Our language learning quandry

We’ve been requesting prayer about language school lately, and you may be wondering, what’s the big deal?  Isn’t it all pretty straightforward?  Go to school, learn Spanish, move on?

So let me just take a few minutes to explain, for those of you who are wondering.  Basically, things are very flexible with language school.  We can do pretty much whatever we want here as far as language learning is concerned, as long as we get to a certain level in a reasonable amount of time.  That reasonable length of time is usually around a year, but it could be longer (like 18 months, for example) depending on how you do things.

So we have a lot of options.  Since January, I have been taking the regular recommended classes at the university, 5 days a week from 8am to 2pm (with some short breaks).  Shari has been working with a tutor through the university (and at the university) for two hours, three times a week.  That’s six hours a week (and I didn’t even check my calculator).  Shari goes after I’m home, so we switch off with the kids.

There are two problems with this setup.  First, although Shari is learning at about double the speed per hour that I am, she’s still going slower because she’s in school far less.  That’s a minor problem, because we can switch off and have her take the classes and me work with a tutor, or whatever.  The big problem is that Shari is paying far more than I am.  Too much.

You see, we raised a certain amount of money for language training.  If we run out of money half way there – well, we can’t do that.

So Shari is looking for a new tutor that will fit in our price range.  We’re still glad we got her started, even if it was expensive, but now we need to find something more reasonable.

So it’s mostly a time and money issue.  We could learn the language much faster if we just both used tutors, but it would cost far more and we’d miss out on some of the great benefits of the university (such as the cultural training I’m getting).  Or, we could both do classes, which would be far cheaper, but it would take far longer – especially since we can’t both go to class at the same time!

So basically we’re trying to work out a compromise between these two extremes.  There are some good tutors available in the city, so we’ll be looking around for someone for Shari to try for the next month.  Then we have some time off in April, and we’ll decide how to go on when we start again in May.

I hope that’s as clear as Mexican hot chocolate!  Or maybe even clearer!  Just ask if you want to know more.