Ironic Debate with ITalki tutor

To give context to my story. I am at 1955 hours (yes, I am still tracking). I started speaking practice at 890 hours in September 2023. I have close to 200 hours of conversation practice.

I get most of my conversation practice with my native Spanish speaking friends who I made during my time acquiring Spanish. However, I still like to have at least one italki class with my tutor who I consider a friend (we’ve been talking for an hour or two each week since September 2023). For various reasons my friends and my tutor were not available this week so I took a gamble on an unknown tutor, well unknown to me.

We started introducing ourselves and giving each other a little background etc. I explained that I just wanted to have conversation practice rather than a “ Spanish class”. Then I went on to explain how I “acquired” Spanish by mostly listening to Spanish and that I have never studied or had a traditional class. Well, things went south from there on in. At first he was polite but insisted that the comprehensible input method was not a good way to learn Spanish. I agreed saying that I don’t want to learn Spanish, I want to acquire it naturally. He went on to explain how I needed to understand how the language functioned, that I had to study and learn grammar and learn vocabulary etc. He cited studies and statistics and he almost had me convinced that I had been wasting my time these last two and a half years.

Then I realized that we were having this debate in Spanish. What was even more interesting is that earlier in the conversation he had even complemented me on my Spanish level, my pronunciation and fluency. That was before I told him how I got to this level.

When I pointed out to him that the fact that I was able to understand everything he was saying and that I was holding my own in the discussion was proof that the CI method was working. He seemed stunned by this for a second as though he too forgot we were talking in Spanish. But he recovered quickly and he said that I wouldn’t be able to get any better without explicitly learning grammar. He pointed out that I had seemed unsure of myself at times when I was talking and that there were some minor mistakes. Ironically, I noticed he too had made some minor errors and had corrected himself with feminine and masculine words a few times himself. That happens all the time to native speakers, especially when they are speaking really fast and not particularly paying attention to themselves when speaking. I was wise enough not to mention that to him though.

Anyway, we eventually agreed to disagree and the conversation moved on to less polemical topics like left wing versus right wing politics. Don’t worry, I am only joking. I’m dumb but not that dumb.

The irony was I was defending CI to someone who was adamant that it was a waste of time while having the debate totally in Spanish. Although he never admitted it, I think if he searches his soul, he will accept that I came out on top. I always wondered what that feeling was like 😂