How do you take spanish for nine years and still not have fluency in it?

Question

I've been taking arabic, one of the hardest langugaes an english speaking person can learn, for about a year now and i'm able to communicate in daily life and read semi-alright. Spanish is a very easy langugae to learn, in fact it is probably the easiest langugae you can learn. What i don't get is how someone can take it for nine years, which i just heard someone say, and still not learn the whole thing? Is that person dumb or is it really that hard for some people?

Answer 1

2 words: FORREST GUMP.

Answer 2

It really is that hard for some of us. It also makes a difference if you have someone you can practice with consistently, besides your classmates who will be hesitant and make many mistakes. You also need a good teacher and many teachers are either not good at the teaching part or they are not native speakers of the language they are trying to teach. I took Spanish for 2 and a half years in high school and another year in college but I was never fluent and now I only remember enough to catch a word here and there. I don't think that it's that the rest of us are dumb; you are extremely gifted. Think about it, why would schools offer languages for 3 or 4 years if the average person learns everything in one or two? The obvious answer is that most people take at least a few years.

Answer 3

Some people are just not good at picking up languages.Does your friend have dyslexia? Seriously it can cause allot of problems.Or,maybe he really isn't into it and isn't paying attention.At this point after 9yrs I'd pretty much say he's wasting his time and the teachers.You on the other hand probably have a good ear and can pick up languages.I'm the same way,in fact if I'm around someone with an accent for an hour or less,I'll be talking like them.I dated an Arab man and learned allot of things from him.the language is fun,I thought.Good for you for taking an interest in learning something new and that will really use your brain.Good luck and God bless
P.S. no offense to your friend,but maybe he needs to master English before trying any thing else.

Answer 4

#1 it is really hard for some people.

I've been taking Spanish in middle school and in high school, I'm on my 5th year.
One problem is that in middle school and in high school, every language class I've seen so far is a joke. Seriously, they don't teach well at all.

What is worse, is that from 4th-6th, I was taught French, and then in 7th til now (11th) I've been taught Spanish. The first two years off my Spanish education were befuddled attempts to remove Oui from my brain and replace it with Si'.

Ok, I am arabic, I went to an Arabic school Kindergarden-3rd grade, my mom has been giving me arabic lessons up until last year (from elementary and middle school arabic books for arabic as a first language and from college books for teaching arabic as a second language), and I'm now Dual enrolled in Arabic one at a local community college (I'm not learning a thing. I would sleep in the class if it wasn't disrespectful. I do the homework and I pay attention, but it's too easy)

I forgot to mention that over the last 10 summers, I've been to Syria (my parent's birthplace) for over a year and 4 months. That isn't including the fact that I've been to Lebanon once and Jordan once. And the fact that my parents have many Arabic friends that we all go over to for birthdays and new year's parties.

Overall, I can grasp any concept, but grammer takes a little while longer.

In English, I'm just smart, so I have a good vocabulary.

Arabic: Very fluent. I could convince someone that it's my first language (if they didn't try to test me, but only had normal conversation), but I really don't have near as much vocabulary as a person who had it as a first language.

Spanish.. HA
I understand grammer, tenses, etc. It's just that I forget things easily, I have NO vocabulary (exaggeration), and I can't "hear the words"

In Arabic, I hear the word's ending, and I know that it is in this tense, or it's his cup, but in Spanish, I have to think: -o, was it -o or -o'. Okay, it's an -ar verb, so -o' means preterite singular 2nd person formal, or third person.

I'm not Spanish fluent, and I understand why others (who aren't as language exposed as I am) arent' fluent either.

If you're taking Arabic, you're either taking it at a private high school, or in college, both of which are better than a public middle school or a public high school.

The kids who have been taking arabic for 5 weeks don't know the entire Alphabet yet, but they are on the road to true fluency. Their pronunciation isn't the best either.

Answer 5

First of all, it depends what they mean by fluent. I graduated with distinction with a degree in French, and can easily hold a conversation. However, I do not consider myself fluent because I sometimes have to talk around vocabulary I do not know and in some situations I am a little out of my element. Many others though would consider me to be fluent.

Also, if you take a language in a class for a few hours a week, but do not have an opportunity to use the language outside of the class, you many not be able to speak the language. Many teachers of language use what teachers call "drill and kill". The students do a lot of grammar and vocabulary exercises, but they do not get much of a chance to apply what they learn in class. If they cannot use the language in ways that are meaningful to them, they will not be able to remember it.

There is also the talent factor that must be considered. Some people have a natural aptitude for language while others struggle with it.

Answer 6

There are many things that affect a person's language acquisition. First of all, there may be a great difference in the amount of time that the person spends studying the language. For example, you might spend five hours a week learning Arabic, while a person you are talking about might spend one hour a week learning Spanish. Obviously just the amount of time that you spend has a lot to do with it.

Secondly, the teaching methods also have a lot to do with it. Many people who teach languages in high schools in the United States, for example, aren't trained language teachers and are therefore not aware of current language methodology. The activities they do in their classes, while involving Spanish, may or may not be designed to help students learn Spanish in optimal ways. Many people consider two years of high-school language instruction to be the equivalent of one year of college-level language instruction. My guess is that if you're to a conversational level of Arabic in only about a year and a half, you're taking classes at a school that really knows what it's doing. I see many people like you're describing as an ESL teacher, especially students from Korea, Japan, China, and Taiwan, who have been studying English for 10 or 12 years but are only at an intermediate level, and have a very hard time with listening and speaking. Is it because every Chinese, Japanese and Korean person is stupid? Of course not; but the language-teaching methods that are popular now in these countries are not the same as the ones that we use in the States, so people progress slowly under those conditions.

Thirdly, there are some individual characteristics of language learners that appear to have some effect on their ability to acquire new languages. Intelligence, motivation, desire to acculturate, and a number of other individual characteristics have been posited to have an effect on language acquisition. Some people appear to have a special ability to learn languages. For example, I have read one case study where a person "picked up" a language after staying in a country where that language is spoken for only a few weeks. Actually, people like that lead us to believe that language learning is a separate ability and not completely connected with intelligence or cognition.

Finally, the person might be subject to what's called "attrition". This refers to the fact that a person's ability to use a language often deteriorates when they aren't receiving regular exposure to the language or practicing it regularly. If a person is at a lower level of language acquisition, language attrition could cause him/her to forget much of what he/she learned in the previous school year over the summer, for example. The next year it could be like starting from zero.

In summary, there are many possible things that might make it necessary for a particular person to spend more time studying a language than another.

Answer 7

Part of the "secret" to becoming fluent, and remembering a language is to practice, practice, practice it. I can't stress this enough. When I say practice I am referring to the habit of speaking the language, preferably on daily basis, with those whose first language is the one you are practicing.

It can happen that you lose knowledge of a language over time if you don't keep up with it.

Spanish is easy for speakers of English since both have relations to Latin (although it would be safe to say that English itself is a conglomeration, possessing words from most major languages around the world.

Arabic is a Semitic language (as is Hebrew, Aramaic, etc) and is thus very different from the Indo-Latin language family.

Best of luck in your Arabic learning!

Answer 8

The person isn't necessarily dumb. You must know, if you are already speaking another language(s), that the key to learning another language is to SPEAK IT. Speak speak speak. That person has probably not taking the opportunity to really practice. he/she may know all the grammar (which is really not that complicated in Spanish) of the language and all the litterature and what not, as long as he/she doesn't practice her/his oral skills, it won't go anywhere.
What do you mean when you say 'the whole thing'? Just on a side linguistic note (for my own pleasure!), there is no such thing as knowing a language perfectly...even for monolingual people (although they are more susceptible to know their language better than any bi-lingual...)

Answer 9

some people find it hard to learn certain language as fluent as some other people. maybe because of the language they are practiced to doesnt sound or pronounced in a different way as the lanuage thay want to learn. and somne are just plain stubborn not to learn the language

Answer 10

well I'm no good at french. i took it for nine years but i never fully learnt it or became fluent. I do not have a talent for languages. But it doesn't make some one stupid. Is some stupid just because they don't understand that brand new math problem on the board? you have been taking math forever and you still don't know it?

well i can also say tho i am fluent in Portuguese so i don't know if my answer is fair. later days.

Answer 11

Maybe that person wasnt interested or paying attention. I took 2 years of French and did not learn anything because I wasnt interested, didn't study, didn't care for it, and wasnt interested. You would have to want to learn in order to know what the subject is about.