I was in the LTM (Language Training Mission) in the spring of 1975. Our district was selected to focus on Spanish language lessons, although it was a poorly designed curriculum, instead of memorizing the charlas (discussions). We only had to memorize charla C, the first vision, etc.

Once in Argentina, we continued these language lessons with our senior companions, about archaic and uninteresting topics, for about three months. Near the end of the training period, they did an evaluation and apparently dropped the experiment in its entirety. In fact, the discussions didn't come any easier and it still took me about three months before I really began to understand native speakers.

Learning Spanish and meeting Argentine people were the best parts of my mission. It definitely shaped my career path as I taught secondary Spanish and some English as a second language for thirty years in California and Utah. Between BYU and my teaching career, I also did a stint as an Army linguist in another language.

Before I retired, there was a major push in my school district to use TPRS (teaching proficiency through reading and story telling) as it had evolved from the earlier TPR (total physical response or using physical movement to react to verbal input). At that point, I was not a fan of completely abandoning the textbook, as hard core proponents of TPRS proposed.

I'm really curious what other folks here have experienced, whether successfully or otherwise with language learning programs, be it through the MTC, public education, online learning, etc.

Cuz X

I showed up at the LTM a couple of years later and went to a Scandinavian mission. We learned several discussions by heart, I believe we were supposed to learn the last two in country. There was a big focus on the C discussion (JS fairytales) and on the baptism challenge and interview discussions. I had not been out very long when Elder Didier (IIRC) visited and gave a talk on a new first discussion that used a piece of paper and drawing the story of Jesus, the apostacy, restoration, and why they should be babtized. I do believe it was many times more effective than the older first lessons. It did however depend on the missionaries having good conversational skills. I think that helped my language abilities a lot. Not that it mattered much, only three people I ever taught ended up getting baptized. The 70s in Scandinavia was not a good time to teach abstinence, tea-totaling, and giving 10% of your money to a church. I read and watch news, entertainment videos in my mission language and I can read and listen to Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, (Icelandish sort of) and converse with folks when I visit their countries. I have several exmo social media friends in those countries. Although I can understand the language, almost everyone I meet speaks much better English than I do in my mission language.

Do you tell them about Joseph Smith putting 2 rocks in a top hat and light coming off the rocks and reads the words and that this is considered translating?

How many doors did you have to knock on?

Do you tell people that native people in the Americas are jews who came from Israel?


~~~~iceman9090

iceman9090 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Do you tell them about Joseph Smith putting 2
> rocks in a top hat and light coming off the rocks
> and reads the words and that this is considered
> translating?


I was at the LTM for 4 months (one month visa waiting), to learn Spanish. We memorized all six discussions, and every night we'd be down in the food hall, pretending to meet with an investigator, and we'd all try desperately to get them to just talk to us about their mission experiences.

I told my grandson, when we got his call to Argentina, that an easy way to really get 'street' language down pat was to read comic books. Every week, for my entire stay in Mexico, I read that week's edition of "Los Supermachos". I stand by that method. But he told me, "We're not allowed to read anything that's not on the approved list..." My grandson, the maroon...

> How many doors did you have to knock on?
>

My first three months, between 80 and 100 a day. That Senior Companion went on to be an AP (assistant to the President: much ju-ju in that position.) and then he quit the church a few months after being released. It was a real pleasure hearing that!

> Do you tell people that native people in the
> Americas are jews who came from Israel?

Oh yeah!!! That was a HUGE selling point back then for, as we called them, the Indigenous People. "C'mon!", we told them, "Get baptized and win a prize! Maybe you'll turn White! You won't know unless you try it!"

And the next thing you know, EOD is wearing a grass skirt and dancing like a Hawaiian.

That's Guadalajara in a nutshell!

Can you still put on a Tapatio accent? I was there as an exchange student. When I want to have fun with Spanish-speaking friends, I can still drag out the Tapatio accent, where they stretch words from here to Harlem in a sing-songy voice to accentuate their meaning. Love it!!

I'm not sure if I fully understand the question, but I will give it a go. I served a stateside Spanish speaking mission in the early 90s. What I can say is that it was an intense language course about basic conversational Spanish. Full immersion of speaking, listening, reading and writing Spanish. For some elders (we had no sisters in our MTC district~ half of us went to Florida and the other half to Texas) it was a tremendous shock to conduct class entirely in Spanish. I had two years of Spanish in HS so I was already accustomed to it. There was was a lot of time spent conjugating verbs, learning a mixture of church vocabulary and places.

From 1988 to 2005? the church used 6 discussions (in rainbow colors) and the missionary guide to help missionaries manipulate people to get baptized. I was at a serious disadvantage because I was the first person to serve a mission in my family. I was clueless as to how missionaries really taught lessons. [There were sister missionaries assigned to my homeward and my ward sent only 1-2 missionaries in the prior 4 years before I went out. One elder was sent home for having sex with his companion~ he was gay. The other RM was a sister who was supposed to share her missionary experience at a youth fireside and she DIDN'T show up!!!] I was very naive as to what I had gotten myself into.

I kid you not, at the end of 3 weeks the rainbow discussions were given to us in our evening class. I think it was Wednesday. Aside from opening it up around 10pm (lights out at 10:30) I gave it no thought. The following morning, we found out that our MTC district had been challenged by an outgoing set of English speaking elders. They had been practicing the rainbow discussions from day one! I was the one chosen to teach an elder "portraying a difficult investigator".

I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I stuttered and misread the discussion. I had never read through the discussion because all we had been doing was shouting out "Yo como, Tu comes" etc. Let's just say that I did a poor job going through the first discussion about the plan of salvation. That pretty much sums up my experience; pretty crappy.

I remember that we had 3 classes a day.
Morning 9-11:30
Afternoon 2-5
Evening 6:30-9:45



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2020 06:11PM by messygoop.

I was in the "New" LTM, dedication in the fall of 1976. In fact I was there for the dedication.

After the first day, we had to "Live your language", which meant speaking Spanish 24/7. Ya, we didn't do that in our dorm rooms. In class, we spend about half the time learning Spanish, and half the time learning the "charlas" We learned the first vision and baptismal challenge, which included the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood.

I went into the LTM in the summer of 69. They brought in a Television and let us watch the moon landing. Never heard of what you went through. We had some basic Spanish classes but otherwise spent all of our time memorizing the 90 pages of discussions. I was always really good at memorizing and could recite the 90 pages of discussions by heart although I mostly had no idea what I was saying. So I went to Argentina South mission being able to say a lot of words, haha. "I had a lot of good words." Know what I'm saying there?

My first companion was leaving in a month and trunky. We went to see Funny Girl and Midnight Cowboy in B.A. Next companion was gung-ho and we spent a lot of time with a new member family who loved to have us to dinner and chat. The wife talked to me a lot and after about 2 1/2 months something clicked and I was actually conversing with her and able to just laugh and talk about anything. Finally the words were useful! That was in Campana which was a slice of heaven.

I got a degree in Spanish with a focus on writing at the Y along with my art degree. I have spoken Castellano at work my whole life although my vocabulary seems to be mainly work related and everyday conversation. Would not want to discuss rocket science.

Five years ago I decided I wanted to speak Italian. I have traveled to Italy a lot---favorite place--and wanted to be able to converse the next time I went. Got a set of CD's from Penton Overseas, listened to them everyday in my car for years. They were excellent. I got to the point I wanted to be with the language. Was easy as the hard part of understanding the repositioning of verbs and nouns and extensive conjugating was already understood by knowing Spanish. Listening to words and phrases and repeating. The words and phrases gradually got longer and more complicated. Very good course. I doubt with the way the world is now I'll ever get to Italy again. Very sad about that.


I loved Argentina--everything about it. Don't know what its like now, but then it was everything Mormon mountain Utah wasn't.

About learning the language. The MP's wife tried and tried learn Spanish and never got it.

I went directly to Finland from the UK in '66. We learned Finnish using a correspondence course run by the mission office. We were required to learn the missionary discussions word for word. That sixth discussion did not get a lot of use.

Haha. We rarely made it past the third discussion and I think I only got to sixth base twice in the two years. Luckily the films and projectors we lugged around bought us an extra visit or two.
Well, that would have been "unluckily" for our victims, I guess.

LTM c 1972. After memorizing part of the 1st discussion in the SLC mission home, even though I was going to Peru I was shipped off to Provo.


After a couple of weeks of Spanish grammar we went to a temple session to prepare us spiritually for the difficult task ahead of memorizing all 6 discussions.

I was a slow learner.
I had one really good instructor.

Not long before leaving he sat down beside me and said "just keep talking, you'll get it." And I did. I was never the best Spanish speaker in the mission buy I came to do OK.

In later life, I was living in a largely Spanish speaking neighborhood and spoke Spanish every chance I got. One day someone said to me, do you ever speak English. Lol. I was still following the instructor's advice.