Poco a Poco

I remember taking my first Spanish class in sixth grade. I thought it would be so cool to learn another language. I wondered if when people spoke a language that wasn’t their native one, they would have to translate everything in their heads. I wondered if it somehow felt different.

Everytime I encountered someone speaking Spanish, I’d try to interact with them with my very limited knowledge. Sometimes I even, as a twelve year old, walked up to entire families to initiate conversations.

This happened for years. But, I never became fluent. I thought that maybe people who can speak multiple languages are just born with some innate talent. Or maybe, the only real way to learn is to do so as a child. Some say that our brains are better able to pick up languages when we are very young. This may be true. But, I think there’s more to the story than that.

When we go to school, we are taught how to learn. It is a very specific method, built off of memorization and regurgitation. We repeat this process again and again, for the next twelve years or so. Our language classes are no different.

Every week in Spanish class, I’d recieve another list of vocabulary and grammar rules to memorize. The test would come, mostly focusing on writing, spelling and answering questions. I had difficulties with spelling, and the memorized words would leave my mind as soon as the test ended (and sometimes before it even started). I wasn’t picking up the language because memorizing vocab lists is not how our brains naturally work.

We learned English by listening to others talk, reading their body language, looking for context clues, watching movies, having conversations, learning through active participation. Why do we think our second language has to be a different method?

I learned to speak Spanish over the course of this past summer. Maybe I had some background knowledge because of the language classes I took in school, but honestly they didn’t help as much as I thought they would.

I stayed with a family in rural Panama who didn’t speak any English, in a small town of two thousand people who did not either (with the exception of a few other English teachers). At first, it was overwhelming for my brain. It only knew English. It was confused to be hearing different sounds that it didn’t understand. I felt like people spoke so quickly and all of their words ran together.

People would ask me questions and I would just stare at them blankly. I decided to just start saying yes to everything and seeing what happened. The first day I was there I cried. I thought, “what did I get myself into?!” I wondered how I would go through seven weeks in another language. How would I express my thoughts? Emotions? Personality? Would new friends really know who I am as a person?

I watched my brain slowly adjust itself. I started thinking and dreaming in Spanish. Each week, I knew and understood a bit more than the week before. My family would tell me “poco a poco” (little by little). I tried to remember this when I was frustrated or discouraged.

Poco a poco was my guiding force this summer. I trusted the process, and I watched myself go from essentially 0 (más o menos) to 100. Of course, I am not perfect at Spanish, but I am not perfect in English either. Perfection wasn’t the goal, communication was.

I started to think about poco a poco when it came to learning anything new. I realized that if I am trying out a new skill, I am going to be starting at zero. I am going to suck and make mistakes and fail a lot. But, poco a poco I am bound to improve.

This mindset has pushed me into trying out a lot of new experiences. It helped me get over an innate fear of failure. It helped me realize that failure and rejection are one in the same. I saw how fear of these two has held me back for so long in my life.

I started to trust myself more than anyone else this summer. I had faith in my own abilities. I knew that poco a poco I could do anything I put my mind and energy towards.

I used to believe in innate talents. I thought that people were just naturally good at certain things, and maybe our genes do play a role in this and make us more predisposed to succeeding in certain ventures, but there is more to it than that. Now I believe in growth. I believe that poco a poco we can improve. Poco a poco we can become the best versions of ourselves.