(Even if you do not speak any Spanish yet, you will learn some really important things in this chapter so stay with me.)

Is your Spanish full of potholes?

If you have ever been to Latin America you may have noticed many of our roads are full of potholes. This is a major topic of discussion among Latin Americans in Latin America. The roads are passable, but they are hard on your car after a while. If you know some Spanish but cannot speak well, then you may have some "language potholes."

Most Intermediate Level Spanish Speakers have "potholes" all over their conversations.

You get past "Buenos días, mi nombre es _______" and by the time you get to the second or third sentence of a conversation you start to hit these "potholes." By the end of the conversation you are either frustrated, or at the very least tired from all the wear and tear, not to mention the stress that a full-length conversation in Spanish puts on you.

Maybe you do not have enough words to support a "real" Spanish conversation, maybe you are still struggling with "verb conjugations," or maybe you are having trouble with the "speed" of the language. Maybe you are struggling with all three!

Whatever the case, there is a solution for your need.

I have had students who have gotten upset because they spent four years in high school and college trying to learn Spanish but never really got it to where they could speak well. Then they finally found out how easy this really is.

I also have had students who have spent a lot of money on private instruction who afterwards found out they were paying a lot of money to a teacher who didn't really know how to teach this language. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard, "I wish I had known this before!" Well, better late that never!

Let's dig in...

Do you "recognize" or "generate?"

Intermediate speakers typically struggle with being able to use vocabulary words and verb patterns quickly in a conversational mode. If you see things in writing, or if someone says something to you slowly enough, you understand most everything.

The problem occurs when you have to create sentences on your own. What is happening is that your ability to recognize the language is stronger than your ability to generate the language for yourself.

Here are several different reasons why people struggle to use vocabulary well in conversations. They are:

• Words were learned through "dialogue based learning." This includes immersion based training.
• Words didn't get enough repetitions for a long enough period of time, thus cementing them into long-term memory.
• Words were learned from Spanish to English rather than English to Spanish.
• Words were learned through "image based learning," that is matching objects and pictures with the words themselves.
• Words were not learned with the proper balance of nouns, verbs and adjectives.
• Words learned were not “universal” in nature. Words were not learned from the main areas of speech that most people engage in.

There are many reasons why learners struggle to use "verb structure" well in conversation, here they are:

• Verb structure was learned calling different “tenses” by name. (imperfect, subjunctive, etc.)
• Verb structure was learned in a “Spanish only” environment, thus forcing you to try to learn Spanish structure from Spanish structure itself.
• Verb structure in Spanish was not “linked” to the same English structure thus allowing you to easily move from one equivalent to the other.
• Verb structure was learned by learning different conjugations in a lesson by lesson format, rather than in a big-picture, global format based on patterns.

If you learned to call verb patterns things like, "imperfect," "preterit," "simple present," "subjunctive" and those types of names, you learned verb patterns in stagnant forms and will be forever limited unless you change how you view verb structure. See Chapters 1 and 2 of this booklet to refresh your memory on how verb structure is best learned.

I detest words like "conjugate," "tense," "irregular verbs," "subjunctive," "past perfect" or anything else in that vein. The goal here is to be able to communicate well in Spanish, not to get a degree in syntactical analysis.

Balance is Critical!

We humans are given to extremes. We tend to swing from one extreme position to the other. Some of us are in desperate need of balance in our lives. So it is with language training.

In language, you either hear people saying, "The only way to learn is to learn like a child in an immersion approach" or "You have to learn grammar in a traditional college way if you are ever really going to learn verb conjugations." Both are two different extremes and neither one is correct!

There is middle ground, there is a balance. The fact is that you do need to learn structure (notice I did not say "grammar"), and you do need to learn how to implement structure into a dynamic and free conversation. Let's face it, if you do not learn structure well you will never speak well in a dynamic conversation.

Here's the MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION…

How do you fix a road with "potholes?"

There are only two ways and one of these two ways will be your solution.

• Fill in the potholes.
• Resurface the road.

What does this mean in real life? It means that for you to become an Expert Level Speaker you have two options. Either someone will have to find every place where you are weak in Spanish, help you do the remedial work and then move you to Advanced and Expert Level training. Two, you will need to start again at the beginning and program the language in correctly this time. I can tell you, (and this is based on a lot of experience), that most Intermediate Level speakers should definitely resurface the road rather than trying to fill in the holes — that is, go with option two.

There are several reasons for this, they are:

1. When you resurface the road everything is smooth and we make sure that we do not miss any holes. The other way, you never really know what gaps are still there.

2. When you resurface the road you get a total reprogramming of the entire language. (This is much more than a "review.")

3. When you resurface the road (correctly) we can make sure that you truly have long-term memory of everything in the language and can generate the language for yourself quickly.

4. When you resurface the road you do not waste time and energy trying to find out what you cannot do well. You invest your time into making sure that you can do everything well. I have people all the time who say, "Well, I do not want to start with the Basic Level."

Here's the problem — most people who describe themselves as Intermediate Level speakers still have structural weaknesses in things that we have in our Basic Level courses.

If you can show through an objective evaluation that you really do not need to go back and reprogram the language, then I am fine with that. I just would not want to put you in Intermediate, Advanced or Expert Level course materials knowing that you are not ready.

I had a student one time who had a Masters degree in Spanish and she could not do things well in our late Intermediate Level Course Materials! We started with the Basic Level (because of her background, she did it quickly) and then went all the way through the Expert Level materials. When she was done she was really, really happy with the result. And this is, after all, the whole point, to get a strong result.

Here are the steps to take if you want to speak well in "native level" conversations:

1.Take an objective evaluation of your present level Spanish skills.

Before this evaluation do not study or review any Spanish. If you do, you will not get a true indicator of your real skills since you are "cramming" information, rather than getting a true evaluation of your present skill level.

This is a free on-line evaluation with Bilingual America.

You can take it by first doing the on-line Aptitude Assessment. At the end of the Aptitude Assessment, there will be a question that asks you to define your present skill level in Spanish. If you say anything higher than "high basic," it will give you access to exams that correlate to our Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Levels.

2. Have a program designed for you that will meet your specific needs.

Neither of us know what your "specific needs" are right now, but we will find out. When we do, we can custom tailor your program to meet your exact desires.

3. Get started..."mañana" may be too late!

Capture your motivation and take advantage of the many opportunities available to people who can really communicate well in both Spanish and English. You are already half way down the road. All we need to do is "get you over the hump" and "past the bumps" by assessing and leveraging your present knowledge. We will resurface the road so you are riding on a smooth language infrastructure.