Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a person learning Spanish, this reminded me about how regional differences with the language has led to some debate about which variations to cover in courses and textbooks. For example, a university course I took tested for the proper conjugation of verbs with "vosotros/as" (with its typical usage in Spain). But I later read about some debate over why the usage of vosotros/as was tested, but not the usage of vose…
> As a person learning Spanish, this reminded me about how regional differences with the language has led to some debate about which variations to cover in courses and textbooks. As a person who learned Spanish as a foreign language, let me assure you that none of this matters. What matters is learning the language well enough to communicate without causing too much strain on the other person. If you can achieve this…
A useful aspect of the language that I was required to learn was a stricter focus on grammar. I got away for a while with a weaker understanding for verb conjugations during conversation, but the courses required me to learn this thoroughly. Though this wasn't necessary for general communication, this helped with preparation for a professional language assessment and for formal communications.
However, a less useful aspect that didn't matter much to my communication abilities came from taking a course on pronunciation. Though learning the pronunciation rules for the first two thirds was helpful for reducing my foreign accent, the last third required a couple assessments that heavily weighted students' abilities to identify the regional accent of a speaker (e.g. identifying between accents that were Andalusian versus Rioplatense versus Chilean). While there is arguably some value with identifying a speaker's accent from an interview or film, this took a lot of time that I could have spent learning other aspects of the language, and I wish this skill would've been optional to learn.
So, you've hit on one of the downsides of learning Spanish in a formal environment via inflexible expectations of learning goals, though I did find upsides too (that said, a motivated self-learner could absolutely learn grammar on their own—though a classroom environment does provide a nice motivation).