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Learning Spanish Then versus Now

March 10, 2015 •

Last month I began one of my big projects for 2015, relearn­ing Span­ish. It’s a les­son in humil­ity, but I’m encour­aged by how many options there are for moti­vated learn­ers will­ing to prac­tice at home.

Pre-digital Lessons

Mount Holyoke College gates

Mount Holyoke Col­lege gates

When I attended col­lege, per­sonal com­put­ers had not yet been invented. There were no Macs, no iPods or iPads, no YouTube or online com­mu­ni­ties — no dig­i­tal devices to serve as end­lessly patient lan­guage tutors.

In those days the empha­sis of Span­ish instruc­tion tended to be read­ing pro­fi­ciency. You went to Spain for the sum­mer or did “junior year abroad” as a more prac­ti­cal way to learn to speak like a native.

Col­lege classes were con­ducted in Span­ish, once past the intro­duc­tory level, but time con­straints pre­vented teach­ers from coach­ing stu­dents on how to improve pro­nun­ci­a­tion or con­ver­sa­tional skills.

We got coach­ing or cor­rec­tions as a class, rather than as indi­vid­u­als. No one taught me where to place my tongue to roll my R’s or RR’s in the Span­ish man­ner. Any native His­panic speaker knew instantly that French was my pri­mary sec­ond lan­guage.

Prac­ti­cally speak­ing, there was no at-home tech­nol­ogy to rein­force lis­ten­ing, pro­nun­ci­a­tion, or sen­tence con­struc­tion in a for­eign lan­guage. We were lim­ited to hand­writ­ten exer­cises, lan­guage labs and audio-tapes (ana­log, not dig­i­tal).

Pre-digital language labs

Pre-dig­i­tal lan­guage labs

Lan­guage labs were spe­cial class­rooms with ana­log A‑V equip­ment, avail­able only at presched­uled times.

Instruc­tional focus was on the basics: vocab­u­lary drills, gram­mar lessons and writ­ten Span­ish. We learned to read and write in Span­ish, to under­stand its logic and gram­mar; how­ever, we strug­gled to use our Span­ish in real-world set­tings. Our con­ver­sa­tional skills lagged far behind…

I could read Don Quixote or Cien Años de Soledad, but I could not dis­cuss music or cur­rent events with native speak­ers, at their nor­mal pace.

My Span­ish-speak­ing hey­day was a self-guided tour of Spain with my hus­band. We rented a car, nav­i­gated across the coun­try, chose where to stay with the help of a Span­ish-only guide­book, booked hotel rooms by phone, ordered meals off Span­ish-only menus, shopped, and thor­oughly enjoyed the expe­ri­ence. Estábamos muy con­tentos.

21st Century Language Lessons

Multimedia Spanish lessons

Mul­ti­me­dia Span­ish lessons

Fast for­ward to 2015, and my Span­ish vocab­u­lary has evap­o­rated, for lack of use. My lan­guage recall is pathetic.

Until last month, I could not remem­ber how to con­ju­gate the most basic verbs — but I still under­stand the rules for gen­der match­ing, the ratio­nale behind the tenses, or when to use the verbs ser, estar or tener. The logic of the lan­guage, but not its con­tent.

As I work through my mul­ti­me­dia Span­ish lessons, I’ve noticed that my lis­ten­ing skills are bet­ter, more nuanced than before. I hear and under­stand more clearly. As a result, I’m get­ting a lot of ben­e­fit from the expen­sive Liv­ing Lan­guage course I pur­chased from Ama​zon​.com last month.

Who knows why? Have I got­ten bet­ter at lis­ten­ing as I’ve matured?

Per­haps there’s less pres­sure from my pri­vate dig­i­tal tutor, ever patient with my mis­takes. I can repeat a sen­tence or a phrase as often as I want — some­thing that was not prac­ti­cal with ana­log-only audio-tapes.

What I notice most is how clumsy my tongue has become, for lack of prac­tice. There’s a big gap between the sounds I “hear” in my brain and what comes out of my mouth.

Dur­ing drills my tongue feels slow and clumsy, eas­ily tripped up by the chal­lenge of rolling my R’s like the native speak­ers, or try­ing to remem­ber to pro­nounce the V like a soft B. My tongue gets stuck, I floun­der, and the dig­i­tal instruc­tor is already onto the next drill activ­ity. It’s hum­bling, but only my cats are lis­ten­ing…

My brain can “see” the words as they would be writ­ten, but my tongue rarely dances from one word to the next at the pace required by the prac­tice drills.

I’m find­ing some very help­ful YouTube videos that explain how to posi­tion the tongue to trill that R. I’ve tried a cou­ple, and already it’s get­ting bet­ter.

As I prac­tice and re-learn this begin­ner-level Span­ish, I find myself observ­ing the many dif­fer­ences between then and now: how I learned Span­ish at col­lege, and the options avail­able to me today, thanks to YouTube, my Mac, iPhone and iPad, a CD player in my car, and the Inter­net for addi­tional drills and prac­tice.

I’m learn­ing how to use the iPad key­board dif­fer­ently, in order to access the accented let­ters such as ñ.

As for con­tin­u­ing ed classes, I’ll wait until ready for a con­ver­sa­tional class.

In the mean­time, by the time I get to Mex­ico next month, I will know how to count to cien and con­ju­gate the com­mon verbs, in the present tense. I’ll have a 100-word vocab­u­lary, the most basic words. It’s not much, but it’s a start.

¡Estu­pendo!

Now if I could only say perro…

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Reflec­tions on life, travel, books, and yoga. Think­ing out loud about the pur­suit of mind­ful­ness and well-being.

Learn­ing how to recover from the loss of a beloved spouse, and then to find a trans­for­ma­tive path for­ward.

About Me

Semi-retired marketing exec, transitioning from a career in high tech. Now "managed" by two Tonkinese cats. Missing travel and friends on the West Coast. Avid reader and foodie. Staying active with long walks, biking, kayaking and yoga.

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