Many Adults Finding Good Reason to Study Spanish

Sharon Westcott laughs now, remembering how she pronounced Spanish words just after she had migrated to Ventura County from Minnesota in 1989.

“I could not even pronounce conejo,” she said. The word--it means “rabbit,”--came out sounding more like “Connie Jo.”

“I just didn’t have any background at all in hearing Spanish words or seeing them written down. I kept seeing that word conejo whenever I’d drive to The Oaks mall, which I could pronounce. “

Westcott, a psychiatric social worker for Ventura County Behavioral Health, has come a long way since her “Connie Jo” days.

Now in her second semester of Spanish classes with instructor Maricarmen Ohara at Ventura College, Westcott can use un poco de Espanol on the job, and plans to take more classes, notwithstanding those frustrating Spanish verb tenses.

She is just one of thousands of Ventura County adults who have gone back to school to learn California’s second-most-common language in their spare time. They do it to get ahead in their jobs, to converse with colleagues and family members, to better understand California culture and to enrich their travels.

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“I work with many Spanish-speaking and bilingual clients, so I think this will help me be more effective,” Westcott said while studying a colorful chart of fruits and their Spanish names in her afternoon class.

Ohara said Westcott fits a common profile.

“Overwhelmingly, the No. 1 reason is jobs--people feel they’ll be better qualified if they’re bilingual. Or they think Spanish will enhance their performance on the job.”

After jobs and financial rewards, reasons for enrolling vary widely.

“Family . . . people get into relationships with boyfriends or girlfriends. I have many couples taking the class together. And this semester, I have two young women from Santa Paula who told me, ‘Because our parents didn’t teach us. We want to understand our roots better.’ ”

Even as a language requirement in school, “It has almost displaced all other languages. And, of course, people want to travel to Mexico or Latin America, or converse with Spanish speakers here in Ventura County.”

Unlike high school or even college students studying the language, older people who take Spanish classes have different motivations, said Susana Martz, who teaches Spanish through the city of Ventura’s adult education program: They are rarely interested in academic credit, for instance.

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Martz thinks her mostly senior-citizen-age students’ biggest language hurdle is “when they Anglicize the language. Accents fall in different places in Spanish, and when seniors see written words, they give them an American English accent.”

But Martz thinks seniors also can make the best students: “When they take on learning a foreign language, they want to do it right. Better than right.”

She echoes Ohara in her convictions about the best way to learn Spanish as an adult: Go for the whole enchilada.

“Take a college class, an adult ed class, private lessons or go to the senior center class. Then listen to Spanish-language radio, watch Channel 34, check out a Berlitz-type cassette from the library. . . . Go to movies with subtitles, read signs, say ‘hello’ and ‘thanks’ in Spanish to someone.

“And go to the bilingual Toastmasters club, Los Amigos, in Oxnard or the swap meet at Ventura College on Saturdays to learn fruits and vegetables.”

Above all, recommends Martz, “combine a vacation in Mexico with intensive language classes. That’s the best way to get up to speed.” And the most fun, she adds as an aside. Martz, from Atlanta, has done all of the above.

Ohara points out that “arrogance is more of a problem than age” in learning any foreign language.

“Arrogant people should not attempt to learn a foreign language. This is an area that will make them feel diminished. They will also--erroneously--think the teacher is challenging their cleverness or intelligence. Acquiring a second language is comparable to babies learning to speak.”

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In fact, she believes, a willingness to sound downright foolish enhances learning any language. In other words, braving it out to say “I like fruit” in Spanish a dozen times to a dozen other foolish-sounding students in class is the best teacher.

“Students need to talk Spanish rather than talk about Spanish.”

Also, she agrees that while it may be easier for young people to absorb pronunciation, “any person can learn Spanish, or any language, at any age, if that is their goal. Just don’t quit.”