Learning Spanish – Part 12 – Conversational Spanish Lessons

In my last article I wrote about the elements of Spanish grammar that my personal tutor and I went over during the Spanish lessons I took whilst in Antigua, Guatemala. In this article I want to talk about the conversational lessons that I attended at the same school.

During my two weeks at the school I spent Monday to Friday from 9.00am to 12.00pm studying Spanish grammar on a one to one basis with my tutor. The afternoons were devoted to different kinds of conversational lessons. These included talking in Spanish with various different tutors on a one to one basis, participating in group conversations and playing different types of word games.

Conversational lessons benefit the student in a number of different ways. In my case having conversational lessons each afternoon gave me the opportunity to put into practice the Spanish grammar that I had learnt during that morning. It is always a good thing to try and practice any new Spanish you have learnt, straight away while it is still fresh in your head. You might want to think about constructing certain types of typical sentences that help you remember different aspects of Spanish grammar better.

Speaking, listening and becoming accustomed to spoken Spanish is an essential part of the learning process and of course, having a conversation with someone allows you to do all of these things at the same time.

When you first start to have conversations with people in Spanish you will probably find the whole experience quite gruelling, especially if your vocabulary is limited! This is completely normal. Don’t forget that you are used to speaking in your first language every single day without even thinking about it and to suddenly change this habitual action is no easy task! The thing is that you have to keep practicing. It is like anything, the more you practice the better you become.

One of the great benefits of having conversational lessons is that you can take as long as is required to have the actual conversation, plus, your teacher can make sure you are speaking correctly. In real life situations this is often very difficult if not impossible to achieve. Often people will not have the patience to wait while you try to get your words out or not bother to correct you if you say something that isn’t quite grammatically correct.

The types of conversations that you can have in order to practice your Spanish are endless, which means you can practice using all aspects of Spanish grammar and a full range of vocabulary. To practice different verb tenses for example you can talk about things in the present, past and future or you could practice describing what certain objects look like if you just want to focus on specific vocabulary.

You can talk about yourself, you can talk about events in your life, you can practice describing things, asking and responding to different types of questions, you can talk about different experiences you have had, about things you would like to do, about the things you do and don’t like……. The list really is endless!

When I was attending conversational classes in Guatemala I did however, sometimes get a little board and frustrated. I think this was mainly because I couldn’t speak quickly enough, didn’t know enough vocabulary and always had to think about what I was going to say before saying it. Also I was having the same types of conversations over and over again and couldn’t really talk about anything in great detail. In order to prevent or lessen these types of annoyances the school provided group conversational lessons and encouraged the students to play different types of word games such as ‘hang man’ or ‘what am I’.

There is no point in doing any kind of study if you are not enjoying it or if you start becoming board. Varying the different types of learning activities is a good way of preventing this from happening. Playing word games are also a good way of breaking up your study routine but in a way that still allows you to practice your Spanish. Group conversations can help build your speaking confidence and listening to other students speaking Spanish can be quite reassuring. You realise that other people are in the same boat as you and you can also use the experience to test whether you think someone has said something correctly or not.

Making the learning experience an enjoyable one is important and to help achieve this the school I went to in Guatemala arranged different group activities after lessons. Some of these included visiting a local coffee plantation, going on a bike ride and going out for a meal. Getting involved in social activities is not only fun but it also allows you to practice your Spanish in less formal and natural environments.

In my next article I intend to write about ‘home stays’. When I was studying at a school in Antigua, Guatemala the school arranged for me to live with a local family for two weeks. I will discuss in what ways this type of culture immersion helped me to learn more Spanish and practice the Spanish I already knew.

Learning Spanish – Part 11 – Learning Spanish Grammar with a Personal Tutor in Antigua, Guatemala

In this article I will discuss in more detail what the Spanish lessons were like that I attended for two weeks while I was travelling through Antigua, Guatemala. I will also explain in what ways I benefited from the lessons and how they helped me move one step further towards my goal to learn the Spanish language.

The school I went to was well established. Apart from Spanish lessons the school also gave students the opportunity to participate in group excursions and they also organised accommodation where students could live with a local family for the duration of their studies. I intend to talk more about the benefits of home-stays in one of my future articles.

The first thing that impressed me about the school I went to and which was actually the norm in most of the schools that I looked at, was that all lessons were conducted one-on-one. Each student had a dedicated teacher. You might think that this would be expensive but you will be surprised at just how affordable it is! Learning more about the local economy will open your eyes as to why this is, but this is another story! (Lessons will always be cheaper if you book them on your travels. Like most things it really isn’t necessary to book in advance before you start your travels!)

Not all the teachers at the school were proficient in English but my teacher was. This was quite important. Even though all my lessons were conducted in Spanish there were times where I just couldn’t understand what was being explained to me. Sometimes my teacher had to explain things in English! Having the lessons conducted as much as possible in Spanish is also quite important however. The more exposure you get to hearing and trying to understand true Spanish / Latin American dialects the better. It might be more difficult and certainly more frustrating but it will definitely pay off in the long run.

So, what were my lessons like? At the beginning my teacher asked me what I had studied before and what I thought my current level of Spanish was. Actually it didn’t really matter what I thought too much as my teacher was able to quickly gauge what my level of proficiency was just my talking to me for a while. My teacher didn’t just tell me what he was going to teach me either. He asked me what I wanted to know and what I needed further understanding on. At the end of a discussion that included some basic get to know each other conversations we decided on a general study plan that we would follow over the next couple of weeks.

Of course it depends on the individual as to what exactly you might want to cover, but for me, I/we decided, that going over all of the basics of Spanish grammar would be beneficial. I had already studied most of what we were to discuss already, but my knowledge was full of holes. I needed to have the holes filled and my brain refreshed. The following is a short summary of what we covered.

1 – Subject personal pronouns (I, he, she, we etc)

2 – The verbs ‘ser’ and ‘estar’ (to be) – Used with the ‘gerundio’ (verbs ending in …ing in English)

3 – Regular and irregular verb formations (present, past and future simple tenses)

4 – All other verb tenses (concentrating on the more usual ones)

5 – Gender – Nouns and Adjectives and word order of.

6 – Direct and indirect object pronouns (me, him, her, it etc)

7 – Pronunciation

8 – Prepositions (to, at, in, on etc), and conjunctions (and, but, or, if etc)

9 – Different types of words – Definitions and how they are used in speech.

Studying all of the things listed above a second time was invaluable for me. I was benefiting in a number of different ways. I was able to validate the things I thought I already knew, I was being corrected on the things I thought I already knew but didn’t, I was remembering things I had learnt at some point in the past but had forgotten about, I was remembering things I had read about before but had never actually used and I think more importantly than anything else I felt like I everything for the first time was falling into place. The language seemed to make sense to me!

My teacher helped me achieve a far better understanding of Spanish grammar than I had had previously. Another reason why having a personal tutor helped me to do this was that I was able to bombard him with questions about why certain things were the way they were. In a very short space of time I had answers to questions that I had pondered over by myself for a long while.

Even though Spanish grammar is for the most part very logical I realised more than ever that I needed to have an open mind when learning Spanish in general. It is not always a case of translating one word for another from English to Spanish or vice versa. The structure of English and Spanish grammar is often very different. Sometimes you just have to accept this and try not to worry about why the language is structured in the way that it is!

My grammar studies were conducted in the mornings, I think for about 4 hours a day with as many breaks as was necessary. Each evening after class I used to write up my notes from that mornings lesson into something that was more legible. Although this might be the last thing you want to do I think it helps because you are re-affirming everything you learnt that day and are writing things down on paper in way that makes sense to you. For a long time afterwards I used my notes to refer back to!

In my next article I intend to talk more about the two weeks I spent in Antigua, Guatemala attending Spanish classes. In particular I will talk about the benefits of conversational lessons.