Hey everyone, hope all is well.
I have been in Madrid now for 2 weeks. I go a language school from Monday-Friday from 0900-1300 and I live in a shared flat with people from all-over the world. I find myself frustrated though as I don’t feel my Spanish is improving really that much at all, even though I’m actually in the country itself.
I sort of know why this is. In the beginning when I moved in, there was a guy who was just finishing the course at the language school and he could speak Spanish very well and I spoke only Spanish with him, as even if I wanted to speak English with him, he couldn’t really speak English. I felt my Spanish improving even in the first two days. I started being able to speak faster and faster without having to think about it because I was talking to this guy pretty much all the time. Then he left and currently in my flat there are four French people (only two of whom can speak a very very little Spanish) a dutch person and a german who can speak only maybe a bit more Spanish than the French people. These days I find myself not speaking Spanish at all in the flat because everyone just wants to speak English to make things easier…this hugely frustrates me to the point where I start to feel like i’m wasting my time here. It annoys me it’s gone from speaking Spanish every day with this guy…talking about philosophy, religion and politics with him in Spanish…to just speaking English because no-one else actually can/seems to want to speak Spanish. Of course the lessons at the school are all in Spanish but irrelevant to the fact I feel like i’m in class too low for my level, there is no real complex discussion with which ones level could develop…it’s pretty much all just talking about grammar in Spanish. It’s now gotten to the point where I feel like I speak so little Spanish every day that my level is getting worse. The only Spanish I have spoken in the last few days (bar at “school” ) has been small chat in shops whilst purchasing.
And so, I was wondering if anyone had any advice they could give me about how to actually try and immerse myself in Spanish language without just having to be stuck in my room all day listening to audio in which case I may aswell have stayed in Scotland.