Movies – the best Spanish teachers
There must be millions of people around the globe who have attempted to learn a second language and failed. People have the fantastic dream of travelling to a foreign country and having wonderful conversations with the natives in their own language. They embark on the learning process full of determination and confidence but somewhere along the way, the enthusiasm disappears and the books or videos or cd’s gather dust on the shelf.
And now I have to confess that I was one of those people. I had planned to go work in Spain and decided that if I were to do so then learning Spanish first would be a big help. I did not have the option of attending Spanish classes so I bought an expensive home study course consisting of books and cassette tapes (it was a while ago!).
I completed the course but I felt I was little nearer to being able to converse in Spanish than when I had started. A subsequent holiday in Spain where I got the chance to try out my new language skills proved me correct. The problem was I knew how to ask where the nearest supermarket or bus stop was but I had no idea how to interpret the answer. The tapes I had included conversations, but those conversations were very slow and had exaggerated pronunciations, nothing like a real conversation.
The experience was disheartening, but I never lost my interest and bought other books and courses. I would not spend loads of time studying but I did dip in and out fairly often. Then while holidaying in Spain my daughter wanted me to bring her to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and we found a cinema which showed the film in English with Spanish subtitles.
To me it was a road to Damascus moment. My previous efforts were not all in vain because they meant I was able to read the Spanish subtitles without too much difficulty and my vocabulary was good enough to be able to match what I was hearing with what I was reading. I grasped that it is far better to learn how to express ideas with phrases rather than just string words together.
Because that movie is mainly an action movie, the dialogue tends to be in short snippets and it uses language that we encounter every day in normal life. This is presented in normal conversation complete with inaccuracies and sometimes poor structure – just the way we all (well nearly all) speak most of the time. I left the cinema feeling I had learnt more in that 90 minutes or so than I had in months of bookwork.
Now I use DVD’s as my main learning tool. I can watch Spanish movies with Spanish or English subtitles or I can watch English movies with Spanish subtitles and it makes learning enjoyable. I am learning to speak the way native speakers do and I am listening to normal conversation.
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