Exclusive Interview With Nadine Panta Flexhaug – Improving Conversational Spanish
Updated: Apr 3, 2023
Nadine is a bilingual Neurolanguage Spanish Coach®, CEO and founder of Spanish To Fluency. She works with people who are looking to have a more fulfilling experience traveling or moving to a Latin American country, deepen their relationships with the Spanish speakers in their lives and unlock limitless professional & personal opportunities by learning to converse in Spanish with ease.
Nadine works with a team of native speakers from Latin America and their mission is to help their clients learn to think in Spanish in order to avoid having to translate everything through English and ultimately learn to speak Spanish with ease.
Nadine Panta Flexhaug, Spanish Coach
Hi Nadine! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
I’ve always been a big dreamer. I remember spending the last few hours of the long summer days in my hometown in Canada, sitting outside looking up at the sky and daydreaming about all the undiscovered possibilities that awaited me. The distant lands, people, and cultures intrigued me the most. One of my deepest passions is connecting people and cultures… I can’t think of a better way to do this than by helping people break down the language barrier!
At 19 years of age, I left Canada and began my solo travels. After traveling through Latin America I ended up in Ecuador which I now call home. I’ve been blessed with numerous opportunities to connect with people from different backgrounds throughout my time here, myself included! I am married to an Ecuadorian and we have a beautiful 7-year-old daughter who is also bilingual.
Being from the edge of the Rocky Mountains (Calgary, Alberta) I clearly remember the first time I saw the ocean with my own eyes, at the age of 13. From that moment I was mesmerized by her (despite the water being so cold that I didn’t even get in). We didn’t meet again for a few years. I eventually got to the coast of Ecuador several years later and even though I was intrigued by the ocean, I was also terrified. Nonetheless, I decided to learn how to surf because it seemed like so much fun and it quickly became my new passion.
Some of my favorite things to do include spending time with my family, pets (5 dogs and 2 cats!), and friends, surfing, traveling, reading self-development books, and listening to my favorite Spanish songs.
What is your business name and how do you help your clients?
I help people who live, work, or socialize with native Spanish speakers, to learn to think in Spanish so they can converse in Spanish with ease and confidence.
All of our students receive personalized coaching from me and work with my team of native Spanish speakers who provide a safe, fun, and structured conversational learning environment. Interacting directly with a native speaker is important for picking up on the most authentic form of speech and developing a deeper level of Spanish comprehension.
I’ve met so many people over the past 16 years since I started getting really serious about learning to speak Spanish. I’ve watched them struggle to converse in Spanish even trying numerous courses, teachers, apps, etc., due to a lack of the right form of consistent verbal interaction with the language.
What tends to happen is, after the initial motivation wears off, the level of engagement decreases and so does the level of commitment and consistency. I’ve found that understanding how the brain learns languages as an adult gives the student a reason to do things in a certain way that’s necessary for developing a natural, subconscious dominion of the language.
Apart from helping my clients improve their conversational Spanish during our 12-week coaching boot camp program, we teach them about the natural learning processes of the subconscious mind. If you can harness these natural learning processes that we’re all born with, you can learn to think in Spanish, even at a beginner level.
Thinking in Spanish means speaking Spanish has become an automatic function performed by the subconscious mind, rather than the conscious. Consciously thinking about which word to use, and how to conjugate verbs or piece together Spanish sentences is no longer necessary. Translation is no longer needed either. This is when naturally flowing, effortless Spanish conversations are born.
When learning is fun and relevant to the student’s current situation, dopamine is released which activates key areas of the brain essential for learning & memory.
What is your work inspired by?
I’ve always been fascinated with bringing people together, in particular, connecting people from different backgrounds and cultures. The harmony of people and circumstances working together for mutual benefit warms my soul and inspires me to do what I can, to contribute.
Latin America also holds a very special place in my heart. It has taught me so much about myself and life, coming from a very distinct lifestyle and culture in Canada like mine. I would love for everybody to be able to enjoy the beautiful countries and people that come from this part of the world to the fullest. Based on my own experience, speaking the primary language of the region is the best and most effective way to accomplish this.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
Throughout my years of experience learning the language, studying it, and teaching it, I have learned that most courses and teachers out there approach language learning as the process of learning new words & sentence structure to communicate something. When really, it is so much more than that.
I believe it’s time that we take a more holistic approach to speaking Spanish (or any language). Learning a foreign language as an adult encompasses so much more than just the conscious acquisition of new words.
In order for speaking to feel natural and fluid, we must impress these new words and structures on the subconscious mind. The process you go through to achieve this exposes you to vulnerable, uncomfortable situations which bring up past conditioning and limiting beliefs stored in the subconscious mind. Neglecting to reprogram this conditioning will result in a very long, tiresome, and frustrating process full of self-sabotage.
This is why people often experience mental blocks when they try to learn a language. They may know the Spanish vocabulary words or grammar but they can’t access it when they need it. They freeze up and can’t even recall the most basic Spanish vocabulary.
This is a widespread issue and no amount of vocabulary or instruction can solve this problem. The root cause must be addressed, which actually in most cases, has nothing to do with the language itself.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
There have been a few but the main pivotal moment took place in the early stages of my journey to speaking Spanish. By this time I was certain that speaking Spanish was something I wanted to do.
I decided to sign up for an Immersion program at a Spanish school in San Jose, Costa Rica. I stayed there for a month and received classes for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week. While I didn’t expect to be fluent after this time, I was looking forward to being able to converse in Spanish. However, finishing this program was a wake-up call for me that I was not expecting. When the program was finished, I noticed that while I had learned more vocabulary and grammar, my ability to converse in Spanish remained close to none.
At that moment, I decided that traditional teaching methods were not for me and started to question if they were right for anyone… and so my journey to explore alternative ways to learn conversational Spanish, rather than memorize isolated words and grammar began.
