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Did anyone else find their Spanish classes in High School entirely useless? (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it's all totally gone from my brain.

My mother's native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

This crash course on comprehensible input made by the ppl over at dreamingspanish goes over all the problems of non-immersive language learning, and also why it continues to be perpetuated even though we know it doesn't work, and that comprehensible input is the only thing that does work.

I grew up in the US, and took years of foreign language classes in highschool and college, but we mostly just spoke english and tried to memorize vocab and grammar rules. Totally useless. Then after I tried to use notecards (anki) and apps... those also don't work.

Finally after many years, I discovered the comprehensible input method to learn spanish and mandarin, and finally am making progress.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I want to learn mandarin, any tips to start? Any app that uses this method?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Two channels I really like:

This also is helpful : https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Of course non-immersive learning works, it's silly to say it doesn't. "Comprehensible input" is a pseudoscientific term for a theory of learning language; The teaching method maybe works better for some people, but the theory largely lacks evidence and at its core is impossible to prove.

Learn that way if you want to, but don't assert it's the only way to learn a language "that works", it obviously isn't. I know multiple fluent bi and trilingual speakers who simply did 90% of their learning at school.