!Spanish Now!

I'm taking a Spanish class (again) because I'd like to travel to Nicaragua sometime in the near future. I'll never speak Spanish well and I realize that, but I'd just like to be able to speak well enough to get by and understand the language enough to know what someone is saying to me and comprehend the language in writing. 

When I took a Spanish class many years ago while I was in college, my teacher was Cuban and he'd call the students in one by one and yell questions such as "what is the date?" or "what is the time?" at us in order to quiz us. This was not particularly helpful for me. Hopefully I'll have a better experience the second time around.