I haven’t taught Spanish 101 for 6 years and, apparently, I’ve really fallen behind the times. On the first day of class, I decided to intimidate the students using my favorite method that always used to work for me. So I entered the classroom and said:
Buenos días. ¿Qué tal? ¿Cómo están ustedes?
Instead of being intimidated, though, the students replied in a chorus:
Buenos días, profesora. Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y usted?
It seems that there is no real Spanish 101 course any more. Everybody speaks some Spanish, knows about the regional variations, and can share vocabulary used in Tamaulipas or Bilbao where their best friend, boyfriend or neighbor is from.
Clarissa's Blog 
You sound almost woefully. Afraid Rosetta Stone is going to make you unemployed? 😀
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No, I think this is a brilliant development. We used to have strategies of incorporating “false beginners” into our classrooms, and now everybody is a false beginner!
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A couple of decades ago in southern mexico I was at a local tourist attraction that had tours in english and spanish. We were going to go on the english tour since it was next up.
Then someone came out and said the english tour guide wan’t available at the moment and we could either go with a spanish tour about to start or wait a half an hour for the next english tour. All of the US people (none of whom seemed to be of hispanic origin) went on the Spanish tour (and appeared to understand and asked questions). Only the German and French(!) visitors wanted to wait for the English tour.
At the same time a US (non latino) professor I knew whose research was in a SAmerican country seemed a little miffed that Mexicans were basically taking it for granted that US visitors could speak Spanish since they were used to getting praised for speaking Spanish in their research country.
Curious, what kind of pronunciation (and grammar) do you use in class? Peninsular? Argentine? Generalized (mexicanish) NAmerican? A mix? Something else?
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I speak with an Argentinean accent and even though I try to control it, it is still noticeable. But the grammar is standard Latin American (no vosotros). I do dedicate some time to explaining the Argentinean grammar to the students because they always find that very curious. And I spend a lot of time on regional variations of vocabulary because otherwise I get the endless “My Mexican neighbor said he doesn’t know this word you have been using.”
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Weird thing is I am one eighth Portuguese, but the gene is dominant, so some people imagine I am Spanish.
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