Chapter 19: Keep it Simple, Stupid

Peering at us through the Skype screen, bookcase behind his right shoulder, our new teacher Hernán reminds me of a bespectacled Ralph Fiennes — gentle and cerebral, kind but with a touch of remove. We explain our situation with the fast-approaching DELE A2 exam to maestro Hernán in our faltering Spanish. Hernán takes seriously what we have to say about Trump, and gets right down to business. He screen-shares our textbook, which is divided into six units: work; people and housing; shopping and dining out; health, hygiene and diet; studies and culture; and hobbies, trips, and means of communication.

Hernán is not going to leave anything to chance. And he does not like our chances. He instructs us to do listening practice exams every day. We are not to miss a day between now and the exam. We must practice excerpts from news programs, radio ads, answering machine messages, and conversations between two people.

They are not easy.

I’ve already had four months to practice this with our kitchen radio. But when I turn it on, I still hear: “¡Buenos días! AHORAVAMOSESCHUCHARDEUNAUTORQUEGANÓUN PREMIODELITERATUREELAÑOPASADO.”

To make matters worse, answering some of the DELE exam questions about the recorded conversations requires selecting a photo that purports to depict what took place. These pictures are not worth a thousand words. So, for example, if you made out that María told José that she was just visiting her daughter who had a baby, and you chose the photo of a tall white building that looked like a hospital for the “location of conversation” — like I did — you would be wrong. The correct photo is a nondescript block of apartments; you should have been alert to the clues that the acquaintances bumped into each other on the street. Hernán calls these trampas — traps.

Not a class goes by when Hernán doesn’t scrunch his mouth a bit before warning us about Las Trampas, and not one of these times goes by when I don’t think Trump-a and shoot Kate a worried look.

In keeping with her customary practice, Kate scours the internet — this time, looking for YouTube videos and podcasts that can help us with our Spanish. She finds three talented Spanish teachers. One is an American whose tagline is “learn Spanish from somebody who speaks your language.” And he does speak my language: he failed high school Spanish. The second is a Andalusian university professor who speaks entirely in slow, repetitious Spanish while doing ridiculous things so that his viewers feel less ridiculous themselves. This teacher warns against overstudying so as not go crazy. But he isn’t teaching directly to the DELE A2 exam, so we do go crazy — and Kate keeps looking.

She discovers podcastsinspanish.org, the brainchild of two DELE examiners, Bea and Reyes, who hold short conversations about everyday things — making a cake, throwing a party, going to the beach, and the pros and cons of WhatsApp. Sometimes Bea interviews her very small child, Amanda, which is both adorable and about our speed. Bea and Reyes become a daily fixture in our lives. We commit ourselves so much to these podcasts that we start referring to these two women as if we know them. “Bea would say this,” and “Reyes would say that,” we’d remark to each other while shopping. Despite our newly-forged imaginary friendship, we have no idea what Bea and Reyes even look like; they are wizards behind a studio curtain.

Meanwhile, our real teacher, Hernán, teaches us business correspondence etiquette in Spain and drills us on writing mock restaurant reviews, both the sort of thing that may be on the DELE exam. While I think of the Skype screen as a barrier of sorts, Hernán perceptively asks us on several occasions, “¿Estáis deprimidas?” (“Are you depressed?”). But he pushes us forward in a way that is at once calm and demanding. When he wants us to remember a word or a grammatical point, he raises his index finger and calls out “¡Ficha!” — meaning, this is important and you’d better make a flash card! We each hold up a file card to our respective screen cameras to show him that we are obedient students.

But soon we are buried in fichas, so I start using an app called Anki to create electronic flashcards. Ignoring the advice of the Andalusian YouTube instructor not to overstudy, I quickly amass over 11,000 digital flash cards.

Back in class, Hernán begin to prepare us for the extemporaneous speaking part of the exam by giving me three minutes to discuss my favorite book. I drone on for eight.

After class, Kate walks to the kitchen blackboard and writes:

LISTEN

THINK

TEST TRICKS

LESS IS MORE

She then writes “KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid.” on a pink Post-it note and affixes it to my computer.

Then she says, “If I knew half the vocabulary you know, I wouldn’t be worried about passing this exam. But you go on and on, needlessly introducing so many errors that they are going to deduct points. Did you see Hernán on the screen, or were you too busy showing off? He looked positively stricken. If you keep this up, you’re not going to pass this test, Kay.”

I write on a yellow Post-it note, “It’s not what you know; it’s what you can do.” My vocabulary memorization is like a parlor trick. But what good is that if I can’t use the words to form fluid sentences?

At that point I should have said to Kate, “Thank you. You’re right.” After all, she was only trying to rescue me yet again.

Instead, I accused Kate of being obsessive compulsive and told her that she reminded me of childhood classmates who’d complain that they were going to fail and then earned a perfect score.

“I am going to do better than you, but I shouldn’t — THAT is my point,” said Kate.

I decide that I will apologize to Kate . . . someday. But for now I suggest that we supplement our classes with additional tutoring that focuses solely on the oral part of the exam. We contact our former teacher Irene, now busy with a demanding new job, who unhesitantly agrees to Zoom with us an hour each evening as soon as she finishes her long workday.

But, despite having two professional tutors, I’m still struggling. One day, while haltingly describing my favorite kind of vacation, Irene says, “Kat-ryn, you don’t have to tell the truth. This is a language test, not a topic test.” I feel liberated hearing this, but I am embarrassed that I didn’t realize it on my own.

After two more weeks of fifteen-hour study days, our last day of class with Hernán finally arrives. He smiles and says, “I think you are both going to pass.” Perhaps thinking of me, he adds, “If you don’t, it will be so much easier to pass on the second try.”

That same evening, at the end of our last class with Irene, she says, “I really think you are both ready. I really think you are going to pass.”

And with that, we futilely resolved to get some sleep.

©2021 Kay Diaz