Speaking in tongues

In honor of finding out today that I will also be teaching Spanish in France, I decided to write up a comparison of my readiness for speaking Spanish two years ago right before leaving for Spain versus my readiness for speaking French now.


Spain
Had declared a Spanish major
Had taken 6 years of Spanish plus a lit class
Wasted valuable speaking practice time in class/lab
Thought I knew a lot of vocabulary
Had several English-speaking contacts
Lived with a host family
Arrived with other students
Spoke Spanish just as well as the others in the group
Thought I’d be fluent within two weeks
Timid and worried about embarrassing myself

France
Skipped the most basic French class
Took two basic French classes
Made a conscious effort to practice speaking more
Think I can fake a lot of vocabulary
Hope I have some English-speaking contacts
Need to find an apartment
Traveling alone
Probably speak the worst French of anyone
Aware of the work needed to progress toward fluency
Certain I’ll embarrass myself; looking forward to telling the resulting hilarious stories


I’m not sure that it’s evident from these lists, but I am actually more confident of my ability to speak French upon arrival than I should have been (!) of my Spanish two years ago.

First, having some fluency in Spanish gives me a huge advantage when it comes to acquiring French; I did decide to skip French 101 and just look over the material before taking 102, which worked out well because I understood the basics of the language. Many times, I can recognize French words because of their similarity to Spanish, or I can fake it in French based off Spanish.

The second reason I think I am better off now is because I have lost all my inhibitions about sounding dumb in a foreign language. When I first arrived in Spain, I barely spoke, or I would practice sentences and conversations in my head before finding the guts to break the silence. Then I would realize all the errors I’d committed and feel embarrassed anyway. For the first few weeks I was always nervous. Now as I think about speaking French almost constantly, I know that I am going to struggle, and it will be exhausting and embarrassing. If I don’t try, however, I will not make it to Moulins, nor will I have an apartment, food, job, etc., and I will not improve my French, which is one of my ultimate goals.