College Spanish Classes: Did They Work?

[livingdeb]

Short answer: No. I am not a fluent Spanish speaker

Comments

[anonymous]

I took 4 years of high school spanish and one year in college (junior level spanish + conversational spanish) and I think having that background with grammar etc. was helpful, BUT the only thing that worked for getting me to be able to watch and understand people or even Spanish TV was spending a month in Spain with total immersion. Prior to that I could at best understand slow speaking 5 year olds.

[livingdeb]

Yep, immersion would be great--not quite yet, though. Just one month? Interesting.

I spend 3 weeks, but it was not total immersion. The other students usually spoke English (except for one), and most of the Spaniards did, too!

I'm wondering if you take any class at the community college if you can get access to the free tutors. If so, that could be an excellent aid--30 minutes of immersion with people who actually know Spanish.

And the best student in our Spanish III class didn't have a car and had to rely on other people to get rides. She ended up spending a lot of time on campus and she used a lot of it speaking Spanish with one of the janitors. That worked great for her, too.

Another reason

[anonymous]

There's also a decent body of research suggesting that learning another language does various good things for your brain, improving memory, improving decision-making, delaying onset of dementia, etc.

-Sally

Re: Another reason

[livingdeb]

I've heard that too, and it doesn't matter when you learn the language, either.

However, I haven't personally noticed this benefit. I feel just as demented as ever. :-)