Interviewing a Classmate, No English Allowed
New module. Real Conversation, Real People. We spent that whole last unit on tenses and why you picked the wrong one, and honestly you earned a break from grammar surgery. This module we're just talking to each other. No worksheets holding your hand.
Today: you interview a classmate. Fully in Spanish. No English allowed, not even to clarify, not even a little "wait how do you say."
I know that sounds mean. It's not mean. It's super useful, and here's why.
Why this, why now
You've got the past tenses now. You can tell a story. But stories you've practiced are different from a conversation that goes somewhere you didn't plan. An interview is unpredictable on purpose. Your classmate is going to answer something in a way you didn't expect, and you have to respond in real time, in Spanish, with no script.
That's the whole skill. Not vocabulary. Reacting.
Translating in your head is the enemy here more than anywhere else in this class. If you're building your question in English first and converting it, you're already three seconds behind, and now you're also trying to understand their answer while you're still translating your own question. It falls apart fast. The fix isn't "think faster." The fix is skipping the English step entirely, which only happens if you refuse to let yourself lean on it. So today, no English. Not as punishment. As training wheels off.
How this works at home, before class
You can practice the shape of this on your own even without a partner.
- Write five questions in Spanish you'd actually want to know the answer to. Not textbook questions. Real ones. "What's a food you hate that everyone else loves?" "What's the worst haircut you ever had?" Stuff with an actual answer attached to it.
- Say them out loud, not just on paper. Your mouth needs the practice, not just your eyes.
- Guess three ways the person might answer, and practice a follow-up question for each guess. This is the part people skip and it's the part that matters most. The follow-up is where real conversation lives, not the opening question.
- Time yourself asking all five without stopping. If you freeze on one, don't rewind to fix it. Keep going. That's the muscle you're building — recovering mid-sentence instead of restarting.
None of this requires an app or a class. It requires you talking out loud in your kitchen, possibly looking a little unhinged to anyone who walks by. Do it anyway.
In class
You'll get paired up, one person interviews, then you switch. I'll circulate and I will not rescue you the second you stall. If you're stuck, sit in the stuck for a second before you look at me. The struggle is genuinely where the learning happens, I'm not just saying that to sound wise.
If your partner says something you don't fully understand, you're allowed to ask them to repeat it, slower, in Spanish. "¿Puedes repetir, más despacio?" is a completely legitimate move and I want you using it instead of switching to English. Asking someone to slow down is not the same as giving up.
A confession about systems that don't hold
I reorganized my garage back in January. Got real proud of myself, labeled the bins, gave the hiking gear an actual system, felt like a whole different person. By March I'd changed that system twice trying to improve it, and now nobody in my house, including me, can find the trekking poles. My kids have stopped even asking where they are. They just assume the garage has swallowed them.
I bring this up because your first attempt at "no English allowed" is going to feel like my garage. You'll set up a plan — I'll ask this, then this — and the second the conversation goes off script, the whole system falls apart and you can't find your trekking poles either, so to speak. That's fine. That's expected. You don't need a system that survives contact with a real human. You need to be okay rebuilding it mid-sentence, every single time. Nobody's system survives contact. Mine sure didn't.
What not to worry about
Accent, gender agreement you fumble, a verb tense you grab that's not quite right. None of that is the point today. The point is staying in Spanish the whole time even when it's clunky. If you catch yourself about to say an English word because it's faster, swallow it and describe your way around it in Spanish instead. That skill — talking around a word you don't have — is worth more than the word itself.
Before next time
Think of one question nobody's ever asked you that you'd actually want to answer. Bring it in Spanish. We'll use real ones next time instead of the ones I hand out. 💛