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Why You Cant Learn Spanish in School |
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Saturday, 04 August 2007 |
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In schools across the United States Spanish is being taught to elementary and high school students as an integral part of their curricular requirements. This is intended to allow students to walk away from the campus on graduation day with a basic knowledge of another language that will allow them to enter the world one step ahead of their competition. Unfortunately, this is not often the case. Despite having spent four or five years in the mastery of their chosen language it is very rare for a student to enter the “real world” in possession of even a basic grasp of its fundamentals.
How can this be? The simple truth of the matter is that schools are teaching children Spanish all wrong. The methods employed are the same as those that would be used to teach history, or math, or any other subject that can be learned by rote memorization. Language is not history or math, and it cannot be learned by reading from a book or writing on an exercise sheet.Take a moment to consider how you learned to speak English. After all, if you are reading this article you must have at some point achieved at least a basic mastery of the language. You probably learned English as a child by hearing it every day from the people around you, and once you could speak it fluently you set out on a quest to learn to read and write it. This is the precise method that should be employed when learning to speak Spanish. It must first be spoken, then written, which is where so many schools go wrong. Of course, hearing and speaking Spanish does you no good if you only do it for an hour three times a week. This is another reason that learning a language in school is unsuccessful; these students simply do not have the opportunity to practice their newly acquired skills outside of the classroom enough for them to become the integral part of the subconscious they must become in order to develop fluency. In order to truly learn Spanish it must be spoken and heard throughout the course of your daily affairs. This is known as immersing yourself, which is something that you will never be able to do in school. |
