Learning Spanish For A Specific Purpose
Tuesday, 23rd December 2008
Richard Bradford tests an unorthodox approach to language learning in preparation for a business trip to Spain
“I know what I want”, I tell Diana, my native-speaker Spanish trainer, who I’ve drafted in for 15 hours of concentrated Spanish tuition. I’ve been asked to speak at a conference on the value of the Spanish language at the University of Salamanca, a month from now.
The lecture, or “ponencia”, is to take place in one of the more minor rooms at the Palace of Congress, for the International Congress on the Value of the Spanish Language in Salamanca. It has to be 15-20 minutes long, and I’ve decided to zoom in on British colonial attitudes and specificities around learning the Spanish language when in Spain. Given the subject matter, I have insisted on presenting in Spanish, a decision which haunts me.
“I need to speak about language learning. I need to make a 20-minute presentation of my findings, in Spanish. I need to be able to introduce myself and talk about language schools and language training companies. I learn best by talking, listening to you, reading target language in texts, and writing out all the vocabulary and grammar, time and again until it sticks.”
In 1988 I completed an ‘O’-level in Spanish, crammed into a year whilst studying for my ‘A’-levels. On top of that, I did 2 lots of individual courses of 20 lessons each in 1994. I can order an ice cream but not state which flavour. I think Diana’s wondering what she’s got herself into here.
On the face of it, it seems a pretty impossible task to get to the sort of level of fluency the task requires, in 4 short weeks, and with a handful of lessons wedged into an already full diary of meetings and daily palaver.
For some time though, we’ve been developing this contra-dogmatic approach which states that you don’t have to know the whole language, learnt in strict order, to be able to achieve specific business objectives. This was the time, sine qua non, to test the hypothesis.
The lessons take place in the comfort of the local Café Nero, from 8-9am, just a stone’s throw from our office. No one seems to notice or mind me sitting there, decimating the fine Spanish language. Diana is calm, funny, patient, and doesn’t show any sign of boredom in hearing me constantly repeating the same old stuff again and again. Getting to the end of a sentence feels like wading through treacle. I am a good student though. With the sharp focus of a looming, immovable deadline, I spend time on the train hammering through the verb forms, revising the different verbs I’m encountering, writing out my vocab as predicted. It helps, and means I come to the next lesson determined to shoehorn-in the phrase or words I’ve learned to date. It also helps that I’m able to predict the kinds of sentences I’m likely to be saying, the kinds of questions I’m likely to be asked. This means that, though unconventional, I plod painfully through my target sentences, dragging new words of vocabulary from Diana as I go, until I manage to express myself in the way I intended. The conventional wisdom on this is to stay comfortably within the language you know, that the key is to communicate, but sometimes that is not enough to convey complex ideas. Or if you do, you end up sounding like a child.
In the end I start to feel more comfortable with the basic tenses of present, past simple and present perfect, but nevertheless seize any opportunity to manipulate my response into the present, without it seeming too inappropriate. I start to realise that because I’ve locked the subject matter down completely, the sorts of things I’m saying in what is pretty free, unstructured conversation, are becoming more fluent.
The lecture itself I write in English, and then have translated by Fatima, a Spanish colleague. She matches the register, which makes for more complicated Spanish for me to read out. No matter, surely it’s just down to practising it now? Not easy. Incredible how much slower I am speaking in Spanish than in English. Suddenly it’s taking me 40 minutes to speak 15 minutes of text. Diana hammers it out on a digital dictophone in 18 minutes, but she speaks so fast that I can barely make out the words, even with the script before me. I end up slashing paragraph after paragraph in a bid to reduce the thing down to something more manageable.
All too soon my time is up, and I’m in a plane on the way to Salamanca’s small, regional airport. For the next 3 days, not only am I immersed up to my neck in the Spanish language, but also, within the first few minutes of arriving, in the company of fellow speakers somewhat loftier than I. On the first evening, I find myself sitting alongside the former president of Colombia, Belisario Betancur, the pioneer of the peace process, as well as various regional Spanish governmental officials, and a high and mighty director of Telefonica Espana, whose company, I learn, owns O2 in the UK.
In every spare minute, I’ve been reading through my lecture, probably about 20 times through now, and I’m within the allotted time.
By the third day, I’ve sat through 6 formal meals with my country hosts, and have started picking up the bare gist of their conversations. I’ve even started venturing the odd phrase. Just as well, as this is the day of my speech.
In the lecture theatre. I count 160 people staring back, as I sit on the panel of 6 to start proceedings. I’m third up. By the time I walk across to the lectern, adrenalin has pumped my mouth dry.
I trip over words, but I gradually pick up momentum. The whole thing is a massive ordeal, but the gesture of speaking in Spanish, when other Brits at the conference have chosen to speak in English, wins hearts and minds. It’s over.
Mission accomplished, and interestingly, with the relief, my ability to speak seems to be released, no longer held back by the fear of the task in hand.
It was Paul Hogan who once stated that his philosophy in life is “bite off more than you can chew, then chew like buggery”. I feel like I’m living his dream.
I now find myself having lengthy conversations with other delegates, all about the world of language learning, language schools, and the intricacies of the Spanish accreditation scheme of the Instituto Cervantes.
Hypothesis A is upheld - you don’t have to learn the whole language to deliver complex language after only a short period of tuition. I achieved my objectives, albeit by the seat of my pants.
Why did it work? Well I confess that knowing other languages, and having had some past experience of the Spanish language (many years) beforehand will have helped. It meant that most of what I learned had been seen at some point before. But that’s probably the case for most of us who learned a language for 5 or more years at school.
The winning formula was the combination of good quality, flexible, tailor-made individual Spanish lessons, the fear of failure which motivated me to put in the hours at home, followed by full, fairly painful immersion in the country. Being plunged into an unrelenting Spanish-speaking environment, where you are constantly forced to speak is really critical. It’s so easy to go to a country without actually having to speak all the time.
For this sort of specific need, it would not have worked had I been following a general language Spanish evening group class, nor would I have been able to build confidence and listening comprehension skills had I not arrived a few days ahead of the task in hand. Whilst the cost was higher, the relevancy and the value to me of attending made it the most cost-effective option. I think though, that if you are going to be taking individual lessons, you need to space them carefully, and absolutely put the hours in at home between lessons.
Of course, having learned so quickly, I will inevitably also lose my fluency quickly too. But if I’m lucky enough to be invited back, I do know it’ll be much better the next time round. And I definitely would do it all again, pretty much in the same way.
Tags: spanish, language, private tuition, individual spanish tuition, tailormade
Posted by Sarah Gooding under Attitudes to Language Learning, Types of Courses, Case Studies,
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