Gracias Señor Takemae

I went to a great high school growing up. I read plenty of classics, had fantastic social studies classes, was supported by caring math teachers, and was given challenging homework each night. I even enjoyed some of my classes! Can you guess which class I loathed the most? You got it. It was Spanish, and my teacher was Señor Takemae. Looking back I’m not sure what turned me off most to Spanish. Was it the militaristic teaching style he used to drill home grammar and vocabulary skills? Was it the oral presentations he made us do in front of class, in which his cacophony of criticism quickly dampened our spirits? Maybe it was the tests and papers returned to us that were always covered in red pen regardless if they were correct or incorrect? Needless to say, my foreign language acquisition got off to a rocky start, and I have been envious of bilingual speakers ever since.

Sitting in my language class this week my spirits could have continued to be dampened if I had let them. I was assigned to only the libro uno class. All of my classmates, who make up a mini United Nations (Germany, Brazil, Holland, Poland, Bulgaria, England), are already bilingual and learning Spanish as their third language. Our teachers don’t use any English at all. But I did not let those things get me down. Instead, I have found the language class to be thoroughly enjoying, and have even envisioned myself having a foundation in this language someday.

The Spanish class itself is set up in three parts. We begin the morning with grammar skills, focus on vocabulary for a while, and then finish off with conversation in the afternoon. There is one teacher for the morning grammar and vocabulary, and another for the conversation. The teachers also rotate in the middle of the week, so you hear a variety of native speakers throughout. I have found all these Madridlieno teachers to be very warm and supportive. They also have high expectations for us as they move quickly throughout the text and define new words for us in Spanish, rather than letting us know the meaning in English. The biggest difference in Spanish class for me compared to my past classes (besides the nice teachers and clearly structured lessons) is the pronunciation differences. While I am not at a level where I notice all the differences, I do think the most interesting is the th sound used for z’s and some c’s. Instead of saying Cerveza the way I’m used to saying it at home, here it is pronounced thehr-bay-thah. It is of course still spelled Cerveza. Use that thinking in with z’s and some c’s to all the Spanish words here, and you get the idea of some of the differences. At least I can roll my r’s.

In summary, the post-Takemae years have been difficult, but perhaps I am now glimpsing a ray of hope. The part of me that once wanted to flee from Spanish, is now interested in taking more classes in the future. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll move on to a third language. -Travis