How I *Failed* To Learn Spanish - Vanessa

I cried…

When I was 16 years old in high school, I heard a foreign language for the first time.

Maybe this is almost unbelievable to you.

In your country, do you hear foreign languages frequently on the street or in the classroom?

In the US, I didn’t hear any other foreign languages until I was 16 and started a Spanish class.

I remember the first day of class, I came home and cried because I felt so stressed.

The teacher spoke only in Spanish for one hour, even though she knew that we’d never learned Spanish before.

What a rough start!

My Spanish teachers in high school and college tried to include some interesting activities, but when there are 30 other students in the class, you can’t do that much.

Maybe I just have a language problem…

Because I loved the idea of travel, I wanted to keep taking Spanish classes.

But I was so stressed that I wasn’t improving that I decided to quit.

I could understand individual words, but I couldn’t understand full sentences and conversations, even after 4 years of classes.

I thought, “Maybe I just have a language problem. Maybe I just can’t learn languages.”

And actually, a lot of people think this about language.

I’ve heard people say, “I’m not good at languages.”

And do you know what?

This is the silliest thing that I’ve ever heard because they are USING language to tell me that.

Their brain is perfectly capable of learning language because they can speak their mother language perfectly.

https://youtu.be/Lqada5cwo0k