Exchange of Letters in Spanish

Abstract

A FEW years ago I received a letter from Miss Laura Smith, teacher of Spanish in the Fort Morgan, Colorado, High School, asking me if my second year Spanish classes in Sterling, Colorado would be interested in exchanging letters in Spanish with her students. My students had been exchanging letters with students in South America, Mexico and Spain, but the results were not very satisfactory, and interest was waning. The time between letters was too long, the choice of a correspondent was not left entirely to the student, especially between sexes, the topics of common interest were too few, and there was too much disparity of interests. When my students wrote haltingly of their inter-class and conference football games, trying to explain them as best they could, they received letters four months later during the track season about football. How were my students to explain to their far-off friends that they had met a number, a nilimero caliente, the night before? Ere an answer with proper felicitations could be received, several hot numbers had scorched members of my brood, and it was a bit confusing for them even to remember the first acrid odor. Eternal and undying devotions are fleeting with adolescents.