I’m taking beginning Spanish at school, mostly for the easy grade, and was informed this first class that during the next 16 weeks we won’t get beyond the present tense… 
Wow.
I have never figured out how they manage to control these beginner texts for tense, and why it is assumed that the brain will learn faster by keeping the tenses isolated.
Just use LingQ!
Chris, I presume this is a university. Or is this the Las Vegas Black Jack dealers apprenticeship course?
I think that if I taught Spanish at university, I would use LingQ and have the learners onto authentic content within two months latest. Even Who is She has the past tense.
Yeah, it was surprising even for me. I would probably learn more Spanish becoming a blackjack dealer and getting a job in a North Las Vegas casino. The one good thing though is that the teacher is such a native speaker that I can hardly understand her English.
I’ll definitely step up my Spanish lingqing during this class, I think the problem might be that students get afraid, so the reaction is to make language learning over simplified. There should almost be a two class lecture on famous polyglots and our old golden trinity, Time on task, motivation/attitude and attentiveness, and use lingq of course
But even just saying Como estas? to other students and her trying to explain that to the teacher you should say Como esta usted?, students who otherwise seemed smart, looked baffled. I’ll keep updated on this supreme waste of time… (I remember in German we at least covered all the noun cases and how the prepositions and articles changed, how in Spanish you can only do present tense in 16 weeks baffles me).
But the point is that it may be baffling at first when we encounter new concepts like Como estas and Como esta Usted. However, we have to give the brain time to get used to it. We need not try to deliberately learn it because it is taught at us. It just gets clearer and more natural over time as the brain makes the necessary adjustments for these new patterns.
Hi Chris: Good luck with the course! Is it for credit or is it a continuing education non-credit? I am also surprised at how slow this course sounds! I took a short summer beginner course for college credit in Canada where, unlike here in Las Vegas, hardly anyone spoke Spanish (and there were no Spanish radio or TV stations!) and we went through all the tenses including subjunctives in 6 weeks and even read an entire short novel (3 hours per day, 5 days per week). I didn’t really understand it all but I got through it. Years later, I went to a non-credit evening class and it was so boring and none of the students did any homework and were always behind the teacher’s plan so she slowed down to the lowest level and we made pathetically slow progress. If this is for credit, maybe they are adopting the non-credit course style of syllabus in order to drag on the course and get more money! Sorry to be so cynical! Since you are already a pretty advanced language learner from your Polish studies, you might want to move to a beginner 2 or lower intermediate and just try and catch up rather than be held back by too much un-challenging busy work. In any case, good luck and I hope you enjoy Spanish. I really love this language!
@ Steve,
No argument from me, maybe some people just need to be told that, and told what is needed to really learn a language…
@John
My family is from Argentina, so my Spanish is probably better than my Polish, at least it’s more fluid. I’m sort of like a retarded native speaker of Spanish, someone who was around it enough to get by, I definitely need more practice, but I’d say it’s better than Polish, since with Polish my opportunities to have transcript/voice are limited to a weekly podcast on a Polish website… Btw John when are we going to get that coffee?
haha you dont get past present tense your first YEAR of high school spanish, a semester isnt that bad.
Well it’s starting to become more and more clear why Americans don’t speak multiple languages…
That’s sad. But then again, like xnightxrainx, I don’t think my HS Spanish class went past present either.
My first year was a joke. Most of the time the teacher would be telling us some random story that had nothing to do with the class. It wasn’t even in Spanish. I felt like I didn’t learn anything till my 3rd year.
It’ll be interesting to see how much you actually learn in the class vs. LingQ.
hi everybody i’m megnech 36 year old from algeria & need to meet some friend to speak whith them
because i need to improve my skills
best regards