How I learned to "Speak" Spanish

A few two years ago, I decided to brush up on my Spanish, which had virtually disappeared completely. Once, a long time ago, I had been offered a teaching position at a university in Venezuela on the condition that I learn “operational” Spanish in 3 weeks. So, I had to learn Spanish to get the job then. I was given a book of exercises, and I worked on my own every day doing simple drills, but I did them orally all alone. I knew I needed at least the basics to teach English to the Venezuelan students, who were just a bit younger than myself.

I started on the job after three weeks of intensive work with this self-learning book. A year and a half later, I could express myself correctly in Spanish but with everyday vocabulary. Thirty years later, I wanted to recover what I had known, but I felt I had forgotten it entirely. I also wanted to progress and simultaneously ward off any signs of impending Alzheimer’s. Learning or relearning a language was just as valid as doing sudoku number puzzles or even ordinary crosswords to keep my mind active!

I started by buying some language books and CDs. I have always liked self-help books for autonomous learning, so I picked up “Spanish in 90 Lessons” from a French publisher with sentences to translate from French to Spanish. It was good, but I also bought “Spanish in 40 lessons” for my husband, and I soon found that I needed those fundamental notions dealing with verb tenses and everyday expressions. I plowed through “Spanish in 40 lessons,” reaching lesson number 17 in a few weeks. The lessons were simple but very useful.
Suddenly, I wanted to “speak” Spanish. I went on the Internet and found different sites. The most interesting one for me was “Notes in Spanish”. A young Englishman was married to a Spanish girl and lived in Madrid. His name was (and still is!) Ben Curtis. He was about to go on a motorbike tour of India to gather funds for charities and set out to do one podcast about Spain and Spanish culture for listeners daily. He hoped, in turn, that listeners would donate to the charities he and his group of bikers wanted to help. He lived up to this challenge of one podcast a day! Then, he went on from a blog to set up a whole website with hundreds of fascinating things to listen to, read, or even watch.

At first, the podcasts seemed quite challenging, but little by little, I began to understand what Ben and his wife Marina Diez were saying. I could hear the Spanish words distinctly, one after another, instead of a string of unintelligible sounds. Of course, the scripts you can buy on their website made it easy to understand whatever had bothered me during the listening. Thanks to the system of podcasts and my recently marketed iPod, I could listen to Spanish wherever I was, i.e., standing in line at the supermarket, traveling by train up to Paris, or even flying across the Atlantic. Everywhere I went, the iPod went, too! Ben and Maria’s podcast did, too!

What I find unique about the podcasts of “Notes in Spanish” is first the fact that Ben and Marina speak slowly and distinctly with precisely the sort of vocabulary we learners wish to learn and use. They ask each other questions about life in Spain and Spanish customs compared to Ben’s homeland, England.

Ben speaks like a “foreigner” who has completely absorbed all the language and culture of the country where he has chosen to live. When I say “foreigner,” I don’t mean it in a derogative way, quite the contrary. He speaks excellent Spanish and has acquired many of the Spanish culture’s tricky expressions. His proficiency is not equal to someone born and educated in the country. That is what makes the podcasts so refreshing and pedagogical. We all want to speak like Ben, and since he isn’t a native speaker, we think we might be able to imitate him to a certain degree. He knows when he makes mistakes, corrects himself, and explains the errors.

People raised in a country and who are not teachers often have no idea of the difficulties others encounter when learning a foreign language. So they cannot give as many valuable insights.

I feel the same way about French. I am Swedish and was brought up in the USA. So, I had two languages from the start. But then I had to learn French. I have been in France for a long time and obtained French nationality. I have frequently been told that my French is excellent, but I know I will never speak like a university-educated native. However, I have the advantage of knowing where the difficulties lie. That is how I can help others. Moreover, I have also been teaching English for a long time. The fact that I am studying other languages like Spanish or Russian allows me to teach, write materials, and produce podcasts.

I also want to say that Ben Curtis has set up his website himself. It is splendid: the colors, the photos, the articles…everything! And now there are video blogs that listeners send in. I even did so myself—“Marianne en Francia.”

With Marina, Ben has produced podcasts for different levels: Advanced, Intermediate,e, and “Inspired” Beginners. The topics they choose are very topical. It would help if you gave them a try. The concepts are explained very clearly. For instance, I learn so much more from them than from watching Spanish television. And the worksheets are worth the small fee they charge. Returning to my attempts at relearning Spanish, I decided I needed to find people to “talk” to in Spanish. I had to lie in bed for a few months because of an injury and couldn’t type emails. So I went to “SharedTalk” and found two excellent language partners—a woman in Barcelona and a Spaniard in Paris. I have written about them in my article “Finding a Language Exchange Partner on the Web”. The woman was originally from Columbia but was living in Spain after having spent twenty-two years in Sweden! She even had Swedish nationality! Whenever we couldn’t say the right word in Spanish or English, we would go to Swedish!

I think the time has come for all young people to take the initiative to learn foreign languages independently. We shouldn’t blame language teachers in high schools or even universities. Often, they have 20 to 30 students per class. It is an almost impossible situation for the teacher. I would go as far as to say that it is a waste of time. Now, young people can read, listen to, and even speak English with native speakers just by clicking on different websites. With “YouTube” and “DailyMotion”, you can watch videos and even make videos in a foreign tongue. There is no longer any excuse for not speaking English or other languages since you can learn alone without spending much money.

I am currently taking advantage of all the possibilities I have mentioned, but I continue to work with my self-help book “Spanish in 40 Lessons” (in French). And although I have progressed, I still haven’t done more than 27 lessons. This rich material helps me ensure I speak “correct” Spanish! I don’t claim to communicate well, but people generally congratulate me on my ability to express myself, which they think complements their language.

By the way, I love to watch TV series. In the past, I was a fan of the US series “Desperate Housewives.” I bought the DVDs in Canada to have the series in English and Spanish with Spanish subtitles! That is a marvelous way to improve your language skills. A few years later, I purchased the Spanish parody of the American “Desperate Housewives” called “Mujeres.” With the subtitles, I managed to understand the story very well. It is amusing and entertaining, but a little too much swearing keeps me from understanding everything.

Now let me say one last thing about my work as an English teacher. I wanted to contribute to this great “sharing” of online linguistic materials. I believe in trying to make education as democratic as possible. So first, I wrote a manual for teachers, a digital resource book with text, audio, PPT, and video. I even included films made by my students.

The latest version of the manual is called “QualityTime-ESL: The Digital Resource Book” 2.0. It used to be on a DVD, but now it can be downloaded in three zip files.

You may ask yourself, “What does Marianne Raynaud have to offer now that so much wonderful material is already on the Internet?” The answer is simple: there are some but not many people teaching “correct English usage through grammar drills”. You can find such drills in bookshops, but they are on the Web. So, that area has become “my niche.”

I feel that language is like mathematical equations. Once you know the logarithms in a field and can apply them, you can solve a problem correctly! Once you can manipulate verbs in the correct tenses and formulate clear sentences, others will understand and communicate with you. If you wish to learn proper English or Spanish,h for that matter, you have to do oral exercises that could be called “Language Gym.” Good luck with your training.

Marianne Raynaud