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Passing the DELE B1 — BaseLang Review
A brief account of adventures in language learning.
As a teacher, I constantly try to improve — to communicate more effectively and inform more thoroughly. There are two ways to approach this: perfect my existing knowledge or plunge into something unfamiliar.
My druthers are always to do more of what I know — read more, write more, learn more words, delve into grammar and follow phrases along winding trails to their roots. This is easy for me, effortless, fun.
In short, exactly how my ESL students don’t experience learning English.
In contrast, confronting the unfamiliar is frustrating, boring, tiring, dispiriting and knocks my confidence into a cocked hat. Basically, how my students feel.
Failing to learn
I know how they feel because it’s how I feel — or felt — about learning Spanish. My experience with the language is long but patchy. In high school I took two years of Spanish taught by nice older white ladies who’d probably never set foot outside of the United States.
At university, confronted with the choice of language courses, I panicked. Spanish had an oral proficiency requirement and my confidence was zero. I can’t do that. So I took two years of Dutch and left university knowing neither language, believing I was…
