Terhi is a 65-year-old student from Finland who has been studying Spanish for some years in an unconventional way: watching Latin American soap operas. Her story shows that we do not always have to learn a language gradually in chronological order, as there are also alternative ways of learning that provide an extra quality in the communicative component of real interactions.

Around the year 2016 Terhi bought an exercise machine at home and, in an effort to put together a routine at home to exercise, she began to accompany her exercises with especially Mexican and Colombian soap operas. At the beginning, she watched soap operas with autogenerated subtitles in English, which were not completely correct, but allowed her to broadly understand what she was trying to tell herself. Eventually, Terhi began to search for the repeated words, patterns, and phrases that he heard on a daily basis, which allowed her to naturally understand the interactions as he watched the soap operas.

However, he felt a desire to understand and, at the same time, curious to fully follow the story that was on his television, but he did not want to take traditional courses to learn the language. Therefore, she took a course at a vocational school in Finland. She entered this conversation course without speaking Spanish. This was coincidentally driven by a Mexican teacher, who told her at the end of the first class that she was not in the right class. Even so, she Terhi continued in that course, sitting and listening to other people, for about two years in which she did not speak, but she understood almost everything they said. Meanwhile, she watched soap operas at her house that helped her expand her vocabulary and continue to improve her listening. She then joined a course where she advanced very quickly thanks to her familiarity with the language and her advanced listening skills.

During his time watching soap operas, he understood a lot about the bodily expressiveness of the actors and actresses in those productions. Even though he did not fully understand the words, he could understand the context of an audiovisual situation that was very expressive, perhaps because of the natural corporality of Latinos. Once she realized that his understanding had increased, she could only continue to study and practice more: “It is very satisfying when you understand a complete sentence in Spanish, it gives you motivation, because you realize that you understand more and more, even though sometimes they speak very fast. It shows you that you need goals and challenges.” 

The first country in South America that Terhi visited was Mexico, there she realized that she was not afraid to speak to people on the street, because although her Spanish was not perfect, what she had learned about the most basic and daily social interactions it was very helpful. These natural interactions are those used when greeting, when ordering something in a store, when taking a bus and other situations: “I have learned much more in soap operas than cultural codes, it is something that I would not have been able to achieve in class”.

His trip to Colombia, which recently materialized at the beginning of 2023, was a dream he had since he first saw the soap opera “I am Betty, the ugly one” (1999), “her favourite". He especially liked this novel because he can identify with this woman who is a professional, with a good career, who is very good at her job, but it is a production that also talks about romance, about the human desire to be loved, although above everything speaks of the bases of love, respect and admiration. This with the plus that the development of the characters in the long term is very well developed, since they change during the plot and this is faithful to human reality, added to the performance of its actors: "It's amazing, like they weren't acting, it seemed so real."

On this 2023 trip, Terhi was able to appreciate in person the culture and social structures that were so different from Finland, for example, the very marked social classes, the life of people with money, in contrast to people who do not have many resources. . He was also able to verify that people were more open to talk and help, a scene that he had already seen in soap operas of people asking for help on the street and that he revived during his travels.

To the question of what would you recommend, from the process, to someone who is starting to learn Spanish? Terhi answers: “I would definitely recommend a person who is just starting out to find something interesting to listen to in Spanish. For 3 years I have listened to something in Spanish, every day, while I cook, while I exercise, now on YouTube there are channels of everything that you can listen to while you are doing different activities", perhaps as a way to combat the eternal "I don't have time" which normally protects the indecision to start and face new challenges.

More importantly, find an anchor between personal tastes and the language that is intended to be learned: documentaries, podcasts, music, books and many more resources are the perfect bridge for the necessary interaction in the development of skills. linguistics of a language.

Our student Terhi, with her impressive process, shows that the grammar and rules of a language are important, but the living language represented by cultural codes, expressions and daily interactions provide a great advantage when communicating real in real environments.