Back to the grind

So, we’re back to the grind after the short-lived exam season. I will comment on the exams in another post. Today I've decided to share a clip that you may find motivational. It’s the case of a fellow Spaniard whose English was not very good at first but got to be truly proficient. I’m talking about Penélope Cruz.

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I may have mentioned in the classroom that I once met her in real life. It happened when I was living in Berlin and she presented one of her movies at the film festival. To cut a long story short, she stayed at the hotel where I was working and a series of random events resulted in me being in charge of her baggage. So it turned out that I had to talk to her (very briefly on three different occasions. The second time he did not seem no remember that I had introduced myself to her the day before basically to let her know that I was the only Spanish-speaking person in the hotel. Anyhow, that second time she addressed me in English. I chose to play along and, of course, spoke to her in my best English. Hers was a poor example of what we teachers call a weak intermediate learner. 

It was the late 90s and Penélope was about to make her big career move, i. e. try her luck in Hollywood. A dialect coach had already promised her that she would have a "native accent" in about five years. Needless to say that was a big fat lie that Penélope bought into. Of course, twenty-five years later she is far from sounding like a native but Americans appear to have a soft spot for her accent (and Sofia Vergara’s). So Penélope does NOT sound native. In fact she retains an obviously Spanish accent but the good news is that she is really fluent, can be quite idiomatic, her vocabulary is accurate and finds to problems to communicate in natural conversations. That means that she made an impressive transition: from struggling learner to versatile sophisticate. That said, I’m not a fan of hers at all. Whenever I see her in an English-speaking role I still sense that she doesn’t feel at ease but I thought that you may want to think about her progress.

The way I see it she represents what many Spanish learners of English aspire to. So, please, take four minutes of your time, watch this little clip and check out for yourselves. what a good speaker of English sounds like. She does make one mistake (I was doing some castings) but displays pretty specific expressions (your nails fall off) and uses some idiomatic phrases (I had to rethink the whole thing). She is extremely natural and just sounds great. Just don't forget. If she can, you can.