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ESL courses are offered as night courses at lots of highschools. One needn't drive miles away to a CC or university. That's what I mean. Sorry not to have been clear. I understand demand would be less, but I would think there would be some interest.
Maybe a tutor is the answer.
Still, I wonder why more of us aren't learning how to communicate with the many Spanish speaking people we encounter here daily.
Because immigrants are expected to learn English, like all 4 of my grandparents and their siblings had to do when they came to America. And many of them managed it with very slight or no accents.
Immersion classes are a great idea if you can swing it here or abroad. it's the best and quickest way to learn to understand and speak a language spontaneously.
Agree! And immigrants by default are in immersion, they're the lucky ones.
If one can swing it the best way is immersion. Get a serviced apartment somewhere like Mexico City or Buenos Aires and be in the midst for at least a month.
Re immersion, the dozen or so men I've spent nearly a year with have been here for about that long up to 20 years. Maybe four can communicate at a 50% level. The problem is they don't immerse themselves but stick together and speak Spanish too much to make big gains.
As far as expecting them to learn English, while I fully agree on a ideological level, it benefits me now if they understand what I am asking them to do. So as a practical matter, effective communication is more important than ideology.
Anyway learning a second language is good for the brain, and it allows you to shed the old stereotype of Americans never learning a foreign language.
I have studied Russian for over 22 years, and now I read full speed in Russian, understand almost all native speakers, and can carry on a conversation, although I do speak with the typical heavy accent most native English speakers have in Russian.
Spanish is much easier to learn from English than Russian is.
I would like to improve on the three years of Spanish classes in highschool and college taken many decades ago. I'm living in SoCal recently and have Mexicans working here daily. There are several schools nearby and dozens of ESL classes available but not a single SSL class! No one I spoke with at two schools had even heard of such a thing.
Why not? Do they exist somewhere? Am I left to buy a commercial product?
Why are you posting this in the Retirement forum?
Are you considering retiring in Mexico? If so, move there and then make it a point to converse regularly with locals.
I would like to improve on the three years of Spanish classes in highschool and college taken many decades ago. I'm living in SoCal recently and have Mexicans working here daily.
My wife and I took up Spanish as a second language when we were traveling a lot to Mexico and Central America. I then tried to speak to workers in the US who were native Spanish speakers and it never worked out. Street Spanish, especially Mexican street Spanish, is very different from what you learn in class. And if they speak English at all, it seemed they preferred to use it. Probably trying to fit in.
At any rate, learning Spanish is great but I wouldn't learn it to speak to your yard workers.
I recommend watching Spanish TV channels. The telenovelas are pretty good for learning.
I would like to improve on the three years of Spanish classes in highschool and college taken many decades ago. I'm living in SoCal recently and have Mexicans working here daily. There are several schools nearby and dozens of ESL classes available but not a single SSL class! No one I spoke with at two schools had even heard of such a thing.
Why not? Do they exist somewhere? Am I left to buy a commercial product?
You might want to consider volunteering at a community service agency that provides services to the non English speaking Spanish community. I worked for a number of years at a community hospital ER that serviced a large population of Azorean Portuguese that spoke minimal if any English. I had many colleagues that were bilingual Portuguese/English, and through my exposure to my colleagues speaking Portuguese to these patients and visa versa, within a few years I became pretty fluent in medical Portuguese conversation.
I think if you find a way to expose yourself to people primarily conversing in Spanish on a daily basis you will likely learn the language quicker than from some class or online program.
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