“Who” meant several things in this context. I was wondering about their previous knowledge and expectations. This was actually the point: what they were expecting from me, what they wanted to learn and how. To understand that these questions don’t have a definitive answer took me some time, and probably to keep in mind them is the engine of my ideas about teaching.
Such as in these days, I’m at a starting point now. I’m thinking about how to develop useful and attractive contents for the future students of the Spanishsense program. Like in this moment, I’m wondering who are there and what reasons to learn Spanish they have. I feel that I have some advantages now because of the experience that I’ve acquired during more than ten years of working. Is precisely this background what allow me to know how important is to listen to the students’ feedback, and how better is to have them opinions than to imagine what they need.
In order to try to answer this question I’ve been asking to some English speakers why they want to learn Spanish. Here are the most popular responses:
4. Is widely spoken in the business’ market. To speak it gives you advantages.
中文 Chinese
admin Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 11:18 am
Maria,
Welcome aboard. I’d like to learn Spanish, too. I know some French and Italian and so I think it would be good to learn Spanish - maybe it should be relatively easy in this case.
I love the sound of Spanish and I’d love to be able to produce it. As a young man I visited Spain and loved it. I hope to go back some day - but this time I hope I can use some Spanish!
Ken Carroll
admin Says:
March 1st, 2007 at 11:42 am
Ken,
Thank you for your comment. I also believe that speaking other latin languages is a good background to learn Spanish.
About the the sound of Spanish, I’m sure that you are gonna be able to to reproduce it in a short time.
María Massarini
Huibert de Man Says:
March 3rd, 2007 at 3:23 am
I am already a fan of Chinesepod and I would really welcome podcasts to improve my Spanish!
admin Says:
March 4th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I really appreciate your welcome and I am sure that you are gonna improve your Spanish rapidly!
María Massarini
guillermo Says:
March 5th, 2007 at 6:52 am
Maria, de donde eres? El apellido parace italiano
Brent Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Maria,
I’m currently using Japanesepod101.com to brush up on my Japanese, but am eagerly awaiting the arrival of content on Spanish Sense. I must admit that my primary reason for wanting to learn spanish is for its immediate usefulness (I live in Texas). I think one challenge for you, as you develop content, will be to tap into people’s two main motivators for learning a language: usefulness and cultural interest. I look forward to seeing how these are incorporated into Spanish Sense.
admin Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Guillermo,
En cuanto a tu pregunta, mi apellido efectivamente es italiano, pero yo soy argentina.
María Massarini
guillermo Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Argentina? mi favorito acento…
admin Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
¡Gracias por eso!Aunque debo decirte que trato de ser lo más neutra posible en mi acento.
María Massarini
admin Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Brent,
I really appreciate your suggestions. It could be very valuable for me if you give me some examples about your personal interests. Do you work with people who speak Spanish? Do you have friends who speak it? What the cultural interests are for you?
Thanks,
María Massarini
Brent Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Maria,
I do have occasion to work with Spanish-speaking individuals (in our Mexico office), and I do have friends who speak Spanish; but my primary reason for wanting to learn would be simple cultural curiosity. (If that makes sense.) We have a very large and diverse population in Dallas - many of them from Mexico and South America. (I have a couple of friends from your home country of Argentina.) So I guess I would be most interested in learning to communicate in areas that you would discuss with the general population: food, travel, relationships, etc. Learning to speak on a business level would only be secondary for me. I hope that helps a little bit.
Brent
Pérez Says:
March 8th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Hola,
I studied up to 200-level Spanish in high-school. I’m interested in honing my skills, understanding the differences between Spanish spoken by Chicanos, Andaluz and Castellanos, and learning about Moorish Spain.
- - -
Marcos Pérez
admin Says:
March 8th, 2007 at 10:14 am
Brent,
Of course the expression ‘cultural curiosity’ makes sense! In fact, I’m living in Shanghai and this is my main motivation to learn Chinese. I believe that I can understand what are you talking about. The point is that its meaning is really wide.
Nowadays, for instance, for me this kind of motivation involves the oriental way of thinking on abstract terms and the form of establishing personal relations concretely speaking. Nevertheless, when I arrived to China one year ago, I had more pragmatic motivations that could be mentioned as cultural interest. How the food is, at what time I have to go to lunch, when I have to say thank you, were ones of my first questions.
Is very interesting for me to know more about which your personal interest were. Thank you for your feedback!
María Massarini
admin Says:
March 8th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Marcos,
We are going to include some comments about the differences in the grammar and the pronunciation of the Spanish spoken in Latin America and the one that is used in Spain as official language. It can involves some aspects of Castellano.
By the way, where do you come from? where do your family come from?
María Massarini
Pérez Says:
March 9th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Mi familia y yo somos de la costa del este de los EUA. Yo no soy un Latino: Pérez es un seudónimo.
AuntySue Says:
March 21st, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Twenty years ago I had a burning desire to learn Cantonese (and I still do). While at university, studying science, I discovered a Chinese course and got special permission to add one semester of a language. I went to the dark and formal Chinese office to enrol but the class was full. Next door was the Spanish department, full of people talking and laughing and waving their arms around and jumping up and down and pulling faces and sprawling across the chairs as if all of these behaviours were essential components of their sentences, so I thought hey why not try it out. I stayed a full year and loved every minute, then left and forgot it all.
Where I live in Australia Spanish is seldom heard. For me, Spanish is not for communication, it’s like playing music. With a little bit of theory and a lot of practice you can improvise beautiful sounds for hours. I’d like to start again and regain the skills and pleasures that I’ve lost. I don’t want to become fluent, but I’d like to know enough to have a short “bus stop chat” and to use a dictionary wisely.
But the world is a different place now. The Internet provides communication opportunties that were not dreamed of 20 years ago. Who knows, I might use it for more than my own spoken music this time.
Cornelia Says:
March 31st, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I developed my desire to learn Spanish when I was a consultant on an international project in Paris where I met several Spanish/Lat.American colleagues. They spoke a fairly good English, but never felt comfortably at ease in the foreign language.
After joining my current company I was directly advised that Spanish would be a good idea as our Latin American affiliates widely struggle with English and again at least some Spanish would be a door-opener. Besides being able to read written material in Spanish is a big advantage as they hardly translate their stuff.
I have followed three methods of learning Spanish so far: first I started with two Birkenbihl courses. I like the methodical approach very much but the content is really outdated now. Then I joined classroom-training offered by my employer, 90 min per week, which I still continue, despite all draw-backs of classroom trainings such as different pace-requests. Fortunately our teacher is native Spanish (Castilian).
I had subscribed to a monthly print periodical “ECOS” with some internet pages, a Spanish magazine targeted at German learners.
Generally I am lazy in actually speaking. For another previous project I did Italian with Birkenbihl method, but I answered in English to my key users when they spoke Italian with me - worked perfectly for the objective then, but could be considered as a lost opportunity. When starting with Spanish I completely abandoned any Italian as I kept confusing all the time.
I have a basis of 5 years Latin at a German high school (”Gymnasium”) in Bavaria… anyone a bit familiar with the German federal system will know what that flavour means: old-fashioned rigid rote memorizing, solely using the left brain half, plus a strong request for perfection.
I do find any latin language pretty easy to acquire as there are a lot of similarities. I did a bit of “tourist-Portuguese”, too.
In terms of business reasons I should be reasonably fluent in German English French Spanish, but for the latter 2 that is still a way to go.
But I am also interested pretty much in Spanish culture and history. For example it puzzles me that Spanish-speaking countries had been dictatorships for rather a long time. Is that over or still lurking in the background?
Bob Mrotek Says:
April 2nd, 2007 at 1:10 am
Hello Maria and welcome!
I am a happy ChinesePod student. I am also an American who has been living and working in Central Mexico for eight years. When I was in high school in the United States I studied Spanish for two years. When I arrived in Mexico, however, I found that my previous training was almost useless. I couldn’t understand anything but the simplest phrases. For the first year I lived with two Catholic priests in a parish house in a small town and that is how I learned Spanish. However, the Spanish of the priests was very formal compared to the Spanish of the people that I was working with so I actually learned several forms of Mexican Spanish. Then I moved to a different part of Mexico and I found that the Spanish there was a bit different than what I had learned during the first year. I think it is the same way with Chinese. The people from Shanghai speak a little different than the people of Beijing. I think that your Spanish is very beautiful and it would certainly be understood here in Mexico where I live even though it is quite different from what we are used to. Since Spanish is spoken in 23 countries I imagine that it will be very interesting for you to cover all the bases. I have been corresponding with Antonio Vergara from Spain. He is the administrator of the Spanish Blog on Chinesepod. I am sure that we both smile when we read each other’s Spanish although he also speaks excellent English just like you do. It will be very helpful for me to learn how to speak Spanish in different ways so that I can improve my Spanish speaking ability and communicate more effectively with people from other Spanish speaking countries. By the way, I never would have thought that you are from Argentina. I really thought that you are from Italy
Saludos,
Mexico Bob
Pablo Says:
April 5th, 2007 at 5:22 am
Hi, Maria.
I am also a language teacher and one who believes in many of the ChinesePod tenets for language instruction/acquisition (comprehensible input, lots of repetition, de-emphasis on grammar, development of a community of learners).
I have wanted to learn Spanish for many years as I live in the U.S. and it is our second language after English. There is some speculation that it will replace English within fifty years, but that is another matter. I find it very limiting (and even disrespectful) to go into a Spanish-speaking section of my home town (Des Moines, Iowa) and not be able to interact with people in anything other than English (or Chinese ;-)).
Yet another reason to study Spanish [or any other language] is that doing so will help me to have greater empathy for my students, who are struggling with a new language (as I’m sure I will be).
I must say I’ve enjoyed my two days at Spanish Sense. I hope I’m able to contribute something.
Hasta luego.
Randall Damon
Will Says:
April 17th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Bueno, I’m Australian, studying Chinese, mostly, but I lived in Chile for a year, before I started university. Although the Spanish department is literally right next to me (I mean literally literally) I don’t get to practice too much (can one practise too much? I think not). I’m pleased to be joining you in an effort to match ChinesePod.
Rick in Atlanta Says:
April 19th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Hello,
I am interested in Spanish for mostly social reasons. I have a number of friends that are originally from Latin American, and so I have lots of friends of friends that I cannot communicate with directly.
There are also a number of specific situations where it would be good to improve my Spanish.
I go to restaurants from time to time where the people working there are able to speak English, but are much more comfortable in Spanish.
I like to watch soccer on tv, and it is more likely to be broadcast on Spanish stations than English ones.
I have recently started learning latin dancing. I expect that as I venture out to apply what I have learned, I will have opportunities to also practice my Spanish.
Thank you very much for starting this service.
Rick in Atlanta
Adriana Says:
April 19th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
Hola Rick, it seems to me you have lots of intrinsic motivations to learn Spanish, and that is a step ahead in your learning process!
María Says:
April 19th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Thanks to all of you I am beginning to figure out who is there. It has been really interesting for me to read about the story of the Spanish learning process of some of you. After those readings, I’ve noticed how frequently you talk about cultural interests like motivations to learn Spanish.
It has been really a pleasure for me to evoke the image described by Aunty Sue about her first Spanish course, where people was talking the language and at the same time was laughing and jumping. From that image, I have had the opportunity to remember how important the corporal energy that the Spanish speakers put on their speech is. Definitely, to talk in Spanish is not only pronouncing words, but also using several corporal codes like movements and gestures.
Thinking about other motivations, like the ones expressed by Cornelia, is very valuable the worry of some students about social issues like the story of the countries where the studied language is spoken, because both, language and history, are different aspects of the same social group and to relate them can be the possibility to understand both in a wider way.
Finally, comments like the ones posted by Pablo or Rick talk about what for me are central aspects of the learning of a language: to achieve empathy with the native speakers of this language and to understand the culture of those speakers on their own terms.
Talking about things like soccer or dancing, I have to say you Rick, in Latin America both, but mostly soccer, are not only diversions, they are rituals. I believe that is the reason why you notice the difference between the English and the Spanish broadcasting. Just let me know if you want links to programs about soccer in Spanish, the are terrific!
Erik Witteborg Says:
May 4th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Maria,
For language enthusiasts I think a great reason to learn Spanish is that it is such a “gateway language”.
Knowing more than one language will inherently help you to appreciate the differences when faced with learning a new language. Being able to really understand that you can’t just take one word or phrase and directly translate it into another language will help break down a lot of barriers that people get stuck on when asking “why” is something as it is in a lanugage. Sometimes you really can’t understand why a word or phrase is used in a language until you’ve assimilated it and used it a couple times in a couple different scenarios .. then the understanding will come.
My Chinese language teacher always has to remind us when we get hung up on a concept and keep asking ‘why why why’ .. “meiyou weishenme”.