Jonatan Hernandez Castillo

What I do really like about teaching Spanish is to be able to promote my language and culture around the world and see that students are happy to learn one of the most spoken languages worldwide. I do really feel fulfilled when I see that both, my student's effort and mine are aligned and are being fruitful.

I started at the age of 23 when I was an exchange student in the USA. Back in that time, my classes were merely informal, and I had not undergone any formal nor proper training. In fact, I only offered conversational lessons to improve students' fluency in Spanish.

I do really think that most people want to learn Spanish because they think that lifestyle in Spain and Latin American is more laid-back than in other cultures like the Anglo-Saxon one or Asian cultures that are more work-centric. Some others feel attracted to Spanish literature. These two types of students are the ones who are intrinsically motivated.

On the other hand, some other students are more extrinsically motivated, and they only want to take Spanish to get additional credits, as it happens in IB schools or similar. Some others want to get a formal language qualification like DELE or SIELE (although SIELE would not be considered it as a proper language qualification, since it would be the Spanish TOEFL/IELTS equivalent.) A kind reminder here is that if you want to live in Spain and obtain Spanish citizenship, you need to demonstrate you are able to speak Spanish at A2 level (DELE A2). There are some other students who want to prove they can speak foreign languages, so that they take DELE (the official Spanish language qualification) for professional purposes.

There are no easy or hard languages as such, since that will depend on what your first language/mother tongue is. For example, for students whose mother tongue derives from Latin, such as Portuguese, French, Romanian or Italian, will be much easier because they are 'sibling languages'. Students that speak English or German will find it relatively easy as well.

On the contrary, Asian students may find Spanish harder than other languages because of its grammar, especially when it comes to dealing with the four main past tenses and subjunctive mood, which has to be taught very systematically. As for vocabulary and pronunciation, Asian students tend to pick it up efficiently.

Spanish as the language we know nowadays originated in Castilla-León and spread across the rest of the Iberian Peninsula. This language expansion would not be fast, but gradual. It would become the official language after the Spanish reconquest by the Catholic Kings in 1492. However, there were different dialects in regions where pronunciation and some words differed.

Following, I would like to compare Iberian Spanish with other dialects:

Iberian Spanish pronunciation is very peculiar. We pronounce the letter 'c' as an interdental consonant, whereas in South America they will pronounce it 's'.

Pace: When Spaniards from Spain speak, they tend to do it much faster than someone from South America. If we compare Iberian Spanish with Mexican Spanish, we will see that Mexicans tend to enunciate more than Spaniards do.

Intonation: Iberian Spanish tends to emphasize tone more than South American countries do.

Some countries like Argentina have a peculiar pronunciation of words like 'yo', which is pronounced as 'cho' and similar. They also speak with a peculiar tone as if they were singing.

Once Spain was reconquered, it would start colonising overseas territories.

Students are normally interested in songs, especially trendy songs and dances like bachata or flamenco. One thing that must be noted is that the Spanish-speaking world is not only Spain, but also South America. Some other students are interested in history or monuments. These students are the ones who are often interested in learning literature.

Those students who are younger are keen on learning about leisure activities, nightclubs or beaches to visit.

In my opinion, I would say that the hardest part of teaching Spanish is the four past tenses, subjunctive (although I find this relatively easy to teach), pronunciation of letters like 'ñ', 'ch', 'll' (beginners), 'por/para/, 'ser/estar', DO AND IO pronouns like 'me, te, se, etc...'.

A good Spanish student is for me someone who is perseverant, attentive, respectful and who makes plethora of questions in every class showing that he/she has an enquiring mind.

Learning something for the very first time is always hard, or it may be hard when something is not known. There is a saying that I always share with my students that goes like: 'Make questions about things you do not know, and you will be a fool for a minute, but if you never ask anything, you will always be an ignorant'. And there is another saying that goes like: 'Everything is hard when it has never been learnt.' (Everything is hard before it gets easy).

Both of these sayings emphasize the importance to seek knowledge and explore new ways of getting the right answer, but I would like to add something else, and it is as follows:

'A tree does not grow overnight, an empire is not built in a blink of an eye, and no one becomes an expert right away'. So the only conclusion that can be drawn out of this is that if there is no perseverance is like depriving a plant of water. If the plant is not watered regularly, the plant will eventually die out, so will Spanish learning.

If you cannot find a way to study something or it is not working for you, maybe you should change the way you are studying it. Perhaps, they may need to know how they learn. Only by doing so, they will get to know their strengths and weaknesses and how to study more efficiently. This is a concept known as 'metacognition' or 'learning to learn'.