Dreaming of the perfect Spanish class

I felt depressed after leaving Spanish class yesterday.  Granted, it is a just-because-I-want-to class at an institute at a local university.  But, by darn, I wanted to have the chance to ratchet up my declining fluency in Spanish. And that wasn't happening.

I started daydreaming about what my perfect Spanish class would look like.  Here is the rosy picture I painted in my mind.

First, and most importantly, I would have the chance to speak lots of Spanish for the hour and a half class. In my perfect class, I was paired up with other participants of varying levels of ability and allowed to talk and talk and talk in Spanish about many topics.

In contrast, yesterday our whole group of 20 worked together the entire time. I  had the chance to formulate only two full sentences in Spanish. Two sentences for each of the six classes is only a 12 sentence total! That amount of Spanish would barely get me a plate of red enchiladas (my favorite) ordered in a Mexican food restaurant!.

Next, in my perfect class, grammar instruction would take a back seat, and I mean way in the back. I'll get my shield ready to defend myself against the arrows of those who believe grammar is akin to motherhood and apple pie.  Yes, I do think that at some level of learning, grammar knowledge may be helpful to some people.  And, no, I am not a grammar hater.  I actually think it is fascinating to discover how a new language is put together.

But when a speaker is trying to express an idea in another language, the last thing that person needs at that point is to be corrected. So someone speaking Spanish makes an error and uses the preterit verb tense instead of the imperfect.  Is the sentence still comprehensible?  Probably. That person's mind is completely concentrating on making meaning.  A correction, especially when accompanied by an extended grammar explanation, is an interruption in the thinking process.  

One poor participant in our class yesterday was asked to read aloud her paragraph for a second time. Each time she used an incorrect verb, the instructor stopped her and gave an extensive grammar explanation to the class.  When the participant was through reading, she looked like she had been wrung through a wringer.  Not only was I myself bored with the repeated grammar explanations,  I felt really sorry for her. In the future her fluency may to be even lower because she will be using her energies to worry about using the correct past tense.

Finally, in my perfect Spanish class, the atmosphere would be calm, welcoming, non-judgmental, and playful. Yes, I want to have fun!    We speakers of other language put enough pressure on ourselves to be perfect without experiencing outside pressure to reach that unattainable goal.  I would rather be comfortable producing language and make a few mistakes (inevitable, even in one's native language) than uptight and thinking I need to be error-free.

My time on the soapbox is up!  But I'll keep dreaming about that perfect Spanish class I hope to find one day.