I took Spanish in middle school, high school and even two years in college. My dad is also fluent. I know a lot of words, but I can barely speak it. You really need to practice it to become fluent. Classroom learning will never be enough.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
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I can correctly identify when someone is speaking spanish, unless they're speaking portuguese, and ask where the bathroom is. Educational victory!
I had 4 or so years of Spanish throughout various levels of school and never felt I learned much at all. I jammed Duolingo for a month or two before going to Mexico and was really surprised by how much I still remembered. I was able to test out of a lot by having a solid foundation that somehow had stuck with me, I felt pretty cocky going into my trip.
Unsurprisingly, my lack of practice speaking and listening made real time conversations nearly impossible even though I could still read and write well enough. That really didn’t help much with day to day stuff, you can always pull out your phone to translate what a sign says but there’s no substitute for being able to immediately understand and respond to someone. Several others have mentioned it but an academic setting is not a very good way to learn a language, the best is just continuous exposure to how it’s actually used. I taught myself Korean primarily from watching a lot of Korean shows with some supplemental grammar and vocab lessons, it was SO much more effective. I was conversational from the start and was able to connect on a lot of cultural references, after 6 months there I was pretty damn fluent (and even won the grand prize for a speech I gave entirely in Korean).
Yes
I think you should be angrier at your mother dude. There’s only so much classes can do to help you learn a language, no matter how good they are.
I'd have appreciated if those classes had emphasized this point that they are only supplementary, but they didn't. I really thought I was going to be fluent by the end of the third year.
The result is I wasted 45 minutes a day for three years of my life learning something that I'd never have enough mastery in to serve any sort of function in my adult life.
I think you should be angrier at your mother dude.
That's kinda fucked up. You can still learn, just use Comprehensible Input resources (like Dreaming Spanish) instead of the "blue-pill" crap like classes.
Lo mismo hemos podido llegar a pensar algunos hispanohablantes acerca de nuestra experiencia como alumnos de lenguas extranjeras, incluyendo el inglés.
Primero se debería de mejorar el nivel hablado, a base de conversaciones que partan de situaciones cotidianas. Después ir mejorándolo e introduciendo la enseñanza del idioma escrito, con sus normas.
Pero no, pretenden que aprendamos todo simultáneamente, aún encima dejando de lado la conversación.
Cuando visitaba a Costa Rica para mis estudios intercambios, tuve un choque cultural cuando me di cuenta q muchxs ticx no tienen ninguna habilidad de hablar inglés pese a la presencia de multinacionales estadounidenses.
Como estadounidense, tenía la opinión contraria. La mayoría de personas simplemente no continúa su aprendizaje escolar de idiomas extranjeros y es una pena.
my high school Spanish courses were taught by 1) the school's serial assaulter who would neg his female students openly in class, and 2) a glassy-eyed weirdo who once a week would play his favorite sketch from Saturday's SNL