I work with many different Spanish teachers through another service. Often when I am reading and working on pronunciation with a Spanish teacher, they ask me to repeat it again at a faster pace-- the pace that is natural for them. Today I felt frustrated and pressured by my teacher, who made me repeat the same sentences several times, wanting me to go faster each time.
I kept trying to meet his expectation but honestly I had negative feelings. Part of me wanted to tell him ¨I will starting speaking faster when I am ready to speak faster, I am trying to pronounce it right.¨
Have other students of Spanish felt frustrated by pressure to speak or read at the pace that is natural to a native Spanish speaker, but that makes you feel like you are trying to race through a tongue twister that you can never get right?
Can a Spanish teacher give me their opinion of whether pressuring a student to read or speak faster is actually helpful? I read and speak much faster than I used to, but I can not speak or read at a pace that is ¨natural¨ for many native Spanish speakers. This particular teacher is one of my favorites when we are talking, but when he tries to help me read Spanish ¨more naturally¨ it makes me feel like a child being asked to do something overwhelming.
I am trying to decide whether I will just trust him and keep trying to do what he asks, or whether I will tell him I do not think what he is asking me to do is helpful at my current level.
This teacher has told me he is aware that I do not speak English (my own language) at as fast a pace as native Spanish speakers Spanish, but somehow he seems to think it is necessary for me to learn to speak Spanish fast.
I agree with you, Rock Anthony, that listening skills are the most important thing if one wants to have conversational ability in another language. Obviously, you need to be able to speak too. But, when it comes to speaking, one only need know one way of saying something to make oneself understood. But if there are four different ways to say the same thing in a given language and you only know one of them and the person speaking to you uses one of the other ways? You're stuffed. If they speak very quickly and run words together and you cannot pick out the individual words? You're stuffed.
Speaking personally, with languages that I have learned, I feel that so much emphasis has been placed on me speaking in lessons, that my speaking ability is much better than my listening ability - and this does not actually help me to have conversations with people... what it does is it allows me to talk to people and be understood but then often be baffled, in turn, with the response.
I personally feel that the current orthodoxy that places speaking in the dominant position in lessons needs to be altered somewhat, so that listening plays as great a part in lessons as speaking, if not slightly more so.
