I have to hand it to Georgetown for at least one thing: Taking four or five lecture courses at the University of Seville could have been traumatizing if it weren’t for the preparation we got on the Hilltop. The 12 of us here are actually confident for that hour or two we’re behind a desk every day. But for all the Spanish academic jargon we’ve compiled over the years, we’re failing miserably at something that should come easily: socializing with our peers. How is it possible that American students who have written 10-page research papers in Spanish still lack basic conversational skills?

Some linguists believe that there are two kinds of language learning — one that occurs through face-to-face interactions with speakers of the second language and offers more cultural insight and another that occurs in an academic context, where the focus is more on reading, writing and analysis. In an age of globalization, and especially at a school as internationally focused as Georgetown, where we’re lucky enough to have native-speaking teachers, there should be some way for the two to better overlap. More vernacular language in the classroom would be a good start.

Of course, some textbook authors have tried. During my first home stay in Spain in high school, I broke out a few so-called colloquialisms that I had copied down from the back of my book. It turns out they were all either incomprehensible or really lame (think, “Neat-o!”). The truth is, a lot of conversational terminology is regional, and on top of that, it’s constantly evolving, especially among youth, so things like slang can be a little challenging to ship overseas and into the classroom.

But the fact that teaching some informal aspects of a language is tricky doesn’t excuse replacing them with details that are practically useless. Last week, my Arabic class spent a day on a new grammatical construction in our textbook, incidentally the Georgetown University Press’ infamous Al-Kitaab. According to my professor, the rather lyrical construction is used in works of literature and by extremely proficient speakers to describe something poetically. I couldn’t resist asking that unanswerable question that so many high school calculus teachers fear: “When are we ever going to use this?”

My professor couldn’t answer my question, except to reemphasize how impresionante any speaker would sound using that kind of grammar. When class was over, I took my time getting my things together so I could listen to my six Spanish classmates discussing their weekends — or were they talking about the presidential elections in March?

That I’m not sure is discouraging. I doubt I’ll ever get a chance to sound impressive in any second language, except maybe on paper, if I can’t jump into a casual exchange. It’s one of the reasons the American students here aren’t interacting with the Spanish students as much as we maybe should. They can understand us, and they can certainly make themselves understood, but we both know it just takes too much energy.

As someone fascinated by communication, I see the significance of studying the intricacies of a language. It can offer valuable insight into the culture and context of the language’s speakers. But is an intermediate-level class really the place for them? For those who want to first reach some kind of functional proficiency — whether just to spend a summer in Paris or to eventually work in a U.S. embassy in the Middle East — learning how to have a regular conversation, in this case with someone our own age, is more relevant.

As the demand for foreign language education rises, I hope that textbook authors and language educators start to evaluate what’s really useful. For now, students abroad will have to rely on the immersion process and pick up those key phrases and cultural nuances on their own.

Beth Shook is a junior in the College and a former Copy Editor of The Hoya. She can be reached at shook@thehoya.com. Found in Translation appears every other Friday in The Guide.