You Don’t Learn to Speak Spanish even if You Are Doing Full Immersion Courses in Spain
Is This The Solution?
I have this idea. It’s related to the never-ending struggle of learning a new language other than English. It can be frustrating at times because no matter how much money, time and effort you put into lessons, it all comes down to how fluently you can speak the language.
No matter how many lists of verbs and groups of words you have memorized, this doesn’t count for anything if you can’t use them in a sentence. And no matter how many different tenses, forms and rules you know by heart, you won’t be able to apply them if you never actually talk.
Before I go on listing the main problem that may come in the way of learning a new language, I should probably mention that this isn’t written from the point of view of a frustrated individual that is stuck in his Japanese studies. I actually do speak multiple languages so I must have done something right to overcome these struggles.
What’s holding you back from improving your Spanish skills
My name is Frank Sellingsloh and I am the head of a language school in Tenerife. Before you click away, I am not here to promote my business and claim that the key to learning a language lies in taking my classes.
I would rather put some inside views out there that I have collected over the years. And when I say years, I mean since 2004. That’s when I became director of the Spanish language school here in the North of Tenerife, the biggest of the Canarian Islands.
After all, the most basic rule to learning a new language is actually using it. But of course, if you come to a new country and you’re surrounded by new people, you tend to forget about that rule as you are trying to make friends and present yourself in the best way possible, which won’t happen by you mumbling some Spanish words in the hope of getting your point across in a conversation. So what do you do? You switch back to English, the language everybody knows best.
Even though we make sure to only teach in small groups or even individually to get the best results out of the lessons, it seems as if most of our students can’t wait to switch back to speaking English or their mother tongue once the classes end. Which is sad, because that’s what’s holding them back from improving their Spanish skills.
Here’s what’s so sad about it: Once that level of speaking Spanish freely is reached, you won’t think twice about having a conversation in Spanish instead of English — you’ll even prefer it! You will go out of your way to prove your Spanish skills to yourself and those around you and by doing that, you will learn even more.
Once you reach that stage of being able to speak Spanish freely without struggling to find the right words, the whole project will automatically take care of itself and you will constantly improve your skills without even thinking about it.
So if only you could bear those difficult first few weeks of awkwardly conversing in a new language, then all your problems with that language would basically solve themselves as you would become increasingly fluent.
Like I’ve said, this is what happens to almost all of our students who are highly motivated in the classes and come here with the best of intentions to learn Spanish. If only we could make them understand that continuously speaking the language for a certain period of time will help them memorize it for good!
The Concept of a Workation gave me this strange idea
Last year, I opened up a coworking space for digital nomads here in Tenerife. Now we have digital nomads and remote workers from all over the world coming to our workspace all year round.
By meeting all those digital nomads and entrepreneurs in the last year, I was introduced to this new thing called Workation. A workation is a trip to one of the nicest spots you can find on this earth; a place where you’d normally only go to spend your vacation — but instead of going on vacation, you’re going on a WORKation which is basically a combination of working and vacationing.
It is hoped that because of the new inspiring environment and the like-minded people you’ll be around, you will get a ton of work done in that period of time because the atmosphere those circumstances create will call for much higher productivity.
In short, the idea of a workation is to have a group of like-minded people with similar goals come together in a beautiful and motivating place to reach those goals fast. What a brilliant idea, isn’t it?
It turns out that due to the location of our coworking space, we are an ideal host for such a workation, and we’ve helped organize plenty of them in the past. Seeing the impressive results that the participants were achieving right next to the halls of our language school gave me this idea…
The Spanish Bootcamp
What if I took the concept of a Workation and applied it to the need to learn a new language quickly and efficiently? I’ve given this plenty of thought and this is the idea that I’ve come up with:
Have 10 students and 2 teachers move into a villa together for a period of 8 weeks. Have them meet on the terrace or in the living room for Spanish lessons 10 hours per day, 6 days a week.
Sounds like a lot, I know, but hear me out. Make sure that the only language being spoken in that villa is Spanish at all times. Make it a rule. If someone is to break that rule repeatedly, they have to leave. Again, this may seem excessive, but trust me when I say that people will always switch to a language they know better when they have the slightest chance to do so.
I’ve seen it one too many times in my language school. It’s what keeps them from achieving the results that they aim for. Everyone who chooses to learn a new language wants to speak it fluently eventually, but only few people get to that point — and most certainly only if they are left with no other choice but to communicate with the people around them in that language.
This is the key reason behind this idea. I am pretty sure that anybody who was to move into that villa I mentioned above would walk out of it after 8 weeks speaking Spanish. Actually, I am so positive about it that I started a project around it. I want to see if something like this could work. I want to know what other language institutions think about this idea and if there are persons out there interested in such a thing.
The name of this project is “Spanish Bootcamp” and if it seems as if it can work, then I will make it happen in Tenerife.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your opinion about the whole thing. Whether you are working in the field of teaching languages or you’re interested in learning a language yourself, let me know if you think this could work.
Here’s the link: http://www.spanishbootcamp.net/
With sunny greetings from Tenerife,
Frank.
