language immersion

[audreyh1]

I learned Swedish when I married DW thirty-six years ago. I'm fluent when it comes to talking, but my comprehension has always lagged.

In 2017 we lived in Sweden for one month. I thought that would solve my comprehension problem, but it did not. Listening to the news, for example, I usually couldn't keep up.

Luckily, we decided we did not want to move to Sweden.

I improved my Spanish listening comprehension immensely by watching many hours of Spanish TV fiction programming (not any news or talk shows). Leaving the captions on in Spanish really helped too at first.

 

[Finance Dave]

I'd do the immersion but make the trip more than just that...consider it extended travel or a mission trip or something...dual purpose.

As a side note, I took Spanish classes in 7th and 8th grade, and I still remember most of it. My dialect/enunciation is very good, but my vocabulary is small. They only taught us the basic things like how to tell time, counting, parts of the body, colors, rooms in a house, foods, weather, etc.

I worked for a Fortune 500 company for 25 years and took a few business trips to Mexico and was in meetings where almost all they spoke was Spanish. I was only able to understand about 25% of what they said. I find that I can read it very well, but listening is very hard because they use slang and talk way too fast for me.

I think that if I lived in a Spanish-speaking locale for about 6 months I could become fluent...maybe someday.

Tiene un bien dia!

 

[Scout]

Have you tried italki? If not, give it a look. It’s helped me a great deal with listening comprehension and speaking.

 

[BoodaGazelle]

I have done about 5 or 6 lessons using italki.. I did like it, but still not the same as "being there"...

 

[brett]

I slowly lost my poor French when I left Quebec. Tried to keep it up by listening to hockey games in French and reading French language newspapers etc. But it does slowly go.

But, after about day three or four in France it gets better. In a few cases after five days or so my spouse claims that I have most of it back.

Different people learn in different ways. I would want an immersion class but that alone would not do it. I would have to be able to practice on a regular basis for some time.

The difference for me is understanding as it is spoken vs translating everything in my mind as it is spoken to me. Clearly the former is where I want to be. I would like to learn Spanish. I did suggest to my spouse that one way might be to get a Spanish girlfriend. That suggestion did not go over very well.

 

[OldShooter]

I sometimes see language immersion trip offerings in the Road Scholar/formerly Elder Hostel catalogs. For example: https://www.roadscholar.org/find-an...n-sevilla-independent-stay-and-language-study

We are not group travel people or, God forbid, cruise ship people but we occasionally take one of the Road Scholar small group trips and have been very happy with them. We did this one last year: https://www.roadscholar.org/find-an-adventure/22069/cooking-in-sicily It's the kind of thing you really can't arrange as a couple on a private tour.

 

[Navigator]

My wife and I have been taking Spanish classes at the local university for the past year. In Arkansas, it is free for seniors over 60 to take university classes on a space available basis. I asked the chair of the department what the best way to become fluent in Spanish was. He recommended taking Spanish as a Second Language, and mentioned that he had good experiences at universities in Spain (Salamanca and Granada) and one in Costa Rica ( just outside San Jose).

 

[bobbyr]

Trying to figure which language would be the best to learn. We love visiting Italy, but Spanish seems like the best choice to maximize countries to visit (and to engage spanish speaking population in our town).

 

[Koolau]

I learned the most Spanish from the ladies who cleaned our cubes back at Megaacorp. We used to make them giggle when we'd refer to them as Señorita! One of the few things I miss about cubeland but YMMV.

que tenga un buen día

 

[brett]

My experience is that if you do not use it, hear it, or read it on a very regular basis you will begin to loose it. It becomes easier to pickup later and it is only then that you realize how much you have lost.