Sara Tolley

Sara Tolley is a double major in Spanish Translation and Family Studies and her path to language fluency began almost by accident. Her high school didn't offer the American Sign language class she originally wanted, so she chose Spanish.

After four years of high school study, she was called to serve a mission in Spain—originally in Barcelona and then Madrid—where she had to grapple with everyday language in a real world setting.

Sara found that high school Spanish provided a limited foundation; upon arriving in Spain, she realized how much she still had to learn. One of her greatest challenges was her first mission transfer with a native companion who spoke no English, forcing her to learn essential phrases to express her feelings early on. She also struggled with the restriction of using only formal verb forms as a missionary, which made it difficult to practice the informal "tú" forms commonly used in Spain.

Now at BYU, Sara is preparing to enter the Spanish master’s program with the goal of becoming a family law court interpreter. She credits her academic progress to the rigor of reading and writing essays in Spanish, but she attributes her conversational growth to a more creative method: audiobooks.

During a summer job as a custodian, she listened to the entire Harry Potter series and The Inheritance Games in Spanish. This immersion helped her understand natural conversational flow, idioms, and more exposure to how people actually speak. She also continues to practice speaking with friends at church and attending films at the BYU International Cinema.

Initially, Sara struggled with the pressure to be perfect, but she eventually realized that mistakes are beneficial. "Often when you make a mistake, you're so much more likely to remember what you learned," she explained, noting that even native speakers are not always grammatically perfect.

For those preparing for the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), Tolley offers several practical strategies:

• Target Your Weaknesses: Weeks before the test, she created flashcards for words she frequently confused or misspelled, such as senderismo (hiking). 
• Manage Physical Stress: On the day of the exam, she arrived early to avoid rushing and had a snack and some water. 
• Reframe the Experience: Rather than viewing it as a terrifying test, she treated it as a conversation with a professor. 
• Be Open and Honest: She recommends being open about your personal interests during the interview, talk about what you want to talk about; if the interviewer doesn't understand a sentence, try to explain it a different way.