Dutch teacher
To me, language is the basis of all communication: language is what brings people together and connects us. To understand each other, it is useful to, literally and figuratively, speak the same language. How fortunate for that language to be Dutch! For me, our tiny country has one of the most complex, and at the same time richest and most intriguing languages in the world. The fascination I have for the difficulties and possibilities of our language, I wish to pass on to my students. My favourite part of this profession is working with Dutch literature. In my classes, I implement a principle of improvisational theatre: “have fun in failure”. If you don’t make mistakes, you won’t learn. That’s why students in my classes must make mistakes, and I teach them how to have fun while doing so.
Brief CV
As a daughter of a Dutch expat father and a German mother consumed by wanderlust, Doris was born abroad and was raised more or less trilingual (Dutch, English, German). Later in life, she also learned other languages, such as French, Spanish, Latin, Ancient-Greek and a bit of Bahasa Indonesia. And with each language, she learned about the countries and cultures behind that language. After her studies in Journalism, various careers followed, such as television maker, writer, translator, guide, actor and drama teacher. All skills came together when she decided to follow her heart and become what she had been all along; a teacher of Dutch. And due to her background, “Dutch as a second language” was the only logical choice to make: to work with people of all sorts and conditions and from all over the world.