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Teaching English in Spain can be done. Patrick Riley explores how he was teaching English in Madrid and the chitchat became his lessons in teaching English TEFL

I was standing at a gas-station coffee bar in middle-of-nowhere Spain, drinking a peppermint tea and munching a bag of Lay’s Mediterraneo chips. Next to me stood an older Spanish fellow smoking Ducati cigarettes and sipping forlornly from an espresso. It was a chilly November day, and I mentioned this to him. He agreed. We continued on in silence. There would be nothing notable about such an exchange but for the fact that I was on my way via a group bus to participate in an Teaching English in Madrid opportunity called Pueblo Ingles. And the man standing next to me at the rest stop was one of the Spanish participants. I was going to have to make conversation with him and more than 20 other Spaniards around the clock for the next week. I was off, it seemed, to a slow start.

Pueblo Ingles offers teaching English in Spain for travelers and Spanish folk an intensive period of English study without leaving the comfort of their own country. Most participants are sent by their employers, often multinational corporations that need bilingual staff and pay the almost 2,000 euros tuition. More than 2,000 Spaniards and Anglophones took part last year.

For the past five years, Vaughan Systems founded by longtime U.S. expat Richard Vaughan has been running this camera-free reality show featuring a couple dozen Spaniards living with about as many “Anglos” for a week, forced to speak only English.

For the Anglo participants, it’s quite a deal: Any native English speaker can go to one of the three locations in rural Spain, live there for a week, eat three square meals a day, and not pay a dime all in exchange for teaching English to the Spaniards. A free holiday, right? Well, not according to the Pueblo Ingles press packet: “We prefer that the word ‘FREE HOLIDAY’ is not used in articles as it often causes misperceptions about the program.” True, you have to be dedicated to their schedule and there’s not a tremendous amount of open time. It may be free and in a foreign country, but that doesn’t mean it’s a free vacation.

Still, it is part getaway, part fraternity and a true alternate reality.

Movin’ Right Along
I signed on for “Dream Team 157” (the 157th program) last November at the Pueblo Ingles location near La Alberca, a small village south of the student of Salamanca. Home base was a new hotel complex of bungalows and a main restaurant/reception building. This is where the routine that ruled my life for the week got underway.

In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray woke up to Sonny and Cher. At Puebla Ingles, it was a droning alarm-style phone (reminiscent of Cher’s vocoder work) that went off in the living room of my duplex. Upstairs lived my Spanish housemate every Anglo has one, kind of like an R2 unit but not always so easy to communicate with. Truth be told, mine, Manuel-Angel, could usually get his point across, if less smoothly than he would have preferred.

From that point on each day was more or less the same: A series of 50-minute one-on-one stretches of conversation with a rotating cast of Spaniards walking outside or sitting inside over coffee and discussing everything from Almodavar to Spanish construction-industry loopholes. There were also, of course, the meals (conversation required there, too) and, bless ‘em, a siesta or a stroll to the local historic village. Later in the day, there were group activities: games, presentations or skits. Dinner was at 9, followed by optional time at the bar.

If the first few one-on-one sessions were a bit stiff for all involved, the small talk loosened up as everyone got used to one another. The guy from the gas station? We were soon chatting like buddies or at least friendly colleagues as he told me about his rise and (self-inflicted) fall in the computer sales world: a great cautionary stay-out-of-the-fast-lane tale to rival anything Cosby or Moyers could cough up on the graduation pulpit.

Most of the Anglos relished the opportunity to chat with these captive Europeans, often pulling out maps and brochures and other conversation aids. The majority of them were middle-American retirees; the youngest other than myself was 34 but even she worked at a retirement home. But these weren’t your typical mallwalkers, and they’d apparently worn out some guidebooks in their day. There was a 73-year-old ice skater, a man who helped found the Peace Corps, and a surfer who’d spent his career with the Florida Marine Patrol. One NASA retiree had this to say about what he does now: “I don’t do anything and I don’t start that till 10 o’clock.”

Two Vaughan employees led the proceedings: Jaime, an affable Spanish guy who attended Pueblo Ingles as a participant about a dozen times before landing the job. He was still working on his English, but he had gained the essential thing: confidence. He set up the one-on-ones and an even more linguistically challenging scenario called “the conference call” to work on speakerphone comprehension. The other company man, an Irishman named Davy with a side gig as a tour guide (walkspain.com) had a resume of military work in Africa and plenty of tales of NGO corruption. He ran a tight ship of group activities such as speeches, skits, and songs, and also oversaw a mystical Celtic drinking ceremony so full of incantations and weirdness that he felt it necessary to announce ahead of time it was “not a black mass.” The Spaniards, who all spoke at least some English, skewed younger than the Anglos and never failed to outlast them when the patcharan (a Basque liqueur) and Carlos III brandy flowed freely (well, you had to pay for it) at the bar. There were snowball fights and Spanish songs and drunken renditions of Elvis Presley standards and the Canadian national anthem.

Still, tales abounded of friskier past sessions, like the one with the two Spanish chicas who joined an Anglo girl “on a mission to bed every man in the place.” My November group was more subdued, and at least one married Spanish fellow expressed relief at not finding “California blondies” staring at him from across the table. Indeed, a more serious streak ran through the group I was in, as some couldn’t help but get their pantalones in a twist about whether it was all just a big waste of time.

Fight the Power
Vaughan started in the late ‘70s with English classes in his own, apparently anti-TEFL method, and slowly built a small empire. There’s even a well-known Vaughan radio station in Madrid. He only began the full-immersion thing in 2001, when an opportunity arose to open shop in an abandoned medieval village. It quickly took off (from 4 programs and 128 participants to 49 programs in 2004 with 1,960 participants. Vaughan has added two more locations in Spain, with another being piloted in Tuscany.

The program is based on the idea that if you’re immersed in a language you can’t help but learn it. Not a groundbreaking concept, but most language institutes muck it up with classes and that sort of thing. Not here. No grammar quibbles, no vocab lists. We Anglos were even told to go light on correcting verbal mistakes. Participants were told there would a “miracle” moment when things would start to click. It was working for me: By day six, some of the Spaniards were appearing as extras in my dreams so it would have been understandable if English was starting to seep into their heads.

Do the Spaniards benefit from the chitchat? Only their subconsciouses know for sure, though that doesn’t stop them from having heated conversations about it. In English, of course.

The Tuesday night four days in turned out to be the evening of the Spaniards’ discontent. An argument broke out in bungalow four, and I was witness to the cacophony. Some Spaniards were defending the Vaughan system, others slamming it for its lack of feedback. My housemate was the leader of the resistance, saying he wanted to know how he was doing, but no one was giving him an idea or correcting him when he made mistakes (he was making a steady stream of them but seemingly improving his gift of gab). Yet we Anglos had been specifically told to let the talk flow for good reason pausing every few words to point out a mistake does not a good conversation make. This was the Vaughan way one of the fundamental principles underlying Pueblo Ingles.

Except that Vaughan himself didn’t seem to agree with it.

Vaughan Troppo
I had just come back from a stroll with one of my assigned Spaniards. It had been a typical one-on-one session pleasant give-and-take, light on correction. We walked into the lobby, where a list on an easel supplies the name of your next “victim.” But amid the mingling word mavens stood a stranger. Well-dressed, hair slicked back, he could’ve just stepped out of the boardroom or the car dealership. He was Richard Vaughan, the man behind the language curtain. He smiled and greeted my Spaniard, who was quite pleased to meet him. When my Spaniard spoke, Vaughan abruptly cut him off with a correction. My Spaniard spoke again and SLAM! Another correction. Lacerating. Scathing. The atmosphere was charged. ¿Que pasa? This wasn’t the Vaughan way. Except that it apparently was. I pointed out that we were told to go easy on the correcting. He acknowledged this but said he “just can’t stand to hear people butchering my language.” He said this with the cool confidence of a man who could justify a certain smugness after decades of helping people overcome their butchering tendencies. Who could argue? If it hadn’t worked already, none of us would’ve been there.

Upstairs in the conference room, Vaughan gave the official, well-practiced presentation he’s made at most of the sessions since 2001. His approach was once again unnerving: He singled out some Spaniards for a pop quiz. “Are your shoes clean?” he asked one at a speed that would make an auctioneer sound like Forrest Gump. The Spaniard was dumbfounded. Others were equally baffled by similar doozies until one crafty young lady broke the code on “Can dogs speak?” and answered “No.”

A tough approach, but Vaughan had a point: People sometimes speak fast, and it takes practice to break down the words. But Vaughan’s sneaky approach was a turnoff for some: “At this moment you think, ‘This is not for me,’” a participant from the Basque region said later. But they hang in there, and what they get out of the sink-or-swim approach satisfies some water-treaders more than others.

What you the Anglo get out of is perhaps less reliant on the subconscious mind: Twenty Spanish people you didn’t know before but who come to feel closer than some of your own relatives; conversations some dry, others vibing with a worldly cool that wouldn’t be out of place in a Steven Soderbergh movie; a bit of Spanish village flavor; and did we mention the free room and board? You also come out of it with plenty of Spain advice and contact info which could lead to more interesting travels ahead. If you have limited time and are desperate to explore Spain or if you’re the shy, silent type this isn’t for you. But if you’re running low on funds and need three squares, you’ve found your ideal retreat.

You also learn that speaking slowly and clearly can be hard work, but that it makes a difference. You come out of the week better able to speak English to non-native speakers because you learn to differentiate between the dull stare of befuddlement and the glint of comprehension. And the glint feels good.

For many, it was a moving experience. For every Spanish skeptic, there were one or two fully in thrall to the process. They experienced those miracle moments where the English was really kicking in. One women in her 20s phoned a Greek friend whom she’d never been able to understand before (they speak only English); for the first time, they communicate effectively. A sentimental young businessman gave us thank-you gifts from the local village. A bit of Stockholm Syndrome even set in for some Spaniards. One young woman was heard to declare: “I could be for all my life here.”

TIPS: Talking to Foreigners

• Take it slow: They won’t think you’re making fun of them they’re going to understand you.
• Project, but don’t shout: There are enough loudmouths on the tourist trail.
• Enunciate: If ever there was a time to break your mumbling habit, this is it.
• As Thoreau put it, “Simplify, simplify, simplify” though remember, Pueblo Ingles prefers “native speakers whose English is not watered down or stilted by hundreds of hours teaching the language.”
• Don’t be afraid to be misunderstood, just keep trying: “Your job will not be to "teach" English; it will be to 'expose’ your Spanish friends to the English language by being talkative, inquisitive, and enjoyable.”