Finding Ways to Practice Spanish

I've been here 3 weeks already and I am beginning to settle in and feel more comfortable. One of my reasons for being here is to experience what it is like to live in another culture and speak another language. I also hope that by doing that, I will become more fluent in Spanish, a language I first studied over 30 years ago!

My Spanish is pretty good, not great, but it is good enough for me to be able to survive. My problem is confidence. When I get into situations where I make mistakes I feel shy about going back and trying again, but I am learning. Fortunately for me, one of the scariest places for me, the supermarket, is also a place that I need to go to alot. In fact, I have been going to the supermarket almost every day. I am beginning to learn the different questions that they ask me at the cashier and beginning to feel less nervous about answering those questions and dealing with the money. Each time I go back now, I feel more confident and less scared.

But I have done some things that are helping me feel more comfortable. One of them was putting an advertisement on Craigslist for a conversation exchange partner. My ad said I was looking for someone who wanted to practice English in exchange for speaking Spanish with me. My idea was that we would meet for about an hour and spend half the time speaking English and half the time speaking Spanish. I got about 5 or 6 responses to my ad and so far have met two people. Both times we spoke more English than Spanish, but I was glad to be able to meet people from Argentina and I was able to ask them questions about things that were confusing me. I hope that the next time we meet I will have more of an opportunity to speak Spanish, and I know that if I want that to happen, I need to just do it.

From one of my conversation partners I found out about a kind of music that is popular here called cumbia. Cumbia in Argentina is a little different from cumbia in other parts of Latin America. I wanted to find out more about it and went to You Tube to find some videos. I watched some music videos and found the lyrics and read along with the music. From there I found some other videos, short documentaries and interviews with people. You Tube is a good place for me to practice listening to Argentine Spanish, and also I can read comments that people post and learn some of the vocabulary that is special to Argentina.

One of my conversation partners recommended a TV program called Patito Feo - it means Ugly Duckling in English. It is a program for teenagers, but it is interesting and it is a good place to learn vocabulary. I found a website on the internet and was able to learn a little about the show and the characters. Now I try to watch that and the news every day for listening practice.

Finally, maybe one of the best things I am doing is taking language classes. I am not taking Spanish classes though (I have a private Spanish lesson once a week). I will be studying Arabic and Italian while I am here. My idea was that if I took another Spanish class (I did that last year), I would be in class with other Americans or other English speakers, but if I take another language class, I will be in class with Argentines. Today was my first Arabic class. There are 12 students in the class. All of them except me are Spanish speakers. Even the teacher, who is originally from Syria, speaks Spanish fluently. There was a lot of Spanish spoken in class, and I also spoke Spanish in class. Of course we were studying Arabic, but there was so much discussion in Spanish I felt like I was in a Spanish class! It was great. The conversation was fast and natural and I think this class will be a good place for me to meet people to talk to outside of class. We might even have some field trips, or go to movies or restaurants together, and that will give me more opportunities to talk to people.

Finding ways to practice Spanish has helped me to feel more comfortable here. When I am successful communicating with people I feel better about my Spanish and it encourages me to keep doing it. When I have problems communicating, I try to ask someone to explain what happened. I learned that when I went to a supermarket called Dia, they asked me if I wanted a bag because that supermarket charges money for bags. Now I know that when I go to Dia they are going to ask me if I want a bag.

I know I will continue to have challenges and I know I will make more mistakes, and maybe even be embarrassed, but, I really like the way they speak Spanish here and I want to be able to communicate better with people, so I am not going to let small failures stop me. Maybe I can't do everything in Spanish and spend 24 hours speaking, reading, writing, thinking and dreaming in Spanish, but if I do one or two things every day, after 5 months I think I will see a big improvement in my ability to speak Spanish. At least I hope so.