By Adriana L. Jacklin , San Diego, California

About a year ago I retired to a little town in California, just south of San Diego. Shortly after the move, I realized I had a problem. Many of my neighbors and local business people spoke Spanish as their primary language. Since I didn't speak any Spanish, I often had problems communicating.

I wasn't sure how I should go about learning Spanish. I tried some audio tapes, but they didn't help much. At my age I didn't want to go to a college class. I was thinking about online lessons when I found out about private Spanish tutor with Skype.

For the technologically challenged (like me), Skype is a kind of video-conferencing you can use on your computer. Its like online lessons, but more personal. I was a little anxious at first, both about using the program and about talking to a perfect stranger, but the program was easy to use and Catalina, my private Spanish teacher, was a delight.

Catalina and I would get together twice a week and she was very patient with me. Since I could see and hear her, it was easier to learn the language. I could see how her mouth moved when she was forming the words, and I could mimic her. It helped my pronunciation a lot. Online lessons don't give you the one on one attention you receive from a dedicated language teacher. It's a lot more personal.

She worked with me on both oral an written exercises and corrected my mistakes. Since it was just the two of us, I didn't feel self conscious, as I would have if I'd been in a college classroom . I would read in Spanish, and when I made mistakes, she would correct me, but I never felt embarrassed.

As I got more proficient, Catalina and I would talk in Spanish. She and I both love to knit and we swapped some knitting patterns. I felt like she was more than my teacher, she was my friend. I really looked forward to our lessons. When my husband saw how well I was communicating with our neighbors, he decided to try learning Spanish,too. He used the same company as me, but was assigned a different tutor. He enjoyed his lessons almost as much as I enjoyed mine, and now we can practice and keep our skills sharp by having conversations in Spanish. Learning Spanish with a private teacher using our own computers was a great experience for us both. I really recommend this type of one on one learning. We enjoyed it. The company my husband and I used was NuLengua. We were really happy with them and they even offered us a free trial. My husband liked his tutor as much as I like Catalina. The cost was really reasonable, I really had thought it would be a lot more expensive.

If you are thinking about learning Spanish, I recommend you try a Spanish tutor with Skype. Like me, you can learn Spanish with out leaving home. If I had known how easy it was, I would have done it years ago.


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