Hola! Welcome to a new semester of Spanish! I hope you are excited about....not taking a Spanish class.....but learning Spanish! I believe anyone can do it!
I am Señor Rivera, and I am happy to be your teacher. I speak 6 languages. I have been learning languages since I was a child. I have been teaching them for 15 years. This is my 10th year at Atlantic Union College. I am still a student with a lot to learn.
This class will be an experiment for you. You will receive a lot of information. Some of it you will understand; a lot of it you will not understand. How does that make you feel? Frustrated, perhaps? Well, don't fret about it. That is the way big people learn language - by being continually patient through the frustration, anger, confusion, and embarrassment! What spiritual training!
Yes, language learning can generate a lot of emotions. It is only normal. Think about when God confused the languages at the Tower of Babel. Some carpenter was asking for a hammer, and after repeating himself three times he got a set of dice instead. His assistant saw him shaking his hand and thought, "dice!"
Can you remember when you were a child, before you could speak...? Hard to remember, right? People would talk to you, and you would watch and listen. You never spoke. You only listened. You continued observing while your beautiful God-given brain began to make sense of what you saw and heard. All the while, you were preparing to imitate!
One day, it popped out..., "mama!", or "momma", or ..... whatever! And you've never looked back...
Learning a language is kind of like becoming a baby again! It is nothing like learning math, history, or any other subject. It is like trying to catch water, you know? You always miss some. But that's fine. You just need to know what to expect and roll with it.
You will develop a tolerance for ambiguity. It won't bother you not to understand every little thing or even most everything. In time, if you put in an honest effort, you will get the hang of it. It is something like riding a bike, hitting a tennis ball, or learning the guitar. It takes some time and patience, but the payoff is incredible! BUT...you have to put your heart into it. Otherwise, it will escape you. If you put your heart in it with patience, you will conquer it, poco a poco!
Understanding another language will open doors in your life that you cannot imagine. For me, it even got me a wife! You will hear that story one day, if you are good!
I love languages because I love people. Speaking someone's language is a unique way to reach them. Ask me about an article for you to read on this! Learning more about another person's culture and background gives you indispensable tools to work with. Read 1 Corinthians 9: 19-22 on this.
Hasta luego...
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