The Great Classroom Debate

Over and over again, I read about students who are immensely frustrated with the language learning classes in their schools.  Why is it that classrooms seem to deaden the desire to learn among young people?  Schools are meant to be the places we send our children to learn and grow into adults but often I find the reviews to be abysmal.  Students are uninspired by the curriculum and become reticent, especially when it comes to learning a foreign language, leading to failure to learn more than some basic vocabulary and the very simplest ways to communicate.  I find it hard to blame the students in this case, as I too as a student found my Spanish classes to be either boring or at times overwhelming with the various grammatical topics we covered.  I was a good student, however if I was not inspired to learn, it was very easy to shut myself off and stubbornly refuse to learn.  I couldn't find the right place for accent marks or often I conjugated the verbs incorrectly, making me feel foolish which pushed me further down into my shell.  The more confused I became, the more I shut myself off from learning.  So how is it that now, fifteen years later I am not only enamored with the language, but I find it easy to learn?  It all has to do with inspiration, motivation, and the desire to learn.

I love learning, but that does not mean I loved my time in school.  As I said, often school can be boring, methodical, and entirely uninspiring.  My whole attitude towards learning Spanish changed when I found myself surrounded by native Spanish speakers who I desperately wanted or needed to communicate with.  I learned how to talk, which goes well beyond memorizing vocabulary lists or learning how to conjugate verbs.  Yes, those things are critical when it comes to learning a language, even in your own native tongue, but there has to be more to it than that if you want a student to retain the information.  When I started learning why we said things in Spanish the way we did, it all started to click.  When I heard native speakers talking, I started to understand where to place the accents.

Tell me something and I'll forget it.  Show me something and I'll understand it.  Practice it with me, and I'll be able to do it.  Classrooms simply do not offer enough practical usage of the language to teach a student how to speak effectively with another person.  Sure, after a few months, anyone can ask the basic survival questions we all learn when first taking on a new language, but how many students can actually talk to another person in that language?  I'm not suggesting we can teach complete fluency in a matter of four or five school years, but if we start emphasizing communicating over rote memorization, I think we'll start to see a tremendous change, not only in the success rates of the students, but in the overall satisfaction the students get out of gaining a skill such as speaking a second language.  Being able to conjugate verbs is boring, but being able to use a skill in my everyday life is fun, and when it becomes fun, it is not a chore to learn.  Clearly not every student is going to fall in love with foreign languages, as I was never one to fall in love with, say, chemistry.  We can, however, make learning more fun and find ways to encourage those who will fall in love with language learning.  I wish I could find a way to work with public schools to improve foreign language classes.  Should anyone have any suggestions, send them my way!

When Confidence Fails

OK, I see it's been a while since I last posted here, and abandoning this blog was never my intention.  I just tend to get distracted with things and lose my focus now and again.  Hopefully, with only 147 days until I leave for Spain, I can continue to post here the ways in which I find learning a language helpful to opening new doors in life.  That being said, I want to talk a little about my moment of fear and doubt in myself and how it has affected me recently.

I have been a follower of the website Fluent In Three Months since 2010 and the site's host, Benny, has been a great inspiration for me.  I posted the following in his forums about my recent bout of terror regarding meeting him in person.  Read on:

This past Summer, while Benny was touring the globe on his book tour, I was fortunate enough to be presented the opportunity to meet him along one of his stops. He made a stop in Connecticut, about 45 minutes from where I live and I had planned on making the trip to the book store for some time, as the stop had been announced months in advance. I had the day off from work, his book in my hand, and a collection of anecdotes to share with him, yet as the minutes ticked by that afternoon, suddenly an unsettling anxiousness took me over. I was nervous about going to meet him in person although I had been a follower of his site since 2010. His blog inspired my own Spanish language blog that now has almost 900 entries. I've used his platform of making small, three month goals to help me in my journey to speak Spanish and in May of 2015 I will be spending a month alone in Spain with the intention of not speaking a word of English. So what stopped me from making the short drive to meet him? In short, I was afraid. Despite all of my hard work and all of the conversation exchanges I have had through Skype, I was nervous about meeting Benny in person. Why? I was certain he would expect me to speak Spanish. In fact, I was planning on speaking Spanish with him, so what was I afraid of? I was afraid I would say the wrong thing. I was afraid I would conjugate a verb in the present tense that should have been in the past or that I would use a feminine article for a masculine noun. I was afraid that I would tell him how long I had been studying the language and how excited I was to be going to Spain and then I would be unable to say even the most basic phrases. Worst of all, I was afraid that after just one silly mistake, I would fall back into English, knowing full well that Benny speaks English and I could just as easily talk to him in English as I could in Spanish without actually showing that I had learned any Spanish at all. Despite all the advice I have given and received over the years, I suddenly lacked the confidence in myself to use a skill I had been working on attaining for years. I find myself more timid speaking Spanish to those who are fluent in English as they can readily point out my mistakes and we can easily fall into the trap of speaking English instead of our target language. I'm using my trip to Spain as a way to force myself to get over my timidness, as it is less likely I will find those willing to use English in place of Spanish. With roughly 145 days until my trip, I am more and more anxious, but the ticket is bought, the room is reserved, and I can't back out now. I wish I hadn't chickened out of my opportunity to talk with Benny in Spanish, but hopefully I can use this as motivation to practice more and more before my trip. I'd love to hear others thoughts about their experiences with complete loss of confidence.