Some questions?

  1. I hear the learning a language in school is different than learning a language in the real world: Immersion (visiting another country, culture, etc.) Why is that?

  2. I am learning Spanish, and I know words to have a small conversation. I always translate those words in my head to English for me to understand, even if I know that word. Same goes for reading, writing, and speaking.

  3. How can I avoid, certain words, from Spain? I plan on moving to a certain country in Central America, and we learned there are two words from car. “Coche y Carro”. When I asked a friend from the country they responded saying that carro is car, coche could be another word used for “pig”. I am learning the Latin American version, and sometimes I will be reading new content, learning new words, I will use those words in a sentence and I will be corrected on how it means something different.

It can be for English speakers learning US English, but accidentally learning new UK words, and using those in the US, it would be a little confusing. (Ex: The meanings of ‘‘Trolley’’)

Thanks

I can give an answer to your 3rd question: Firstly don’t worry too much about it. I live in Ecuador but I learnt my Spanish in Spain and with Spanish friends and teachers. Every country will have its own variations and you will quickly get used to their way of speaking when you are living there. For the time being just focus on improving your overall level of Spanish. However if you want to focus on the vocabulary and accent of a particular country, then seek out material from that country: podcasts, news articles, blogs whatever. Use language exchange sites to find people from that country. Search travellers/backpacker forums like lonelyplanet as well - these usually have conversations about the most common variations for that country. But I would say for Spanish at least: don’t worry about it! Spanish is so varied and everyone within the Spanish speaking world can understand each other, so they’ll understand you even if you use a few words they are not used to.

Hope this helps. Enjoy Spanish, it’s great!