Welcome to our first issue of the Language Exepress!

As a tutor, I usually reflect on my own attitude as a language learner when I was the age of my students. And I always reach the same conclusion. When I was doing my BA in English Studies back in my hometown, being fluent in English was a goal in the long run, but the most imminent one was to pass my language exams.

 

Unfortunately, at that stage I could not see a correlation between the former and the latter. By focusing primarily on memorising the contents I was going to be assessed on in my exams, I was actually neglecting the crucial need of putting those contents into practice in order to achieve my long-term objectives. I remember I devoted many hours to learning grammar rules by heart… so many, that joining a tandem scheme, a language study group, or a book club never crossed my mind. I never researched on any other opportunities for my linguistic development available at my University: magazines written in English, the English Language Society... I didn’t even mingle with Erasmus or exchange students. What was the point?

 

Now, I know that was a huge mistake, as I never challenged myself to produce the structures I had memorised in real communicative situations. When I completed my BA, I was very proud to be able to define myself a language expert, as I had all the pieces of the English language puzzle in my brain. But soon I realised that putting the pieces together when talking was a real struggle. When I moved to the US to complete an MA in Spanish Literature, I was amazed by the language skills of my fellow American students. Even though most of them were younger than me, they were already able to engage in sophisticated conversations in Spanish, and were never afraid of making mistakes. It was obvious to me that they enjoyed speaking in Spanish. They just had the confidence as well as the attitude.

 

Apparently, when they started taking Spanish lessons, their language tutors encouraged them not to just learn the language, but to use it in real life from that very moment. For example, they encouraged them to interact with the Spanish-speaking community living in the area acting as translators at local schools, and to take every opportunity to use their language skills in real, purposeful situations. Which they did.

 

That made a big difference for them, and for me. The experience of my fellow American students as learners of Spanish opened my eyes to the fact that I had wrongly perceived being fluent in English as a long-run goal, as it all depended on my own motivation to put my skills into real practice. No matter how many pieces of the puzzle you can retain in your brain, you won’t be able to put the puzzle together until you actually try. This is a motto I constantly ask my students to bear in mind.  The resources are there: language societies, PAL, the Tandem Scheme, The Language Exepress… No time to waste. The future is now.