Did anyone else find their Spanish classes in High School entirely useless?
Did anyone else find their Spanish classes in High School entirely useless?
I took three years of Spanish and got an A every semester. Even when it was still fresh in my mind, I was nowhere near able to hold even a very simple conversation. And now just a few years later it's all totally gone from my brain.
My mother's native language is Spanish and she never taught me, which I resent her for. But I still find it incredible how shitty my public school education in Spanish was. We really should be teaching kids a second language from kindergarten up.
I also took several years of Spanish in school and have never had anything close to an understanding of Spanish. The thing is, if you're anything like me, you weren't trying to learn Spanish. You were trying to pass your tests, which means memorizing what you have to memorize and nothing more.
To learn a language, you have to seriously work for it. You need to be proactively seeking out conversations with native speakers, you need to be studying vocabulary, you need to be consuming media in that language, ideally you should be utterly immersed in it and interact with the world through your native language as little as possible. There is absolutely nothing a teacher can do to teach you Spanish in 45 minutes a day, before and after which you're immersed in an English-speaking environment. Simply isn't possible.
Yeah, I get that. I wish public school education would take it more seriously and not relegate it to just a couple years in High School, because it's really important for people to be bilingual, and we can't expect children to recognize how important it is on their own.
That said, I should not have gotten an A every semester with the level of fluency I had. I definitely put in enough effort to receive a passing grade, but that was only enough to ask simple questions like "where is the restroom?" or being able to pick out a few key verbs and nouns from a spoken sentence. Had I received a lower grade, I may have recognized I needed to try harder.
Teaching language in high school is stupid they should be teaching it as early as possible.
I had French since 4th grade up to 9th grade Even tho I always aced my tests I never quite got the hang of the language to me it was just some rules I memorized
Ontarian spotted
As a comparison, here's what an EU report from 2012 said:
Children are starting to learn foreign languages at an increasingly early age in Europe, with most pupils beginning when they are 6-9 years old
an increasing number of pupils now learn two languages for at least one year during compulsory education. On average, in 2009/10, 60.8% of lower secondary education students were learning two or more foreign languages
Language classes in most of the USA are based around memorization but more and more evidence is backing up the "language acquisition" model of language learning. Rote memorization is wholly insufficient and most of us learn language first and foremost by simply listening to "comprehensible input". By hearing this comprehensible input enough we sort of just absorb it naturally. Like we were built for it. Or more because we evolved exactly to be able to do this.
But how do you structure a class around that and test students for it when you need at least 3 months of basic comprehensible input for at least an hour or two a day (the more the better) like this to acquire enough language to start to grasp basic sentences and common words? When using this method you aren't expected or even encouraged to try and speak the language during those first few months. And for most kids who take this for one semester how can you show progress when you shouldn't expect even basic fluency until you are a year or two out using this method? Yet people who stick to this method do actually learn languages and really internalize this in about 3-5 years to full conversational fluency. We all learned at least one language language this way: our first one.
Our school system is simply not designed to handle learning that works this way. If you want to learn Spanish look into Language Acquisition Model stuff. Dreaming Spanish on YouTube has tons of beginner comprehensible input videos. Once you watch one, you'll understand exactly what it is trying to do and it becomes obvious why it would work. You aren't supposed to understand immediately. At first you kind of get the jist a little even though you only understand like 10% of the words. Then you start recognizing structure and more words and understand more. In a few months it starts coming along better. Then you take the next step and move onto videos that aren't designed for this method, just people speaking Spanish and it suddenly gets super hard. But if you stick with it, you can and will really learn any language this way.
EDIT: As an aside I'm forever mad that we have a true all-American language here in the USA and it's not taught to every child in school: American Sign Language. It's not just spoken words signed with your hands. It has its own grammar and rules and It provides accessibility to the deaf. It is useful even for those who can hear. If I ruled this shithole ASL would be a standard class from Elementary to High-school. In two generations everyone would know basic ASL.
From my understanding a lot of deaf people don't want ASL to be taught universally in schools. To them, being deaf isn't just a disability, it has an associated culture. If you're forced to learn it in school you're not going to have any passion or respect for the culture. Further, suddenly having your culture include 30x more people with no connection leads to the erasure of the culture. Imagine if lemmy grew by 30x and it was all Redditors.
so lemmy would basically be the same as it is now?
but for real, im sure a some deaf people feel this way, but ive never met one. that said i dont know a lot of deaf people, only have known three, and had a coworker who was a certified asl translator, and my general experience in this is that most deaf would be more than fine with people knowing asl at a basic level
however you are correct in one thing, deaf people most certainly have a culture because a lot of culture is influenced by language and influences language in a feedback loop. and asl is not just english through hand gestures, it is its own language with its own grammar and slang terms and so on. i personally dont think any language should be gate-kept as i think language itself is a human right, but thats me. im not deaf for the record.
You are right insofar as rote memorization not being an ideal way to become a fluent language user, but "language acquisition model" is not a theoretical framework. Language Acquisition is a sub-field of linguistics.
"Comprehensible input" is an untestable hypothesis from the 1970s by a researcher named Krashen. Immersion methods are perfectly fine ways to acquire language--both grammar and vocabulary--but a massive benefit to already having a first language means that you can leverage your existing linguistic schemata (e.g., mappings for abstract concepts onto words, grammatical categories, etc.) to jumpstart your second language competencies.
With structured instruction and ample opportunities to practice speaking conversationally, a classroom learner can achieve the same level of conversational fluency as someone who learned the language immersively.
Further, a purely conversational course would not lead directly to improvement in the domains of reading and writing. There are some synergies, but these are separate skills that need to be targeted by specific pedagogic interventions. This is why children learning their first language still need to go to school to learn how to read, of course. And a major benefit of learning to read is then reading to learn.
The primary issue here is classroom time. Language instructors need to focus on a million different things. Here's a no comprehensive list off the top of my head: the domains of reading, writing, speaking, and listening; compositional modality (e.g. presentational speech, colloquial speech, presentational writing, genre-specific conventions for persuasiveness/humor/storytelling/etc.); general vocabulary and grammar; specific vocabulary and grammar (e.g. for home/academic/professional/etc domains); social norms (again by domain); cultural literacy (again by domain); etc.
And then divide the instructor's time by the number of students.
A learner needs to integrate within a speech community and continue practicing these skills within the appropriate contexts, or they atrophy. The foreign language context (i.e., the target language is not commonly spoken in daily life near the learner) is terrible at this, because it means that the learner does not have easy access to others with whom to practice and from whom to learn.
Tldr; use your other languages to help you speed up the baseline memorization and pattern recognition skills that are fundamental to contextual application, find a community, and do language with them.
My bona fides are a PhD in the subject and a decade of language teaching in US public schools and universities
Thank you for talking the real sense here.
What do you mean it's "untested". You learned a language through comprehensible input and so did I. So did every single person on this website. It is the most tested method of language learning in human history.
I really like your ASL idea. that kind of basic communicative ability across modes would be very useful.
I'm stupid and went with French in HS, then went to work in factories for a few years in northern Indiana that has a large Mexican population that works in factories. I don't remember any of the French I learned. Like at all. But I probably could have at least used broken Spanish to communicate better with my co-workers during that era of my life.
I hate my brother but one thing that impressed me about him is that not only did he take Spanish in HS, but he is actually fairly fluent in it now because he never left the factory life.
The point of language class in school is to assign grades, not to teach you. We know how humans acquire new languages: immersion. Listen to music in Spanish, watch Spanish shows, etc. but also need lots of practice actually communicating in Spanish with other Spanish speakers. It's really hard to do unless you up and move to a different country where they primarily speak Spanish.
In the United States it isn’t hard to find Spanish speakers to practice with.
The only way to learn a foreign language is through a lot practice and exposure. This is not something that language classes in school can provide unfortunately.
Try reading some children's books in Spanish and you'll learn more Spanish than you ever did in school.
Ok but can we talk about how US schools teach Spanish Spanish instead of Latin Spanish? I got put in the native speaker classes because I'm Mexican and even I had to talk like a European and learn a bunch of useless regionalisms.
Americans don't teach ESL students British English so idk why they can't teach the version of Spanish that's actually spoken in their country.
I think it depends on the instructor. It's just an issue with how poorly the textbooks are created where they cast a wide net over all of spanish without giving enough linguistic context.
True, even within Latin America there are many big differences in dialect. Though I'd obviously prefer Mexican Spanish, I'd still take any of those over the Spanish that's regulated by the literal, actual crown that still exists for some reason. (la Real Academia Española)
I'm a combined spanish/Spanish education masters student and yes, public school foreign language instruction in the US is fucked.
Classes are usually less than an hour which greatly limits the size of lessons students can have. Bush's children will be left behind act defunded schools so foreign languages got a cut.
A lot of Spanish textbooks they give out in these schools are too structured and also move too fast. The emphasis on memorizing and testing on grammar rules is just part of the ableist test culture pedagogy. Kids are naturally anxious and want to succeed but the foreign language curriculum is designed to only let the very top succeed while everyone else languishes behind.
Summer break also has a very negative impact (also other long breaks). Summer break should not exist (hot take I know) as it disrupts the educational flow and makes even more redundant work for teachers. Schools have ACs! But maybe with climate change kids wouldn't even make it to school alive anyway which is always a nice thought. Also in the US teachers don't get paid in the summer. Summer break is where the poor kids and rich kids get separated.
It really depends on your instructor. The Spanish teacher I had in my first year of HS was complete dogshit despite being a native speaker while my next two teachers were great (we even had a trans flag in our class).
My take is that grammar is literally just a booklet you give to students and you should just focus on cultural immersion and history. Spanish should be a slam dunk in terms of cultural study but the textbook companies and capitalist educators want to remake their same shitty textbook so they can squeeze more money from our schools.
Seriously they teach Spanish like we are CIA infiltrators who have 6 weeks to grind a language before dropping a golpe de estado on poor indigenous tribes.
Unfortunately there's only so much that can be done even with high-quality and comprehensive language education that doesn't take up a large portion of school hours - overcoming the hurdle of getting enough exposure to the language without having any interaction with it outside of a few hours per week can never really let you get past A1/A2, especially in output. Lots of parents will also just balk at their child being bilingual for reasons of either racism or a desire for control (or both!) so that avenue is also pretty hopeless for a lot of people. Honestly, outside of having proper bilingual education and schooling, if there was a way to introduce tools like Anki to kindergarteners in a way which wasn't overbearing or shitting on their natural curiosity it probably wouldn't work half-badly lol
Lots of parents will also just balk at their child being bilingual for reasons of either racism or a desire for control (or both!)
My in-laws
I'm having to take four quarters of Spanish for my bachelors, and my high school Spanish classes left me feeling entirely unprepared. Worse still, I only took it for one abbreviated semester in continuation school. Wish me luck everybody, I'm totally screwed!
Edit: I tell a lie, I also took it in the 7th grade. Suddenly feeling much more prepared.
buena suerte 💀
Spanish 1 we had a great teacher. He couldn't avoid the boring constant conjugation, but he added a cultural element that was great. We got to make some clay pots, he taught us to make chorizo and eggs, took us to the local mission. Then spanish 2 we got Ben Stein from Fastimes. Had better luck in college, aside from the fucking gusano who lectured me for an hour in english because I brought up the terrorist attack that killed the Cuban fencing team. After that, the whole class hated me.
i dont really know anyone who learned a foreign language in school. those who did learn it did it on their own, outside of school. mostly with the internet, or by going abroad to work a bit.
this includes my parents' generation learning russian in school and my generation learning english in school.
Mine were actually super helpful and left me conversationally fluent in Spanish. Unfortunately not having anyone to speak it with in rural Canada in the years since have meant that I've lost the majority of that fluency.
I went to a really bougie school though, so my experience is likely not the norm.
I took two years and the full time teachers I had both years were basically Peggy Hill, then partway through the second year, that teacher went on maternity leave and our long term sub was a native speaker who grew up in Baja California and immigrated, and it was crazy how quickly my fluidity and pronunciation/accent improved over that span, and I pretty much totally lost those gains afterwards and now I can't even roll R's right.
I still remember enough to follow along to Spanish broadcasts of Dominican/Venezuelan Winter League baseball in the MLB off-season when I'm itching for some
but I can't even hold simple conversation in Spanish anymore and there was a window where I felt like I was approaching fluency rapidly when I was a teenager and that just bums me out nowI still remember enough to follow along to Spanish broadcasts of Dominican/Venezuelan Winter League baseball
Understanding Caribbean sports commentator Spanish is something to be very proud of. Some native speakers can't do it, even!
Haha, it's mostly just knowing baseball well and what commentators are usually saying at any given time and then cross referencing that against my limited vocabulary, but it's fun and useful to be able to parse really rapidly talking native speakers with accents you don't normally hear locally.
(Random aside, but one of the Dominican teams has a deal with a sponsor that sells cranes and industrial vehicles, and every time they make a pitching change, there's a "brought to you by" animation of the crane plucking the old pitcher off the mound and swinging over and dropping him in the dugout that cracks me up every time)
I took two or three years in high school, and upon graduation I also could not really speak the language. Neither my parents nor anybody else on my side of the family speaks any Spanish. But out of personal interest, I continued learning it on my own, mostly by using music and movies. If anybody is interested I could detail some things that I did which I think most helped me.
Later, I met my first wife who is a Spanish speaker, we were married for several years and spoke mostly Spanish at home because her English wasn’t that great. I also spoke Spanish with people in the community all the time and still use it all the time at work and in my personal life (I’m remarried and the main language for communication at home with my wife and children is Spanish). I’m completely fluent now at a high level. Ive spent time living in several Latin American countries and the Spanish I learned while I was in the U.S. allowed me to understand and be understood by everyone without problems.
The high school class only served to provide a basic foundation of grammar, conjugation rules etc which my later self study and purposeful use of the language could fill in.
In a similar boat. I decided I wanted to actually learn spanish, so a couple months ago I got serious about watching Comprehensible Input (Dreaming Spanish). Between that and self study and speaking practice I'm already well past where I was in high school, though I still have a long way to go to fluency.
It's frustrating that I have to find this all out years after my education. But I feel that way about most subjects I learned in school, so this is no different.
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3rded, dreaming spanish rules. I'm also trying to learn mandarin via a few other comprehesible input channels, but they aren't set up nearly as well as dreamingspanish is.
It's sad that so many "leftists" here are super knowledgeable about politics/history yet when it comes to languages turn into complete dumb-dumbs and say stupid shit like "oH WeLl uNlEsS YoU LeArN It aS A KiD MiGhT As wElL GiVe uP hurrrrr durrrrrr!!!" It's not like CI has been some sort of hidden gem, people have used it to learn languages like Japanese for the last decade on youtube and have produced great results. Another reason why I have absolutely zero hope in the west and have resigned myself that it will become ultra fascist.
A year ago, I didn’t know Spanish. Now, I can watch TV shows for natives in Spanish and have conversations in Spanish (despite making some mistakes obviously). Dreaming Spanish and CI is just a really easy way to learn a language. You don’t need to study. You just watch videos and listen to podcasts that are easy enough for you to understand. Overtime, “easy enough for you to understand” will increase in difficulty. (If you know nothing when you start, then the only way you can understand the videos is by drawings and gestures. That’s fine though, because your brain will still figure things out.)
https://www.dreamingspanish.com/
I know
is bad, but the unofficial Dreaming Spanish subreddit is a great community. It’s very positive and people share their progress.A Reddit link was detected in your comment. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.
This crash course on comprehensible input made by the ppl over at dreamingspanish goes over all the problems of non-immersive language learning, and also why it continues to be perpetuated even though we know it doesn't work, and that comprehensible input is the only thing that does work.
I grew up in the US, and took years of foreign language classes in highschool and college, but we mostly just spoke english and tried to memorize vocab and grammar rules. Totally useless. Then after I tried to use notecards (anki) and apps... those also don't work.
Finally after many years, I discovered the comprehensible input method to learn spanish and mandarin, and finally am making progress.
I want to learn mandarin, any tips to start? Any app that uses this method?
Two channels I really like:
This also is helpful : https://comprehensibleinputwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
Of course non-immersive learning works, it's silly to say it doesn't. "Comprehensible input" is a pseudoscientific term for a theory of learning language; The teaching method maybe works better for some people, but the theory largely lacks evidence and at its core is impossible to prove.
Learn that way if you want to, but don't assert it's the only way to learn a language "that works", it obviously isn't. I know multiple fluent bi and trilingual speakers who simply did 90% of their learning at school.
Three high school semesters in any language is not going to be enough to learn a language. You either gotta learn it young when your neurons are still nice and plastic or put in lots and lots of work and maintain it
i think it also depends on what type of classes you took. my freshmen year class was ezpz mostly basic vocab, but after that they started breaking out the more advanced conjugations that still make my head spin thinking about them
You either gotta learn it young when your neurons are still nice and plastic or put in lots and lots of work and maintain it
No offense, but I despise this kind of essentialist thinking, that once you're past a certain age it's all over. It's the way languages are taught. Comprehensible Input is where it's at. Take a look at the first five min of video link nested below (the bot removed the comment b/c it had a youtube link). You can watch the rest of the vid but the main part is from the first five min.
You either gotta learn it young when your neurons are still nice and plastic or put in lots and lots of work and maintain it
No offense, but I despise this kind of essentialist thinking, that once you're past a certain age it's all over. It's the way languages are taught. Comprehensible Input is where it's at. Just watch the first five min of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnUc_W3xE1w&pp=ygUkc3RlcGhlbiBrcmFzaGVuIGNvbXByZWhlbnNpYmxlIGlucHV0 (you can watch the rest if you want, but the crux is in the first five min)
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I had French and English classes in school. Although I only had French for 3 years and had English classes since primary school until 11th grade.
I'm fluent in English but I've retained little of French (maybe I can read and understand it a bit).
I think the English classes helped with basic vocabulary and grammar, but most of it I got from watching English media and playing games (including MMOs when I got to middle school), and then reading books in English since high school
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You know how the country with the most English speakers is actually China?
It's not. China has 10 million, the US has 300 million.
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I took six years of Spanish and I only learned about the subjunctive tense the very last year
And most Spanish speakers are probably completely unaware of it. English has the subjunctive tense too!
If education were better....
Unaware of the concept, but it's definitely used.
I swear that there's gotta be something in human brains where some people just "can't get it". Mandatory two years of high school Spanish, I could kinda read it okay, but I couldn't really get the hang of speaking it.
Definitely doesn't help that I didn't have any Spanish speaking friends and public speaking (which was a big part of my classes) was very anxiety inducing.
(Anecdote time) I've got a sister-in-law who's not a native Spanish speaker but is pretty fluent, (maybe she majored in it college too, can't remember). She tried to teach her kids for a while but stopped after noticing that they would get so frustrated/confused at trying to switch between English and Spanish.
I really wonder what would have happened if there was language classes that just started in kindergarten and lasted until the end of high school.
Honestly it's just really hard to do in the classroom. It's not really a "subject" that you can sit down and learn through lectures and tests, it's a skill you need to actively train your brain for for an extended period of time through real-world practice. 20 kids sitting down while a teacher instructs them isn't going to be effective for most people to learn a new language
I took 4 years of college French and can't speak or understand a lick of French, but I can still understand basic Spanish (both spoken and written) due to one year of middle school Spanish. I remember going to Peru in college and being worried about how I was going to get around, then stepping out of the airport and realizing holy shit I know what all these signs say. Not sure why that is but I'm always surprised at how much Spanish I can understand having never really studied it save for one year in middle school.
Regarding exposure to the language, has anyone had success in learning a language with a language partner? I have a friend (native speaker) who I can practice with, but I'm struggling to get to the point where simple conversations are possible. I know some vocab and book grammar, but it doesn't really flow into real conversation.
We tried a few times, but it terminates too quickly:
Hello, what is your name?
My name is x.
How old are you?
I have N years.
Do you have a favorite color?
Yes, it is blue.
Good, see you later!I've had good experiences with it, personally. I'm learning Mandarin with a language partner I found on an app and it was very helpful, especially on the pronunciation part.
I know some vocab and book grammar, but it doesn't really flow into real conversation.
Yeah duh it won't flow, because you're not fluent. It's gonna be stilted and unnatural conversations for a while, you gotta be disciplined there.
Hot take but America should have Spanish Tuesdays and Thursdays where all business is transacted in Spanish on Tuesdays and thursdays. Fridays alternate between regional indigenous languages and sometimes there's tagalog surprise day! Which is not announced in advance to keep people on their toes.
hell yeah
I feel like Americans would be better off if high school foreign language classes were replaced with cultural studies. As others are pointing out here, it’s really hard to learn and retain a language at that age in the classroom when you’re not immersed in it. But at least in my school, some of the Spanish teachers would try and do some cultural studies stuff (I even had an Argentinian teacher who brought a bombilla and maté for us to share every day, we loved that).
It's the same as every other high school subject. It exists to create a bare minimum level of skill widespread across society. Just like Math or Chemistry, you can follow up on it afterward and become proficient at it. You can even make a career out of it. But most will forget it (because they chose something else instead).
You need to learn languages by immersion, school can only do so much without it being reinforced.
Immersion only works well with acquiring a baseline through which to understand the experience. You can listen to a conversation all day long but without context through visual, audio, previous knowledge or other means you won't actually learn anything.
I know this may come off as pedantic but it's important for people who are trying to learn a language to not expect to pick up on things without having to put in a bit of book learning, even if it's just at the beginning. Jumping off into the deep end doesn't really work.
Comprehensible immersion is the key in my opinion, where you slowly build up your input ability.
It somehow stuck with me and I genuinely hated my Spanish teachings in HS
Sí
I think they should do language classes in elementary. Your mind holds on to those far better. I had mine as electives in High School and it was brutal. My mind doesn't work that way and I really tried. We did end up going to Mexico for a month and it only cost the families $800. One of the best experiences of my life.
Unfortunately it was 20 something years ago and I barely remember things. I have some reading comprehension and some very basic conversational spanish but not much remains to be fluent at all.
My mind doesn't work that way and I really tried.
Look into comprehensible input, go to the Dreaming Spanish youtube channel and start from the super beginner playlist (or whatever it's called)
This is the correct answer, dreaming spanish is very worth it.
I did. I live in an area where virtually nobody speaks Spanish. We don't even have a very big Latin American descent population. I was forced to take the class in my senior year of high school, when I had no interest. So thus, I then got even LESS interest in learning the language.
I can correctly identify when someone is speaking spanish, unless they're speaking portuguese, and ask where the bathroom is. Educational victory!
I took Spanish in middle school, high school and even two years in college. My dad is also fluent. I know a lot of words, but I can barely speak it. You really need to practice it to become fluent. Classroom learning will never be enough.
I had 4 or so years of Spanish throughout various levels of school and never felt I learned much at all. I jammed Duolingo for a month or two before going to Mexico and was really surprised by how much I still remembered. I was able to test out of a lot by having a solid foundation that somehow had stuck with me, I felt pretty cocky going into my trip.
Unsurprisingly, my lack of practice speaking and listening made real time conversations nearly impossible even though I could still read and write well enough. That really didn’t help much with day to day stuff, you can always pull out your phone to translate what a sign says but there’s no substitute for being able to immediately understand and respond to someone. Several others have mentioned it but an academic setting is not a very good way to learn a language, the best is just continuous exposure to how it’s actually used. I taught myself Korean primarily from watching a lot of Korean shows with some supplemental grammar and vocab lessons, it was SO much more effective. I was conversational from the start and was able to connect on a lot of cultural references, after 6 months there I was pretty damn fluent (and even won the grand prize for a speech I gave entirely in Korean).
Yes
Lo mismo hemos podido llegar a pensar algunos hispanohablantes acerca de nuestra experiencia como alumnos de lenguas extranjeras, incluyendo el inglés.
Primero se debería de mejorar el nivel hablado, a base de conversaciones que partan de situaciones cotidianas. Después ir mejorándolo e introduciendo la enseñanza del idioma escrito, con sus normas.
Pero no, pretenden que aprendamos todo simultáneamente, aún encima dejando de lado la conversación.
Cuando visitaba a Costa Rica para mis estudios intercambios, tuve un choque cultural cuando me di cuenta q muchxs ticx no tienen ninguna habilidad de hablar inglés pese a la presencia de multinacionales estadounidenses.
Como estadounidense, tenía la opinión contraria. La mayoría de personas simplemente no continúa su aprendizaje escolar de idiomas extranjeros y es una pena.
I think you should be angrier at your mother dude. There’s only so much classes can do to help you learn a language, no matter how good they are.
I'd have appreciated if those classes had emphasized this point that they are only supplementary, but they didn't. I really thought I was going to be fluent by the end of the third year.
The result is I wasted 45 minutes a day for three years of my life learning something that I'd never have enough mastery in to serve any sort of function in my adult life.
I think you should be angrier at your mother dude.
That's kinda fucked up. You can still learn, just use Comprehensible Input resources (like Dreaming Spanish) instead of the "blue-pill" crap like classes.
It's amazing how someone can be so "red-pilled" when it comes to politics (the ill effects of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, etc.) yet be so "blue-pilled" when it comes to language learning. I've watched soooo many on this site completely go the blue-pill route when it comes to language learning, such as saying "Hey guys I'm going to start learning Chinese! I'm doing Duolingo!" Might as well learn about socialism from AOC because it's that fucking ridiculous.
For fucks sake no investigation no right to speak. It's pretty clear that the standard approach of textbooks/classes is pretty whack. As others have noted in this thread, Comprehensible Input is pretty much the red pill, at least when it comes to input (output is another matter).
Also there's some weird TERF-style essentialism in this thread along the lines of "if you're not a little child then your brain is fucked, sorry old geezer!!!" Once again, look at all the people who have gotten massive success with Comprehensible Input in this thread, with things like Dreaming Spanish.
No wonder Global South leftists make fun of us, we can't even do something they take for granted (knowing more than one language).
my high school Spanish courses were taught by 1) the school's serial assaulter who would neg his female students openly in class, and 2) a glassy-eyed weirdo who once a week would play his favorite sketch from Saturday's SNL