How I sort of Learned Spanish

MAY112012

I flunked Spanish in high school. Twice.

So, you’ll understand why I was concerned when I went to the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona in the spring of 1966 for Peace Corps training as part of a group destined to spend two years in Venezuela.

Of course, the program put a high priority on learning to speak Spanish.

For 8 or 9 weeks we spent 4 hours a day in intensive language training, broken up into groups based upon our pre-knowledge/ability. Then we spent a month in separate small villages in the Mexican states of Michoacán and Jalisco to practice that which we had learned and to find out how we would adapt to a foreign environment.

Given the insecurity I had about my language learning ability, I worked hard in class and individual study and ended up about average for the group.

I then spent two years in Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela coaching sports, teaching English and trying to improve my verbal skills. I got better, but I never spent any time in study, so I was never content with my ability to communicate in “Castellano.”

Over the succeeding years, I have worked in fits and starts to improve my Spanish.

Today, I probably speak Spanish better than I ever have. Major reasons for this are that I dated a woman for several years from South America and we mainly spoke in Spanish. Additionally, a couple of years ago I took an 18 month course in on-line Spanish called WebSpanish. For two hours each week I worked with a teacher in Peru via Skype. Of all the things I have tried to learn Spanish, I believe the WebSpanish program is the best and would highly recommend it.

So, as a result, if you were to hear me communicate in español today, you might think “he really does speak it fluently.” However, there is a big difference between ‘fluently” and “correctly.”

Oh, and it has always seemed to me, that, after a couple of beers, my Spanish improves significantly.