<p>Sorry if this is long winded, you can skip to the last paragraph if it suites you. ~
I now completely understand why so many kids do not enjoy high school language classes and feel like it is a waste of time because that is exactly how I feel now. Since freshman year up until the second semester of this year(junior year) I have had the same Spanish teacher who was great at what she did. She had personally tailored a new curriculum(administrators were not keen on this) adapted to teaching non native Spanish speakers that did not involve ever opening a Spanish textbook or forcing an endless horde of photo copied fill-in-the-blank work sheets down our throats. We always had the most interesting projects and she stressed participation as the most important part of our grades since it is a language class(although the people, especially native speakers who weren't used to formal grammar and writing in Spanish, who expected to get simple worksheets hated that she made us do work that required we take notes and pay attention, so she wasn't all that well liked until she left and they realized that mind numbing book work is not all that appealing).
Anyway, due to personal circumstances she had to leave and we received a new Spanish teacher who is for the most part nice, but really cannot teach the fundamentals of the language, so we just do worksheets and use the Realidades textbook. Honestly, we have stopped using Vosotros because he said they only use it in Spain so it is not necessary (the kind of Spanish my old teacher taught was considered highly formal white/Spain Spanish by most Hispanics in my school, but I don't feel Vosotros is useless).
I really do love the Spanish language and cannot bear the idea of letting two and a half years of learning it go to waste and would like to continue by finishing up the grammar we did and learn to speak it more often in order to become fluent(hopefully enough to where I can study abroad in Spain during college). I've heard that there is no hope in achieving real fluency in a language after the critical period in lang. development during childhood without full immersion into a country that speaks it, but the bigger worry for me is losing what I have learned considering I have not written a legitimate sentence in Spanish or conjugated anything since my old teacher left so I could very well forget everything by the end of this school year.
My question is, although I am wary of textbooks and internet resources in regard to languages, do any of you know any grammar books or other resources that could help me continue to learn Spanish? Also, do you think I should take AP Spanish Lang. or Lit.(I'm in Spanish 3), even though they are taught by the same teacher I have now and another one of equally tedious teaching methods? I'd study over the summer, of course since I know I won't learn a whole lot in that class next year. I know taking the class or even passing the AP test does not equal my being fluent in the language at all, but I don't want to go a long period of time without being exposed to it because that could speed up the loss of what I have learned.
Do any of you know any good Hispanic radio stations, shows, YouTube channels, or any thing else that I can listen to, so that I can get used to hearing Spanish and responding back in it more? You can comment on this post if you want me to tell you specifically what grammar principles I haven't learned yet, since I realize there will be a difference in curricula across the country. Though, I can tell you that I've learned enough to be able to carry a conversation with a Spanish speaker who doesn't use the more complex/nuanced parts of Spanish grammar(I never cared for conjugation in Vosotros commands, also Pluperfect tense sounds daunting), if I got over the intimidation factor which makes me so reluctant to speak it sometimes.</p>
<p>Make yourself love it. Most students get burnouts once in a while.
I had a friend who was was a USAMO qualifier and USAPO semifinalist who had a burn-out period in some post-calculus studies once. That didn’t stop her from loving math or physics- just a downtime for a while.</p>