Need some ideas...work related project...management tasked us with a project to learn Spanish. So far, project is failing miserably. Read on...
We support several of our company's products in a worldwide theater, but only English speaking support. We have a heavy customer base in South America that we wish to support as well, language barrier being the only obstacle to our assisting them. Management's idea was to get us Rosetta stone (for now, levels 1-3) and mandate that employees complete the levels and courses. Eventual goal is to begin supporting South American customers.
This has been going on for nearly 10 months and so far I'm the only guy who has completed the Spanish training. I am not Hispanic, but of Italian origins so Spanish is not a hard language to pick up on. I also have plenty of experience in conversational Spanish, having visited Spanish speaking countries and I grew up in Northern NJ where there are plenty of opportunities to speak Spanish in everyday situations. I think I am the only one in our group here with this level of Spanish exposure. Others here are picking up the language from scratch.
So far I am seeing a failure of the group here to pick up any Spanish. Nobody has completed any training or even made significant progress. I tried to converse with some of our staff and I'm seeing that people here are still failing to grasp even the most rudimentary items such as verb conjugation, pronunciation and even vocabulary that is similar to English.
So far I've identified the following issues:
-Lack of dedicated environment where learning Spanish is the sole thing tasked to the employee. We are asked to complete Rosetta Stone training in a fast paced environment with plenty of distractions, plenty of other higher priority projects thrown our way, and then only in spare time, do Spanish training.
-Lack of a defined learning schedule. In middle and high school, we had a foreign language class every day. Which drilled it into our minds. Here, the training is only done during free time, which can be days to weeks apart. There is no consistency to the training schedule.
-Reliance on only one tool (i.e. Rosetta Stone) RS is good at what it does and it gives u a foundation and a beginning path. I highly doubt one can become fluent with RS unless one repeats and repeats the lessons already completed. Repetition is the key (IMHO) to learning a new language.
-Immersion: We also need a Spanish speaker to come in here and converse with us. It is so easy to switch back to English when you have trouble thinking of a word or sentence in Spanish, one needs to be immersed in the language and forced to use it.
Even myself, who feels reasonably comfortable speaking Spanish, saw that even the levels 1-3 were hard enough to make me pause, reflect on the lesson and even take some notes. I'm not 100% fluent but know plenty enough to get around and function if I had to speak Spanish in everyday situations.
I think its folly to give RS to staff and then have them train under these conditions with the expectation of supporting Spanish speaking customers. We are no where close to any level of fluency. If I were one of these South American customers, I would think our staff was uneducated and not capable of speaking proper Spanish, much less supporting complex pieces of equipment that they have paid good $$$ for.
I'm preparing a report intended for management outlining these failures and thought I should share with the forum what I've found. Has anyone else experienced language training in a corporate environment? Any suggestions on how it could/should be done?
We support several of our company's products in a worldwide theater, but only English speaking support. We have a heavy customer base in South America that we wish to support as well, language barrier being the only obstacle to our assisting them. Management's idea was to get us Rosetta stone (for now, levels 1-3) and mandate that employees complete the levels and courses. Eventual goal is to begin supporting South American customers.
This has been going on for nearly 10 months and so far I'm the only guy who has completed the Spanish training. I am not Hispanic, but of Italian origins so Spanish is not a hard language to pick up on. I also have plenty of experience in conversational Spanish, having visited Spanish speaking countries and I grew up in Northern NJ where there are plenty of opportunities to speak Spanish in everyday situations. I think I am the only one in our group here with this level of Spanish exposure. Others here are picking up the language from scratch.
So far I am seeing a failure of the group here to pick up any Spanish. Nobody has completed any training or even made significant progress. I tried to converse with some of our staff and I'm seeing that people here are still failing to grasp even the most rudimentary items such as verb conjugation, pronunciation and even vocabulary that is similar to English.
So far I've identified the following issues:
-Lack of dedicated environment where learning Spanish is the sole thing tasked to the employee. We are asked to complete Rosetta Stone training in a fast paced environment with plenty of distractions, plenty of other higher priority projects thrown our way, and then only in spare time, do Spanish training.
-Lack of a defined learning schedule. In middle and high school, we had a foreign language class every day. Which drilled it into our minds. Here, the training is only done during free time, which can be days to weeks apart. There is no consistency to the training schedule.
-Reliance on only one tool (i.e. Rosetta Stone) RS is good at what it does and it gives u a foundation and a beginning path. I highly doubt one can become fluent with RS unless one repeats and repeats the lessons already completed. Repetition is the key (IMHO) to learning a new language.
-Immersion: We also need a Spanish speaker to come in here and converse with us. It is so easy to switch back to English when you have trouble thinking of a word or sentence in Spanish, one needs to be immersed in the language and forced to use it.
Even myself, who feels reasonably comfortable speaking Spanish, saw that even the levels 1-3 were hard enough to make me pause, reflect on the lesson and even take some notes. I'm not 100% fluent but know plenty enough to get around and function if I had to speak Spanish in everyday situations.
I think its folly to give RS to staff and then have them train under these conditions with the expectation of supporting Spanish speaking customers. We are no where close to any level of fluency. If I were one of these South American customers, I would think our staff was uneducated and not capable of speaking proper Spanish, much less supporting complex pieces of equipment that they have paid good $$$ for.
I'm preparing a report intended for management outlining these failures and thought I should share with the forum what I've found. Has anyone else experienced language training in a corporate environment? Any suggestions on how it could/should be done?
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