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 Sherry has now been to two different immersion schools for Spanish, Universidad Internacional in Cuernavaca Mexico and this one, COINED in Buenos Aires.  COINED is my first.  By the end of February I will have experienced two more and Sherry will have been to a total of five immersion schools.  We’ve been discussing what makes for a good experience, what criteria schools use for forming classes and what control you have over the kind of class experience you get.  Naturally this is an ongoing conversation (and not just between ourselves, since we discuss it with others as well).  Sherry has also attended a school at home in which the class was immersion, but it was only two days a week.

   Although there are big schools and small schools, most of the immersion schools seem to be small.  COINED is small, compared to UI in Cuernavaca.  The smaller the school, the MORE likely you are to have people with different skill levels in the class.  That’s because they don’t have enough students to fill a class with people of the same level.  I’ve seen that in my classes here.  The first week we had one student who was way ahead of the rest of us and one who was way behind.  They eventually moved them, but finding the right spot for them was a problem.  In the class I’m in this week, I’m the one who is behind. So far the class is (rapidly) going over the stuff we did in the first two weeks.  If I hadn’t already had it, I would be totally lost.  I understand about 20% of what the teacher is saying.  Strangely enough, I’m keeping up, but it’s only because I know the material.  When an exercise involves something like describing a room and how things are placed in it, my classmates go on and on about a room in their home and I describe the room I’m in: ” The door is to the right of the large window, which is behind the table, and on top of the table are many books and papers. ”  In Spanish, of course.  But compared to the others, it’s baby talk.  It’s a little embarassing, but even though it’s probably bad for the other students, it’s probably good for me to hear so much conversation. 

     Sherry says that at UI in Cuernavaca they tested for both written and oral skills, and that grammar would be taught in the first half and conversation in the second half of the day.  And the two halves were likely to have different classmates, based on their abilities.  But it was a very large school, associated with a university.  Here the testing concentrated on grammar, and the others aren’t too far ahead of me in that.  But even if they had tested in conversation, I don’t think they would have enough students to separate the levels again.  I’m guessing that there are a little less than 100 students  in the morning classes.  There are late afternoon classes, too, but I doubt that there are as many in those.  Just guessing about that.  So I don’t know how to get around the disparity of language abilities.  Being behind isn’t such a bad thing.  It’s better than being the most advanced in the room and risking being bored.  I’m probably learning more than the other students.  I’m seriously considering taking one on one classes when we go to Mexico in January and February.  Seriously considering, but I haven’t made up my mind. One on one is a pretty intense, and I assume will fry your brain.  One good thing about classmates is that your brain gets a little chance to rest while the teacher calls on someone else.  That was the case in my last class, but not in this one.  Here, I’m so slow, and my vocabulary is so weak that I have to look up a lot of words and I’m usually the last one to finish an assignment.  And to be honest, there’s a little vanity involved in my discomfort.  I mean, someone has to be the slowest.  I just don’t like it being me.  And I don’t want it to reflect poorly on my age group, either.

     And age can make a difference in how you feel about your class.  If I were 23, the fit would be much better.  I would have people to hang with between classes and to do things with after class.  In this school, and it’s different in every school I suppose, an older person could feel pretty isolated unless you meet more people like Clare, who is mature enough and comfortable enough with who she is that those things don’t make as much difference.  And some schools have more of a range of ages.  UI did.  That’s something to check if you’re concerned -  the average age.  And the usual mix of ages (not just oldest and youngest). 

Almost all the schools will switch your class if you think you are ”misplaced”.  If I were continuing here, I would ask to be “put back” or something, but since I only have two more classes I might as well try to soak up the language.    Clare (remember Clare?) says that all of her classmates are from Holland and have sort of (probably unintentionally) excluded her, so that she feels invisible.  I know the feeling, being the grandfather in all my classes.  And Sherry says that she felt lost most of the time in Cuernavaca, even though the class were well matched.  Hey, you’re in a foreign country and you don’t speak the language.  You’re going to feel lost.   Get over it.  (Self said).   Insert long sigh here.

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