I took three years of Spanish in college and got good enough to read newspaper articles. Then twenty years passed and I forgot nearly everything. Since my house is in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood, I started thinking about brushing up on those language skills when I moved in. But it wasn't until June, when I met my now-Spanish tutor that I actually started practicing.
I got the push I needed when I went to a meetup and met someone who wasn't completely fluent in English. In Germany this is a thing: you find a "Tandem Partner" and meet to spend half the time working on their foreign language and half the time working on yours. I love this model, because you only need to feel stupid half the time. Luckily, when I proposed this to the person I had just met, he didn't think it was crazy.
Meeting weekly to work on a language is just enough to remind you how much you have to learn. But I've been newly inspired by an old college friend who reminded me what I good language student I had been. And I thought, "That's right, I'm someone who studies hard!" Index card flashcards and writing vocabulary words ten times each is now passe, but I'm loving all the language apps out there. I still feel like all I do is remember how much I have to learn, but I have high hopes of moving into the intermediate level during the coming year.
4 comments:
Muy Bien!
my Spanish is totally rubbish now and my French is going the same way. Good to know if I ever feel the need I can knuckle down and bring them back from the dead! Good on you for working on it.
Alexis - you are my idol! You speak Dutch and I bet your French isn't nearly as terrible as you think it is. My goal is to be as fluent in languages as you :)
Writing down vocabulary before vocabulary tests was my method of learning when I was at school quite a few decades ago. Trouble was, I didn't work it out that I had to
speak the language so the Oral Exam was quite a shock!
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