Tuesday, January 20, 2009

From High School Spanish to A Career

By Neal Walters

I didn't study Spanish first, but actually Latin in high school. After learning the complexities of Latin, Spanish was a breeze. It was also more fun, because we moved to West Texas were people atually speak the language.

It always amazes me that people talk about taking a language class in high school, then graduate without actually being able to speak any of the language. After a year or two pass, they can't seem to speak a word of it. In our classes, the teacher always made us practice actual conversations, and I believe that helped to make the language stick.

During high school, I had two labor-type jobs, so I got to work with several Spanish speakers. I can't repeat many of the "colorful metaphors" that I learned, but it was a good experience. It actually did help reinforce what I was learning in school.

Every summer, our Spanish teacher took a group to Mexico city. Travel is, of course, a great way to further one's language skills. I took lot's of pictures, created a scrapbook accompanied with an audio tape, and got three hours credit for the trip from a nearby community college.

When I went to college, I took CLEP tests - advanced placement tests for Spanish. They actually awarded me 14 college credits from my test results. Wow - that saved me one entire semester in college.

During my Bachelor's in Business, I took three more Spanish classes. One was in Spanish conversation, and the other two were Spanish literature, where the teacher spoke in Spanish, we took notes in Spanish, and of course the tests were in Spanish.

Then, back in the early 1980s, I tried some French, Portuguese, and Hebrew, using the Pimsleur system. After trying other courses that didn't work, I was very impressed with how easy Pimsleur was. I made two trips to Brazil, in which I was able to "convert" my Spanish into Portuguese by learning a few additional words.

Finally, in 1995 I got to live and work in a Spanish-speaking destination, San Juan, Puerto Rico. While I could have used English on the job, I tried when possible to use Spanish, and the co-workers were encouraging. I was there about nine months, and often found myself starting to "think" in Spanish instead of English. I would have learned even more if I had stayed in someone's home, instead of living by mself.

After studying a few more languages, I have learned what works and what doesn't. I decided to create my own Spanish online learning community. We have several native Spanish speakers supporting our forum and creating short lessons.

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