Learning Spanish in Guadalajara, Part 2

There didn’t seem to be a lot of structure at Guadalajara Language Center, but somehow it worked.!

We weren’t given books, the instructors had some notes and only occasionally referred to a book they had. It seemed that there was some coordination between the morning and afternoon instructors, but only in an overlap of general concepts. It wasn’t a direct continuation of what had been previously taught. Each week we could be in class with different people, so some weeks we were ahead of the other people in the class and others we were slightly behind. You wouldn’t expect it, but for some reason this organization worked. After a while, since we were there so long, it seemed like we progressed and other students were shoehorned into our classes.

Excellent instructors

I thought the instructors were very good. Classes combined grammar with conversation, and content was flexible, sparked by what we did last night, our weekend plans, the weather, Mexican traditions. Sometimes there was a lesson on a specific subject, such as the simple past tense or personal pronouns. But other days, the class might consist almost entirely of free-form conversation, during which we learned a lot about the history and culture of Mexico.

For most of our time at Guadalajara Language Center, we had Monica for a teacher in the morning and Edith in the afternoon. Monica was a raucous, loud, animated woman and an outstanding teacher. She was the kind of woman you would want to hang out with at a party. Edith was tall and refined, more reserved, but eventually revealed a wicked sense of humor. 

 

Monica explaining pronouns

Edith watching a lively discussion

After four hours of Spanish every day, we were pretty tired. Many other people who came down for two or three weeks spent additional time studying, but we knew we had eight weeks of classes, so we didn’t feel like we had to jam everything in. Besides, we wanted to also experience GDL and TLQ. In fact, at the end of the first four weeks, we felt like we needed some time to review everything we had learned so we took a week off.  Lex, on the other hand, liked the school so much that she continued for the full eight weeks, and then did two hours a day for three more.

Lex in class

Lots of work left to do

Our official studies have ended. We’ve been exposed to the grammar basics and have certainly expanded our vocabulary. We can get by. We can understand the basics when speaking with Mexicans who speak clearly and not too fast. We can have conversations with Uber drivers and market people. But we know we have a lot more work to do. The Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute’s School of Language Studies says that to obtain a Professional Working Proficiency (Speaking-3/Reading-3 on a scale of 1 - 5) takes anywhere between 600-750 hours of classroom study. We have spent 160 hours in class so far. Granted, we did come in with some basics, but probably at best we’re 1/3 of the way to where we want to be. We know what areas we need to address, and we have found other resources to continue our study independently.

Our plan is to continue studying on our own and supplement that with several sessions of conversation each week with private Spanish tutors. As they say here in Mexico, “poco a poco” -- or little by little!

All in all, we enjoyed our time at the school and found it worthwhile. At some point in time, we will probably take some time to go back to school, perhaps doing the monthlong summer program at the University of Guanajuato, but not this year!