Let's Go2Mexico - Articles

Language Immersion Schools in Mexico -
Knowledge about the Spanish Language or Learning to Use Spanish
By Linda and Eric Langner - The Language Immersion School, Veracruz - September 2007
Photos by Jesus de Avila

In past months we’ve taken a broad look at language immersion school and a close look at a number of instructional considerations. This month’s article is shorter and highly focused. This month we’ll see why some language immersion schools get you speaking Spanish {while so many still don’t.

What’s school’s job. It’s to give us a lot of knowledge about a lot of things. It’s an almost impossible job, and yet we’ve been to the moon and Mars is our next stop. School’s not perfect, but it’s not bad.

So, if school works why have language immersion schools? 

The full answer takes us deep into the philosophical foundations of Western education.  We’d need cultural anthropologists to explain what we’d be seeing fortunately, a clear-mined but not-so-deep look will let us understand the answer to our question. As complex as the issue is, the answer is straightforward.

When we take Spanish classes in college or in high school, exactly what we expect to happen does happen—we learn a lot about the language. We gain a great deal of knowledge about the language.

Given time to collect our thoughts, we can conjugate is many tenses, think our way through the use of ser and estar, understand where the object pronouns go, and handle many things important to the grammar and structure of Spanish. If we take the standard four college semesters, we end up knowing much more about the Spanish language than many native Spanish speakers know. 

School is successful in doing what it’s designed to do. After a few semesters, we can read and translate what we’ve read. We can write (mostly fill-in-the-blank, sentences, and short paragraphs). But, sadly, we can barely understand what we hear, and usually we can speak almost not at all.

What’s wrong with us?  How can we know so much about Spanish and be able to do so little with it?  There’s nothing wrong with us, nothing at all. And, we shouldn’t expect to be speakers, to carry on conversations.

Here are a couple of analogies. I could read all about how to fly an airliner. I could learn how airplanes work. I could go to airports and watch planes takeoff and land, and I could watch them fly overhead. I could do ground school for a pilot’s license. I could gain a lot of knowledge about how to fly an airplane. I could take written tests and get super grades. 

But would I know how to fly a jetliner?  Emphatically NO!!! Even though I’d have a lot of knowledge about flying an big, beautiful aircraft, I couldn’t do it. 

What if I studied all about brain surgery? I could end up with an unbelievably incredible amount of knowledge about opening skulls and working inside. But I wouldn’t know how to do brain surgery.

The answer to why are there immersion schools is easy to see. Immersion schools teach you to use the language—to speak and to listen, to carry on conversation, to talk with people.

Sure, immersion schools also give you important knowledge about the language, they teach grammar and structure and vocabulary. You need this knowledge, but in and of itself, it by far just isn’t enough. 

There are lots of “truth be known’s” about immersion schools, and here’s another. You must be careful in choosing a school to attend because many still offer knowledge about Spanish, and few teach you to use Spanish, to become a speaker of Spanish.

By looking closely at a school’s website you should be able to tell which ones truly teach you to use Spanish. Schools that know how to do it, talk about it. Some good search words for Spanish immersion schools in Mexico are SPANISH IMMERSION SCHOOLS and IMMERSION SCHOOL MEXICO.

A Dean of Instruction for a top ten community college system recently reviewed a language immersion school that truly teaches its students to use Spanish, to converse in Spanish. Here’s a paraphrase of her comments. She said this is exactly how language should be taught. She went on to say that she’d been teaching Spanish for nineteen years at the college level and the frustration of teaching knowledge of Spanish instead of teaching using Spanish was driving her to despair.

A student who has been to five Spanish immersion schools in the last two years reported that he just couldn’t get talking no matter how hard he studied until he finally found an immersion school that focused on letting him use Spanish, speak Spanish.  He made more progress in his nineteen day stay at this school than in all his prior study.

From the ICAO (the International Civil Aviation Organization) comes more emphasis on learning to use Spanish. Internationally their language requirements for English proficiency are increasing in 2008.  Pilots (private and commercial) flying internationally and air traffic controllers handling international traffic are going to be held to a higher standard. 

The ICAO cautions schools teaching Aviation English to teach the use of English (as opposed to teaching only a knowledge of the English language). It advises pilots and air traffic controllers to choose schools that will teach them to use English. (ICAO Document 9835 AN/453).

The best language immersion school is the one that best fits you.  In prior articles we’ve discussed a number of important considerations. The one we’re discussing here might be the biggest of all. The question to ask yourself is, “Do you want to gain knowledge about the Spanish language, or do you want to learn to speak Spanish, to carry on conversations in Spanish?”

Spend a little time on the Internet looking at different schools. You’ll find the one that offers you exactly what you want and need. 

© Linda and Eric Langner, 2007

Linda and Eric Langner own and operate The Language Immersion School, Veracruz, Mexico. They’re always happy to answer questions. You can email them at info@veracruzspanish.com and visit them at www.veracruzspanish.com.

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