I’m getting started on the L140 Open University course, one of the suggestions is that students arrange some conversation practice with native Spanish speakers. No problem you might think. I put out lots of feelers but so far I haven’t found anyone to practice with, so I started looking for conversation classes.
According to Wikipedia, Spanish is the 2nd most widely spoken language in the world. You wouldn’t think so if you lived in Kent. I have been trying unsuccessfully, to find a Spanish conversation class for the past few days, today I got through to a very helpful person at KAE (Kent Adult Education) who looked through their database on my behalf and confirmed what I thought – there are currently no Spanish conversation classes run by KAE in the entire county. I knew that foreign languages were having a hard time but I didn’t realise just how bad things were.
Maybe my comments on KAE were more apocryphal than I realised at the time (http://thirdlanguage.co.uk/adult-education/local-authority-adult-education-classes/ ), perhaps the bureaucracy has worn down the teachers and the hard-to-navigate website has put off enough potential students so the classes have withered and died.
I haven’t given up yet, there is a possible lead I am following. I will write more when I know more.