Maybe you walk into class confidently each day, prepared to try your best to improve your Spanish. Perhaps you slink in hungover, bracing yourself for the following hour that will only make your head hurt more. Maybe you prepared 110 percent the night before -- completing your homework, practicing pronunciation and looking up definitions in the readings. Or perhaps you don’t even bother trying anymore; it makes no difference.
This is nothing to be ashamed of. Well, actually maybe it is...how long have you have been taking Spanish for again but get asked if this is your first class? Do people that you swore were basically born fluent casually mention that they have only started learning it? Has avoiding eye contact with your teacher because you have no idea what he said become second nature at this point? Are you thrown pitying looks when you raise your hand to answer a question? Honestly, do you ever just question why you’re even in that class?
Well, if you have answered yes to any of these questions, congratulations! You and I are now part of a very exclusive group, you see. We are one among the dumb in Spanish class.
Have you been taking Spanish for again? But, nevertheless, it’s true and you might as well accept it.
OK, fine, still not convinced? Read the rest of these red-flashing-it's-you-dumbass-indicators, and you know, if you can relate, well…
1. Are you literally mind-blown when people talk about dreaming and thinking in Spanish?
I mean, literally. Mind. Blown. I can’t even imagine how this happens. What does it feel like? Is it like totally weird?! Just… how….
2. When you’re speaking in class, how do the other students look?
Are their faces blank? Encouraging? Pops of pity? Maybe just intense despair at the fact that they have to go through this again?
3. Do you find yourself actually wanting to volunteer your opinion in class on a book/lecture/video but you’re unable to find the right words?
Let me rephrase that -- you know exactly what you want to say -- but in English. By the time you mentally translate each word, conjugate the verbs correctly, switch around the sentence to get around things you don’t know how to say -- the topic hasn’t only been changed, class is over.
4. Do you ever look at a word and know that there's no way you’ll pronounce it correctly?
5. Ever just give up completely in the middle of asking a question?
Instead of continuing, you just opt for a wide-eyed call for help in the form of a repeated stutter, hoping your teacher will just jump in with the correct words to save you from ten more minutes of this? (All the other students are probably praying for the same thing, too.)
6. Do the other students suddenly laugh in class but you have no idea what’s happening?
Should I laugh, too? Did the teacher say something funny? What even happened? Wow, I need to start paying better attention in this class. Actually, in all my classes. Wait, crap, do I have a test in marketing today? No, no it’s next week, OK, good. Oh shit, got distracted again. It’s definitely too late to laugh now.
7. Why does this not translate directly???
This word looks like a cognate, but isn’t? What do you mean you can’t say that the same way in Spanish? So it translates to exactly the same word, but means something different? What the hell?
8. Do the smart students act like your teacher and coach you along in conversations with them?
Nothing gives you quite the same ego boost as realizing halfway through a discussion with another classmate that he/she has been finishing your sentences to help you along. Gee, thanks! Shoot me another patronizing smile, why don’t you?
9. You think you understand the reading, only to be in class the next day and realize you misinterpreted almost every word…
Wait, this is a story about a murder? I though it was love story!
10. Videos in class are not necessarily the best thing either.
Please have subtitles. Then I can read along frantically and try to steal glimpses of what the characters are actually doing in the film. But if there are no subtitles... your guess is probably better than mine. The only option is attempting to understand the situation from solely the images on the screen. (Warning: this might result in the love story/murder mix up again…)
11. “I have trouble with speaking Spanish, but I’m pretty good at writing it.”
Oh, are you sure about that? Just wait until you have to write college-level English papers in a completely different language. Good luck trying to be linguistically challenging and creative when it’s difficult enough to translate a couple of sentences without changing everything you were trying to say. But hey, you’ve always got “me gusta.”
12. When the teacher looks at you, you can think of only one logical response:
Offer a brief smile while almost instantaneously avoiding eye contact and praying to the Lord our savior that she doesn’t call on you, because you have no idea what she said and whether it was bad or good and if you should have smiled or not and, hell, what has she even been talking about for the last 20 minutes? Wow, crap, if she calls on you, you’re really screwed, just don’t look up, you’re not actually here.
13. Presentations…
So it seems that you are interested in hearing me stutter and mispronounce more words than I pronounce correctly for the next half-hour? Well, you’re in luck!
The good news is that it’s quite simple to escape this “situation” -- you know, the one where you suck at Spanish?
Just get better!
Practice, meet with the teacher, take detailed notes, permanently change your family’s TV language setting to Spanish, interrupt private conversations in Spanish that you’re eavesdropping on at the mall, you know, things like that. Though you might be the dunce now, you can pass down the position with a bit of hard work (and/or getting lucky enough to have someone even dumber than you in your next class).
