Today will be my first day of Level 3 Spanish, and I'm really nervous about it.
I've been a Spanish student more years than I'd like to admit, and yet my ability to comfortably converse in that language is still limited. With time I'm able to come up with a decent sentence, and I'm told I have fairly good pronunciation. My dilemma is that when I finally spit out that carefully composed statement or question, the listener thinks I'm more capable than I am and rapidly answers as if I'll be able to understand what he or she is saying. I'm stopped in my tracks at that point, trying to figure out their answer so I can then compose an appropriate response. My most used phrase has become "Más despachio, por favor" which means "slower, please".
Perhaps the real issue is that I've always been a student at heart, and that studying Spanish is more important to me than actually speaking it (if that makes sense). Some of my earliest memories are loving to go to school, and there's a crazy part of me that enjoys having homework (go figure). So if I can let go of the thought that I "should" be able to have fluent Spanish conversations and just enjoy the classes, my confidence and ability will probably improve as I go along. (I actually know with my heart that's true, I just need to believe it with my head.)
I'm realizing that I unconsciously make a "student" of myself in my daily life. For instance, I enjoy the challenge of going to the local Blockbuster to pick up movies for Rick and I. Now I originally thought that the title of an American-made movie would basically stay the same, no matter what country you were renting it in. But in Mexico, the titles are often very different. For example, "Extraordinary Measures" (Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford) is "Decisiones Extremos" (translated to "Extreme Decisions") in Mexico. I see very few similarities there, aside from the fact that both titles have 2 words and the first word begins with an "E". That's not a lot to go on.
But rather than get discouraged, I've developed a system that works for me. The other day I walked through Blockbuster with pen and paper in hand, writing down titles from jackets that looked interesting. I then went home and used my Google Translator to roughly translate them, knowing enough about Spanish to realize that the translations would probably only "hint" at the actual titles. To help with that, I also jotted down one or two of the actors in the movie so that once I had an inkling of the title I could go to Google, type in the star's name, and look at the movies that he or she have been in. I'm happy to say that in most situations, my system works well enough for me to then Google reviews of that movie to determine whether or not we'll like it. This little exercise, as time-consuming as it is, makes me as happy as a clam once I'm successful and have a list of films, in Spanish, to choose from.
Now if that isn't creating "homework" for myself, I don't know what is. Come to think of it, this blog is yet another way of doing the same thing. Perhaps my need to be "student like" is a way in which I take after my dad, who didn't graduate from high school as a young person but who seemed to love to sit in his chair for hours, reading glasses on and pencil in hand, concentrating on whatever. What he was doing besides crossword puzzles is beyond me because he died relatively young, and I never got to know him or his interests as an adult...But that's a whole 'nother subject...
Anyway... I guess I'll just go to my Spanish class this afternoon, trusting that it's o.k. for my mastery of the Spanish language to be a journey, not an event. I think writing this has helped me to figure out, at least to some extent, what's going on in my psyche. Now hopefully I can sit back and enjoy my student "fix", rejoicing that I won't have to "make up" homework for myself for the next several weeks. There will be enough assigned to keep me very happy, and very busy. This may - or may not - mean less blogging. We'll see.
Hasta luego. j
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