Past Tense

I didn’t study Spanish first, but actually Latin in high school. After learning the complexities of Latin, Spanish was a breeze. It was also more fun, because we moved to West Texas were people atually speak the language.

It always amazes me that people talk about taking a language class in high school, then graduate without actually being able to speak any of the language. After a year or two pass, they can’t seem to speak a word of it. In our classes, the teacher always made us practice actual conversations, and I believe that helped to make the language stick.

In high school, I had part time jobs at a fast food place, and as a janitor. In both of these jobs, I was surrounded by Spanish speaking co-workers; so I picked up some Spanish that I cannot repeat in mixed company. But in general, it did help enforce the “proper” Spanish that I was learning in school.

Every summer, our Spanish teacher took a group to Mexico city. Travel is, of course, a great way to further one’s language skills. I took lot’s of pictures, created a scrapbook accompanied with an audio tape, and got three hours credit for the trip from a nearby community college.

When I went to college, I took CLEP tests – advanced placement tests for Spanish. They actually awarded me 14 college credits from my test results. Wow – that saved me one entire semester in college.

In college, I didn’t major in Spanish, but almost got a minor. If I remember correctly, I had one class in conversational Spanish, and two classes in Spanish literature. I was also involved with Spanish Clubs and Honor Society on campus.

Then, back in the early 1980s, I tried some French, Portuguese, and Hebrew, using the Pimsleur system. After trying other courses that didn’t work, I was very impressed with how easy Pimsleur was. I made two trips to Brazil, in which I was able to “convert” my Spanish into Portuguese by learning a few additional words.

In 1995, I was a consultant and got a job offer in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Being single and living by yourself is not the optimal way to learn more Spanish. But on the job, I was able to put a lot of Spanish to use, even though it wasn’t a requirement.

After studying a few more languages, I have learned what works and what doesn’t. I decided to create my own Spanish online learning community. We have several native Spanish speakers supporting our forum and creating short lessons.