The True Reason why we learn Faster when living abroad!
The Reality of Living Abroad!
Hi! My name is Cesar, I'm 27 years old and I've been teaching Spanish for more than 8 years.
I'm from Spain and almost three years ago I decided to move to USA so I could live an adventure abroad. "It will be fun! I have studied english for eleven years! I'll be fine!" I thought.
The truth is that, even with my confidence and those 11 years studying english, from school to college, no matter for how long you study any language, living abroad will show you what you can do with those eleven years of classes, learning grammar, vocabulary and repetition, and it won't be anything you'd like me to write about.
My english is not perfect, but I could undoubtedly say that I learned more those three years living in USA than the more than eleven years taking courses in Spain, memorizing rules and vocabulary. How is that possible?
The Real "Secret"!
Before living abroad, I taught Spanish the way I was learning english: repetition, grammar, vocabulary, memorizing rules, etc. But living abroad opened my eyes!
The reason why we learn more and faster when we live abroad is just because "we are not focused on learning"! I mean, your focus is on buying some food, your focus is on being able to explain your results to your boss, it's on greeting a customer, asking for directions, negotiating with the car dealer, buying a bus ticket, etc.
Your goal is not to learn english, Spanish or Chinese, it's just to do something else and, in order to do it, you need the language as a bridge to arrive from point A to point B. When your goal is to do something else and the only route or tool is the language, you simply can't help it! You'll learn it! And you'll do it quick!
That's the real reason why we learn so much when we live abroad than when memorizing slides from a presentation.
I learned this the hard way, like thousands of people before me and thousands more after I did.
So I decided to change the way I teach Spanish and I took it to a whole new level. I'm Economist and Life Coach, so I decided to go one step further!
Now I "not only teach spanish" but something else. I teach Life improving techniques and Business skills to my students, so they learn at the same time useful things for their lives and jobs or businesses in a full Spanish environment.
Because, when your focus is not on learning "a" language but on learning "with" the language, you actually "learn" the language.
Cesar Rull
Economist, Life Coach and Business Spanish teacher in Verbling.
January 3, 2017
