Why Spanish Language Classes Suck

How many among you took Spanish language classes for 2, 3, even 4 years in high school and can’t even order a pizza?  I know I certainly fell into that group after 2 years of high school Spanish.  Another year in college helped a bit if only because of the extra practice required by the increased workload, but even after getting an A in my intermediate Spanish conversation class, I could barely manage more than the basics in a real-life conversation.

Oh sure, by that point I knew the grammar and a decent amount of “standard” vocabulary, but I couldn’t string them together to utter a coherent sentence for the life of me.  As it turns out, my experience was far from unique.  In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever met a single person who managed to learn any language fluently  in a classroom.

Why Spanish Language Classes Are A Waste Of Money

Since Spanish language classes are far from cheap, it makes sense to seriously weigh the benefits and pitfalls of learning Spanish in a classroom before shelling out your hard-earned money.  As it turns out, there are tons of pitfalls, including…

• Not enough individual attention – Most Spanish classes in school have between 20-30 students.  Obviously, there is no way the teacher is going to be able to give anybody individual attention during the few hours per week the class is in session.
• You go at the slowest person’s pace – In a class-room setting, you are limited to advancing at the pace of the slowest learner in the room, or at least a pace the majority of students can follow.  That’s fine if you happen to be the slowest learner, but otherwise it will impede your progress.  Eventually, you’ll get bored by the lack of challenging material and tune everything out.  Once this happens, you can pretty much guarantee you aren’t going to learn anything.  Smaller classes limited to just 4 or 5 people can mitigate this problem to a large extent, but will obviously be much more expensive.
• Most class time is wasted on unimportant details – Sure grammar is important, but it shouldn’t comprise 90% of your learning effort like it does in most Spanish classes these days.  An effective class would focus 80% on conversational ability, 10% on grammar, and 10% on vocabulary.  These are just rough estimates, but it illustrates the point that while grammar is nice, it won’t help you speak.  My own experience proves this:  after 3 years of Spanish, I had an advanced knowledge of Spanish grammar but only a beginners ability to converse in the language.  Additionally, out of a 1 hour class period, how much of that time is actually spent learning and not on administrative concerns such as taking roll, handing out papers, etc?  I’d guess less than 40 minutes.
• Simply not enough exposure to the language – The biggest problem with Spanish language classes is that they only meet for 3-5 hours per week, with perhaps another 1-2 hours or so of homework in between.  That simply isn’t enough exposure to learn the language effectively and advance at a decent pace.  And as mentioned above, most of the time you are in class is wasted on things that won’t actually help you speak the language.

In my opinion, the quickest and most effective way to learn Spanish is on your own time using high-quality Spanish language courses such Rosetta Stone, Pimsleur, or FSI.  For those on a budget or who just don’t want to invest that much money, it’s still possible, albeit much more difficult, to learn Spanish for less than $50 without ever stepping foot in a classroom.