# language learning.



## bwingran (Sep 11, 2014)

Is it true that when i register to be a resident in spain,I can Get FREE Lessons in Spanish from my local Town.


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## Lynn R (Feb 21, 2014)

bwingran said:


> Is it true that when i register to be a resident in spain,I can Get FREE Lessons in Spanish from my local Town.


It might be true, but it depends entirely on the individual town. Many places used to offer them but no longer do because of spending cuts. Where I live, the local Adult Education Institute does offer them (the course starts in October each year and you have to put your name on the list a few months earlier, and may or may not get a place depending on how many applicants there are). It will be best to ask at your local Ayuntamiento once you know where you are going to be living.


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## bwingran (Sep 11, 2014)

Thanks,i will look in on my Townhall and ask the Question.


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## Helenameva (Aug 15, 2014)

Lynn R said:


> It might be true, but it depends entirely on the individual town. Many places used to offer them but no longer do because of spending cuts. Where I live, the local Adult Education Institute does offer them (the course starts in October each year and you have to put your name on the list a few months earlier, and may or may not get a place depending on how many applicants there are). It will be best to ask at your local Ayuntamiento once you know where you are going to be living.


El Creu Roja (Red Cross) also offer free Spanish lessons around here. It might be worth checking with them too.


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

I used to go to "free" (there was a small registration fee) language classes at my local centro cultural in Madrid. It was also quite a good way to meet other immigrants (plenty of Poles and Romanians, but also people from Syria, Iran, India, Italy, Russia, etc - everywhere). They also ran quite a few free adult education classes in other subjects.


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## kimuyen (Aug 8, 2013)

*Free Spanish via intercambio*



bwingran said:


> Is it true that when i register to be a resident in spain,I can Get FREE Lessons in Spanish from my local Town.


Another way to get "free" Spanish lessons is to do intercambios with Spanish natives. The website below has a designated category for the intercambio. 

Clases particulares y Profesores particulares

When I first came here, I took an intensive course with a language school, then had some private lessons to focus on just my needs. Overtime, it is apparent that I forgot 90% of what I learned from these lessons. I need to practice what I learn instead of adding more. I think it works after you have a good foundation and if you want to measure your level, you can also follow some book. I got very good responses from putting a free posting on the website. I now have 4-5 language partners to practice with during the week. Your native Enslish skill will be in high demand for local Spaniards who would love to improve their English without paying.


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## Allie-P (Feb 11, 2013)

They offer Spanish lessons at our local town hall for a minimal charge. However, if you should be a complete beginner, it is a non starter - because the lessons are conducted completely in Spanish !!

This rather defeats the purpose  

I went to several, as I had already had some lessons... but many people, who couldn't understand a word, were just walking out.

The classes were huge & there was no personal help/guidance.


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## Lynn R (Feb 21, 2014)

Allie-P said:


> They offer Spanish lessons at our local town hall for a minimal charge. However, if you should be a complete beginner, it is a non starter - because the lessons are conducted completely in Spanish !!
> 
> This rather defeats the purpose
> 
> ...


I went once to the free classes at our local Adult Education Centre, and found the same thing with the large class size, plus it seemed very disorganised eg starting late, leaving the classroom door open so there was noise from the corridor to contend with in a room where the acoustics weren't good to start with, and the tutor wanted to structure the 4 hours per week course in 4 separate hours over 4 days, all at different times, which I would have found inconvenient, so I went back to classes at a private language school instead.

Even at the private school, though, we were taught in Spanish from day one. Don't ask me how it works, but it does. Our teacher was Spanish and spoke a little bit of English, but not much at all.


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

Allie-P said:


> They offer Spanish lessons at our local town hall for a minimal charge. However, if you should be a complete beginner, it is a non starter - because the lessons are conducted completely in Spanish !!
> 
> This rather defeats the purpose
> 
> ...


Of course they're going to be completely in Spanish. Even if the teacher can speak English they're not going to assume all the students can speak English as well. The purpose is to teach Spanish to immigrants from all over the world, not just to British expats. If people want teaching that is personalized to their requirements and their native tongue then I'm afraid they're going to have to pay.


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## Helenameva (Aug 15, 2014)

Lynn R said:


> I went once to the free classes at our local Adult Education Centre, and found the same thing with the large class size, plus it seemed very disorganised eg starting late, leaving the classroom door open so there was noise from the corridor to contend with in a room where the acoustics weren't good to start with, and the tutor wanted to structure the 4 hours per week course in 4 separate hours over 4 days, all at different times, which I would have found inconvenient, so I went back to classes at a private language school instead.
> 
> Even at the private school, though, we were taught in Spanish from day one. Don't ask me how it works, but it does. Our teacher was Spanish and spoke a little bit of English, but not much at all.


Learning another language is much better when the teacher speaks only in the language you are trying to learn, i.e. total immersion. You pick everything up much quicker. Even if you don't understand every word to start with you can still normally get the gist. I went to classes for 5 years in England with 3 different teachers. They all spoke English most of the time. It was a very slow learning process.


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## Lynn R (Feb 21, 2014)

Chopera said:


> Of course they're going to be completely in Spanish. Even if the teacher can speak English they're not going to assume all the students can speak English as well. The purpose is to teach Spanish to immigrants from all over the world, not just to British expats. If people want teaching that is personalized to their requirements and their native tongue then I'm afraid they're going to have to pay.


Very true. I was the only British person in the class I went to - all the other students were from either Morrocco or Eastern Europe (plus their Spanish was a lot better than mine, even one Morroccan lady who could not write her own name).


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

Helenameva said:


> Learning another language is much better when the teacher speaks only in the language you are trying to learn, i.e. total immersion. You pick everything up much quicker. Even if you don't understand every word to start with you can still normally get the gist. I went to classes for 5 years in England with 3 different teachers. They all spoke English most of the time. It was a very slow learning process.


My experience is that to begin with total immersion is best, but it really needs to be with small class sizes because it requires a lot of communication between the students and the teacher so the teacher can advance at their speed and not leave half the class behind. I suspect that was the problem in Allie-P's class.

However sometimes it really helps to have more advanced concepts explained to you in your own language, and in the context your language. For example I (like many native English speakers) struggled with the subjunctive, and it was only when a subtle difference between English and Spanish was explained to me that it really sunk in.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

I have taught many total beginners (English) classes only in English. When I started teaching it was _*the*_ way to do it and translation or using the students' mother tongue was very much frowned on. It's a well recognised method used globally either by choice or for survival! A no- English - used - Spanish - class is often used with beginners for a number of reasons some of which are 


 To demonstrate that effort needs to be made on the part of the student to learn and understand. If everything is "spoonfed" the learning process as a whole will not actually be so successful.
 To show how needing a direct translation of everything is actually a hinderance to learning.
To illustrate that dependance on translation will not help most language learners. It has to be part of a bigger learning experience, but is not a very successful method of really learning a language
 To demonstrate the reality of learning a language. If you are a beginner you won't understand 98% of what is said to you in the real world.
 To give you skills that will help you operate in the "real world" like inferring the meaning of a word from context or picking out needed information from a bigger chunk of information (for example extracting the time the bus leaves and from a longer conversation about the bus route)
 Nowadays I am likely to use some Spanish sometimes in some classes as 1. my students are very rarely beginners nowadays so they are not dependant on translation, 2. because I can (in the past I didn't have enough Spanish to be able to use it in class or I had multi lingual students) and 3. because I now have more of an opinion about teaching and feel that sometimes it's more valuable to say something in Spanish than in English and I also feel that no one method is the best and depending on the teacher and the student you can/ should mix and match


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## xabiaxica (Jun 23, 2009)

Pesky Wesky said:


> I have taught many total beginners (English) classes only in English. When I started teaching it was _*the*_ way to do it and translation or using the students' mother tongue was very much frowned on. It's a well recognised method used globally either by choice or for survival! A no- English - used - Spanish - class is often used with beginners for a number of reasons some of which are
> 
> 
> To demonstrate that effort needs to be made on the part of the student to learn and understand. If everything is "spoonfed" the learning process as a whole will not actually be so successful.
> ...


I try to get my students speaking in Spanish from the very first lesson & as we progress, the emphasis is on speaking, although I will give explanations of a new tense or concept in English

sometimes we will have lessons where I give the students (complicated) sentences to translate, if I feel that they need to be pushed a bit out of their comfort zone - & homework, once they have the vocabulary, is almost always to write something themselves

I do have a few students who beg me to give them something in English to translate for homework - but I just tell them that I won't be there when they need to _use _what I have taught them, so they need to think for themselves

I think for most adults a mixture works - I have, over the years, had a lot of 'drop outs' from the ayto classes come to me - usually citing class size & mix of levels in one class - not the lack of explanations in English


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## Allie-P (Feb 11, 2013)

Chopera said:


> My experience is that to begin with total immersion is best, but it really needs to be with small class sizes because it requires a lot of communication between the students and the teacher so the teacher can advance at their speed and not leave half the class behind. I suspect that was the problem in Allie-P's class.



My previous post was not a criticism on the rights or wrongs of the system - only meant as a warning to the OP - in case, he/she was not aware !

I, personally, had a few months of Spanish learning under my belt - so, was able to follow the gist. The people who walked out, apparently, had no idea that the classes were held in Spanish.

I was trying to be helpful


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

Allie-P said:


> My previous post was not a criticism on the rights or wrongs of the system - only meant as a warning to the OP - in case, he/she was not aware !
> 
> I, personally, had a few months of Spanish learning under my belt - so, was able to follow the gist. The people who walked out, apparently, had no idea that the classes were held in Spanish.
> 
> I was trying to be helpful


I think your post *was* helpful.
I was giving the reasoning from the other side which I also hope was helpful.

I do appreciate how difficult it is for the student, especially if s/he is not a natural language learner or if the student hasn't been in a classroom for a long time


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## el pescador (Mar 14, 2013)

I go to one of these 2 times a week and its a great addition to how i learn.

The best option would have been to have had an English speaker though so you could understand the ins and out of Spanish grammar a lot quicker.

Problem was the British person who ran classes near near me employed a Spanish speaking profesora and her English was only marginally better than my Spanish.

Now i suspect it will take me longer to learn.


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

Allie-P said:


> My previous post was not a criticism on the rights or wrongs of the system - only meant as a warning to the OP - in case, he/she was not aware !
> 
> I, personally, had a few months of Spanish learning under my belt - so, was able to follow the gist. The people who walked out, apparently, had no idea that the classes were held in Spanish.
> 
> I was trying to be helpful


Ok - when you wrote that it "defeats the purpose" I assumed you meant that it defeats the purpose of providing the lessons, but I guess you meant that it defeats the purpose of people trying to learn Spanish if they insist on lessons being in English.


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## IanB (Feb 11, 2013)

As a beginner working in self help mode remotely at the moment, this thread has been very helpful. Languages at grammar school many years ago and the formal methods of teaching (declensions, conjugations and the like) French and Latin have left me with almost a complete blaockage and a total lack of confidence with languages not of my native tongue. Mathematics, sciences applied physics, engineering absolutely fine even when I am totally out of my depth. 

But languages----- always an embarassing disaster and I am retired now. This has at least given me some hope.

regards
Ian


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## Allie-P (Feb 11, 2013)

Chopera said:


> Ok - when you wrote that it "defeats the purpose" I assumed you meant that it defeats the purpose of providing the lessons, but I guess you meant that it defeats the purpose of people trying to learn Spanish if they insist on lessons being in English.


Hi, I observed complete beginners walking out of their very first Spanish class which was wholly conducted in Spanish. 

I meant that those students needed _some _ basic knowledge of the language to understand the class. 

My post was written as a helpful warning to the OP.

I started as a complete beginner in a very small class. My teacher initially taught in English, gradually introducing Spanish words.

I currently have one Spanish conversational class, per week, which is one to one. 

She rarely speaks in English. However, if I don't understand...I have the luxury of asking for repetition & explanation.

There was no such option in the Town hall run classes- they were large classes which made personal interaction impossible......


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

Allie-P said:


> Hi, I observed complete beginners walking out of their very first Spanish class which was wholly conducted in Spanish.
> 
> I meant that those students needed _some _ basic knowledge of the language to understand the class.
> 
> ...


Yes that's a fairly impossible situation, as you say, it's down to class size rather than the language the class is being held in. Having said that, I suspect with so many drop-outs the class size would have reduced down quite quickly. 

I did my first Spanish school in Granada back in 2001 and it was just a German girl and myself in the class. It was fantastic - we just played simple word games - and we picked up a lot just by continuous practice and having nowhere to hide.

Really I think you need to vary your learning techniques - some classes, some private, there are also quite a few language learning apps these days that make the grunt work more bearable. We experience language in a random, haphazard way and a big hurdle is learning how to deal with that. One of the biggest challenges I had was at work when I started to take phone calls from Spanish clients, including quite a few heavily accented older people from various villages around Spain, and who insisted I used "usted" (which is quite difficult when you're not used to it). None of my lessons had prepared me for that.


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