If there is one point that I would like to stress to my Spanish I students who are struggling and like to say, "I hate Spanish" within reasonable earshot of me, (IE to my face), it would be this: DUH, SPANISH IS HARD! Learning a new word for everything as well as a new set of rules for organizing those words is NOT easy, and no one said it was. Thus, could we please eliminate the griping and whining, ask ourselves what new endeavors in life we have ever expected to be easy, and then move on?
I know learning Spanish is hard, I may have done worse in Spanish in high school than I did in math, (ask my dad how many teary, yell filled nights we spent over pages of fractions!). In college I said "sayonara Spanish," enrolled in Japanese, dropped Japanese after one semester, and counted down the credits until I could get my foreign language requirement shelved and behind me. The odd thing that occurred, though, was that I experienced a minor epiphany prior to completing my fourth (maybe it was second and only felt like my fourth) and final semester of college Spanish.
The epiphany went something like this: first, I didn't believe, after all of the elapsed time I had spent struggling in Spanish classes, that I had learned a darned thing. (A teachers worst nightmare: "I don't learn anything in here!" Who's fault is that!?) I couldn't formulate sentences, I could barely read it, and I always forgot how to conjugate the verb suffixes. Then, I realized that my problem wasn't necessarily based in lack of knowledge, so much as in lack of fluency. I had a sufficient (bastante) base of vocabulary, but couldn't string words together in my head fast enough. To me it seemed as though it would be a waste to struggle so much in a subject, realize that I knew a little, (un poco), and then quit, ensuring that I would forget all of what I had learned, despite my belief, and make it all for naught. So I signed up to study abroad, in Spain.
This is unique because my major was English Literature and creative writing. I should have followed my contemporaries to London or Glasgow, or some other land of accented English, in order to study poetry and Shakespeare in more depth. Bah.
Off to Malaga, to spend a summer learning both Spanish and sign language all at the same time. It was wonderful. While I spent too much of my time being a hermit, (lets not talk about personal flaws such as fear, because it will only lead to a long discussion of paralyzation, Joyce, and Dubliners, and remember we are avoiding Ireland by going to Spain), I did manage to acquire the fluency that I did not receive in the university environment, where I never took the initiative to seek out Spanish speaking partners or any sort of outside practice. When I came back to Arkansas I skipped Spanish 3 & 4 and went straight into Cultural Readings. I got my first "A" in Spanish. This is being said by the girl who would tear up over frustrations concerning the difference between "llevar" and "llorar." Not only did I come back wanting to speak and read Spanish more, I also took French, and LIKED it, which I seriously need to pick up studying again. (UT has an amazing web site for teaching and learning French, which can be found at Francais Interactif).
Moral of the story? I don't really know. But it is difficult to learn a foreign language, but at the same time, it is also worth it, and there is no way in hades that it will get done if you don't every study!
Next episode: how is a teacher to answer when a student asks if I, I mean he or she, believes that the world has multiple languages because of the ladder of Babel? So many things wrong with that question, where to begin...
