Dear Editor,This is in response to the article “Letter to the Editor Espa¤ol (Spanish) remains foreign to me. By A Former Beginning Spanish Student”
I would like to say that I agree with the student when he/she says that Spanish can be hard for the beginning student, but anywhere a beginning student may go to learn Spanish they will encounter the same difficulties. Everyone has to begin somewhere, like this particular student and some other some other students, my first year or so of Spanish went right over my head. I will disagree with this article when it says that there should be another way of teaching beginning Spanish.
I took my whole first year of Spanish at Raymond Walters College, and I am now currently taking my second year of Spanish at Wright State University. I have to say that this student wrote his/her letter just to complain. Let me put it to him/her easily. Raymond Walters Foreign Languages Department taught the language much better than what I have to deal with up here at Wright State University. At least this student has access to tutors and a language lab that provides some kind of help for students who are unsure of the language.
The language lab that is offered at Wright State is staffed with people who do not know Spanish, and there aren’t even programs that compliment the book that my Spanish class uses. The lab here doesn’t even offer language tapes. I’d like to tell this student to stop complaining about what he/she thinks is bad about the Spanish Department at Raymond Walters because once he/she gets into another college he/she’ll be wishing that he/she had the same great lab at Raymond Walters! Also, compared to the wonderful Spanish professors at Raymond Walters who will take the time to help if asked, the teachers at other schools will not care.
A former student,
Alyson Utterback