I’ve been taking Spanish classes since sixth grade and have been around the language my whole life. My Mom and her side of the family is from Puerto Rico and everyone speaks Spanish to each other, but I never learned. Coming into this program, I felt I had enough experience to manage the basics in understanding people. I can write Spanish fairly well and understand at a relatively high level, however my ability to speak the language is significantly lower and definitely something I needed to improve. It was an adjustment just flying into the country and immediately having to revert my brain to Spanish mode, but after the first week, it got a lot easier to formulate my initial responses in Spanish, versus wanting to respond immediately in English.
After several weeks, my confidence in my speaking abilities improved and I felt more comfortable communicating even if I was still making basic mistakes. For me, that’s been one of the most important aspects of the language immersion aspect of the program. At home, if I’m struggling with something, I can change back to English to convey whatever I am trying to say. Here, most people speak only Spanish or have limited understanding of English, which forces me to work to the best of my abilities to say what I want to with the vocabulary I know, regardless of how grammatically accurate it is. I also began to think about my basic routine in Spanish, rather than English. For example, if I needed to go to the store and had a running list in my head of things I needed, I would be running through that list to myself in Spanish rather than English.
Now, after being over two months into the program, I feel like I talk faster and more confidently, my vocabulary has improved, and my grammatical mistakes are not as frequent. Even when I do make those mistakes, I notice them and, for the most part, am able to correct myself or notice what exactly was wrong grammatically about what I had said. One of the most rewarding moments was when my host mom told me that my Spanish had improved since arriving and that I was beginning to talk as fast as a Spaniard. It was so great to hear from someone who speaks the language fluently that I was doing better and it was noticeable.