Friday, October 12, 2007

Raise a hand for embarrassment!

So last night was my Spanish class. I have it from 6-9pm every Thursday. It makes for a long day but usually pretty enjoyable. I'm in an introductory spanish class, as I've never taken it before. When deciding upon which class to take I was torn between conversational spanish and introductory spanish. I was advised to take the intro course since it covered grammer and the other class does not. Well, grammer is great and knowing how to say things are great but what's really important is pronunciation and accentuation. We don't cover that because it's not the focus of the course according to the government. Apparently my class does more grammer than it's really supposed to, which I should be thankful for. However, for the first time in a long time, I got really embarassed in a language class.

I took German for about four years and even lived over there for a while. True, I haven't spoken it regularly in about six years but I still remember much of the basics. Also, I've had the ability to pick up some of the languages of places that I've traveled, most notably in Turkey. Spanish, for the most part, has been the same, except I seem to have trouble with the translation part. Anyways, that all leads up to my embarassment. There's about 25 people in my class and all comprised of working professionals. They come from various jobs, mostly governmental and you can tell they're all intelligent. This is not a typical community college language class. You've got to be on the ball here. Well I don't usually voluntarily answer questions in the class because I'm not as quick as some at answering. I'm still figuring out what the exercise is even asking when they begin to answer. So last night my teacher decided to have me interact a little more and did so by having me read this paragraph in Spanish that was about Costa Rica.

It was a disastor. As I went along I could feel myself getting redder and redder in the face (and for those who know me, I can get pretty red). I felt like everyone was watching and thinking, "Man, she's horrible, please stop, or come on already." I just wanted to be swallowe d up by the floor. I felt like I was in the slow kindergarten readers class, which I've never been in. I stumbled over the words, even basic ones especially as I got more and more embarrassed and kept pronouncing words and letters wrong. I felt like it was never going to end. Granted I had some very difficult words and I am a beginner but it was bad.

I then realized later that night after class was over that part of the problem was we don't learn about pronunication or accents. It's not covered. So here I am trying to say the words in what I think is the proper way without having learned the proper way. This just seems like I serious lack in the grammer aspect. Maybe it's just me...

Finally, I realized part of the problem relates to the overall language learning aspect in America. We don't teach foreign languages at early ages, unlike every other major country in the world. Asia, Europe, South America, and even places in Africa all begin teaching children very early. Yet here we are asking adults to learn a language. It makes no sense. This was evidenced by a girl in my class, and she incidently sits at the same table with me. She's Russian and not only speaks Russian and English but also German and French. Plus she knows some Italian, Polish and is currently learning Spanish. She said it's just a natural part of their educational system. They learn English from an early age and as they get older they add other languages. I saw this in Germany, too. My host family's daughter, Eva, spoke English, German, and French. Personally, I feel this is a serious breach in our educational system and believe that it should be changed. Who's with me?

That's enough about my language embarrassment. I know we've all felt embarrassed at some point. So raise your hand if you have!

2 comments:

Debbi said...

ah...a little lesson in humility is always nice! ha ha! i've been there though. and i agree - languages should be taught more.

ネイト said...

*quickly raises hand*