Leo, my Spanish teacher came by today for our usual Thursday lesson. I don't know if it is the time of day, or the fact that I know I am going to be put on the spot speaking Spanish for two hours, but every time he comes I suddenly feel a drain of energy. I've gotten into the habit of making a pot of coffee - some for me, and I offer him a cup as well. It is nice to sit and chat in my living room drinking coffee, if only it weren't so stressful!
Last time we met I made a comment to Leo about my Spanish ability. In spite of the fact that he corrects me after every third word (that is what it feels like), he continually tells me my Spanish is almost perfect. I don't believe him, because he is always correcting me. Last time we met, I was complaining about not being able to express myself or something and he said I must have some trauma.
In Buzios, Hernan and I communicated mostly in Spanish. I felt very uncomfortable talking to him in Spanish because not only did he correct me every time I made a mistake, often he'd roll his eyes. Even though when he speaks English he says things like "I want to go there for to buy blah blah blah" and I've told him he doesn't need to say "for to", he continues to make the same mistake. I don't roll my eyes and I don't correct him because I understand what he means and I realize he is not going to change. Yet, when I was talking about someone sleeping, and I said, "estan dormiendo", he immediately corrected me, "estan durmiendo" - the verb dormir is one of those crazy verbs that changes the stem at some odd, irregular place. Well, I have been saying "dormiendo" and "durmiendo", and I'll be damned if I can hear the difference. When Hernan corrected me, I said, "did you understand what I was saying?" and he said yes, and then I said, "so why is it important?"
The fact is I don't mind having errors pointed out if it is something that I clearly don't understand, or if it is something that completely obscures the point I am trying to get across, but I really don't like it when I am constantly interrupted, or laughed at or am having someone's eyes rolled at me. Leo is right. I do have trauma.
When I first began to study Spanish after the three useless years of High School Spanish where I learned to ask if Susana was at home (and not much more), I studied at a small school in Philadelphia called the Spanish Language School. The director, Antonio, was from Mexico, and his method was something that was used by the US Military, or CIA, or to train diplomats. It was one of those courses that supposedly you'd be speaking like a native after 6 months. The premise of this method was that errors were bad and needed to be corrected immediately in order to avoid formation of bad habits. The other teachers were not as severe, but Antonio was murder. He would not let a syllable pass that was not perfectly formed and annunciated. As a result, my pronunciation is pretty good, but I live in morbid fear of making mistakes.
So today as I was trying to tell Leo about my trip to Buzios and I was having a really hard time differentiating between the two pasts tenses in Spanish (to our one), and kept making mistakes, I got really frustrated. I told Leo that I thought I did have trauma. I told him how I was unable to communicate with Hernan last week and how I felt frustrated at not being able to express myself. He corrected every fourth word and then told me that I hardly make any mistakes at all.
I really like studying with him, and today he helped to clarify some of the things that confuse me. I asked him some questions to try to avoid having to talk, but eventually he caught on and began making me talk. By the end of the lesson I felt more confident with the two past tenses with the definite and indefinite pronouns and with Spanish in general, but I think it will be a while before the trauma of those days spent with Antonio saying, "no, stop, repeat!" in that basement in Philadelphia will be healed.
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