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Always Keeping My Spanish Language Active

January 30th, 2009

After a year of Latin in high school, my parents and I moved to a new town for us, Seminole, Texas - about as far West Texas as you can get, without being in New Mexico. Since I enjoyed Latin, I signed-up for Spanish, since that was the only language offerred. We had a great teacher, and I took Spanish my sophomore through senior years.

My high school Spanish seemed to “stick”, even though I’m always talking to people who have totally forgotten whatever language they learned in school. Perhaps they didn’t have a true love for language, or perhaps they just never made opportunities to continue their studies.

In high school, I had part time jobs at a fast food place, and as a janitor. In both of these jobs, I was surrounded by Spanish speaking co-workers; so I picked up some Spanish that I cannot repeat in mixed company. But in general, it did help enforce the “proper” Spanish that I was learning in school.

At the end of my junior year in high-school, I went on the Spanish Club’s trip to Mexico. Travelling to a Spanish-speaking country is obviously a great way to boost your skills. I created an audio-scrapbook for the trip, and got 3 hours of transferrable college credit from a junior college.

Speaking of college credit, I took advanced placement tests for Spanish when I went to college. Due to my scores, I actually got fourteen hours of credit. Along with some other math and science tests, I was basically a sophomore in college my first year there.

In college, I didn’t major in Spanish, but almost got a minor. If I remember correctly, I had one class in conversational Spanish, and two classes in Spanish literature. I was also involved with Spanish Clubs and Honor Society on campus.

Later, when I was out in the working world, I did self self-study in French, Portugese, and Hebrew. I discovered the Pimsleur system and the government FSI courses (this was still 10 years before the internet!). I went on a couple of trips to Brazil, where I spoke probably butchered my limited Portugese with a lot of Spanish, but I could make myself understood.

Finally, in 1995 I got to live and work in a Spanish-speaking destination, San Juan, Puerto Rico. While I could have used English on the job, I tried when possible to use Spanish, and the co-workers were encouraging. I was there about nine months, and often found myself starting to “think” in Spanish instead of English. I would have learned even more if I had stayed in someone’s home, instead of living by mself.

So after trying dozens and dozens of language books, courses, tapes, CD, and software programs, I became sort of an expert at what works and what doesn’t. I created a software program to teach the Hebrew alphabet, and now I’m focusing again on Spanish. We have just created an online Spanish learning center, have brought in some great talent to build lessons and answer questions in the forums.

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