Today there is a global trend to work in a different city or country, either to experience life in a different place or to get to know the culture of another place and be able to travel while fulfilling the necessary work obligations.

En Nueva LenguaWe receive many students who want to learn Spanish for their travels, their families or just for fun, but also many others who need to learn Spanish in order to work in Latin America and grow professionally in their careers. One of those cases is that of Oliver, a 25-year-old management consultant, who decided to transfer his job from his hometown, London, to Bogotá, with the aim of getting to know a new city with a different culture, the one he had heard about. that “people were great and friendly”, also assuming the challenge of learning a new language in a new continent for him.

Oliver recently finished his course at Nueva Lengua and states: “I wanted to learn the language in Bogotá because my company's office is here, but also because of its accent, since it is one of the best in Latin America due to its clarity and ease of learning. I also thought about going to Buenos Aires, in Argentina, but the economic situation and the location didn't help, because in my company we needed an office further north in Latin America with ease to travel to other cities in this part of the continent, that's why I chose Bogotá ”. His decision to live here before starting work allowed her to become familiar with the Bogota context and his language enough to use it in a professional setting.

She moved here a little over 6 months ago, at that time, she studied Spanish for two weeks at another school and decided to change to try different options, so she came to Nueva Lengua and decided to stay for 2 and a half months: “I especially liked the teachers, the school environment which is very encouraging with the students for our learning and there are many great extracurricular activities like museum visits, little trips and especially the dance with Professor Isaac”. Additionally, he learned new words and expressions that he can now use with his Colombian colleagues in his office, such as “palanca” or “ser un 0 a la izquierda”.

Oliver also referred to his experience with Spanish compared to his experience learning Arabic in Jordan, stating that “It's similar to going into an environment where you feel very uncertain and there's a lot of ambiguity. You need to embrace the ambiguity and accept that it is impossible to express yourself in the same way as in your first language, but you must set goals and you will move forward.” These challenges are related to motivation, which can come from your work but you always need it to be grounded in your immediate environment, accepting the degrees of difficulty, but also the beauty of the new opportunities.

Likewise, having studied in Bogotá, in a context of complete immersion, Oliver affirms that learning a language in an environment that forces you to speak it is a more useful experience than studying remotely or only for a few hours a day, in a place where at close your computer you don't use the language anymore: “When you are in person at a school you are with other people, it is exciting, it is fun and the motivation grows because you have the need to express yourself, that is the motivation you need”. He affirms that this motivation produced by the social and human need to communicate is the most organic and important when learning a language and this, in turn, allows the speed of learning to be faster.

Likewise, during his formal learning process of Spanish, Oliver discovered different autonomous learning resources that he recommends for people who are starting this journey: “I believe that all people need to find their own way of learning, but, in my case, I used a frequency dictionary in Spanish to make my studies more efficient and learn many of the most common words in Spanish by practicing in my app “Anki”. After learning vocabulary I have started a focus on my ear and I am using “News in Slow Spanish””. Also, he recommends creating a habit of listening to podcasts, which has helped him during these weeks in which he started his job and encountered the challenge of listening in real time and speed that a professional Spanish context brings with it.

Finally, if our "ex-student" could define his relationship with Spanish in one sentence, it would be: "everything went like silk", referring to the naturalness and spontaneity with which he has undertaken this journey, as well as the pleasant surprise with which every day and every week, it feels a little easier and you manage to understand much more.