Lista para estudiar Espanol
I have my bookbag ready and packed with my pen and notebook. I've been listening to my language cd's. I've been taking every opportunity to talk to neighbors. I am even working out sentences as I fall asleep at night!
So, yes, I am ready to study Spanish!
Tomorrow I start classes, finally. Paul started in December but since we couldn't both be away from home at the same time while so much work was going on at the house, I elected to start in the next session. Paul is doing great - gets extra work every week because he is doing so well.
Our teacher was recommended to us by a number of people. The main thing we heard is "if you are serious about learning Spanish, he is the one for you." And we are most certainly serious.
The classes are small - four or five people - and take place at the teacher's dining room table. You dive right in with necesitar and querer as those verbs can be used to make a multitude of sentences without learning the conjugation for a zillion verbs. Vocabulary is huge. The class is spent going around and around the table, translating sentences. Proper pronunciation is stressed.
I know all of this through conversations with Paul and others who've taken classes from this teacher, of course. But tomorrow I get to find out for myself!
I had a conversation with my neighbor yesterday. I think I did pretty well communicating - but I know my speech wasn't always perfect Spanish, to say the least. We talked on a variety of topics, and I promised him that in one year we were going to be able to have a much better conversation! He laughed and said "Bueno, bueno!"
5 comments:
I couldn't learn spanish by taking classes. I took 3 years in school, and all I could say was can I go to the bathroom, and you are a big fish. Not very conducive for having a conversation, LOL. I tried though, I really did, but for some reason, I couldn't learn that way.
I had to learn by immersion basically. I got married to my first husband (from Guatemala) and could speak enough to get my point across, but that was about it. If you were a friend, you understood my dialect, LOL. But I picked up alot of words, and how to use them, and the different conjugations by watching novelas (with the closed caption on - to read as they spoke) and by listening to different music, and reading the lyrics. Then when I met my husband now I picked up everything else. There are a few things that always confuse me, but other than that I am basically fluent. Its funny because I have friends who are from Mexico, Gautemala, El Salvador and Honduras, and each country - and sometimes within each country - they have their own accents, and so I have picked up words with the different accents, so in one sentence you will sometimes hear me change the accent - without me realizing it - to whatever person I learned the word from. So people will ask me where am I from, because of my accent, they aren't sure. I have to laugh at that all the time. They have a hard time believing that I am from the US with no latino blood in my past :)
ok I wrote a book, sorry. I will shut up now. ;)
~Jennifer
Hola Nancy,
El que la sigue, la consigue.
Please let us know how it goes! I'm on hiatus from clase de español but, like you, I take every opportunity to practice. I can't wait to get back into my classes again. I guess I'll live vicariously through your posts. Try incorporating Spanish into your blog--that's a fun way to learn.
Un saludo,
Gregorio
What a great adventure you're about to embark on. I love Spanish! I always think of foreign languages as secret codes that other people know, so you're about to learn the secret code that will make communicating in Mexico so much easier! Good luck and have fun!
Mucha suerte señora! I've lived here four years and have not had a class, but I sure wish I could now. I think I've reached a peak of "self taught" and immersion, I need someone to lay out some of the tougher conjugations and grammar rules.
Good for you for speaking with the neighbours, that helps a lot. I always say "hablo español de taxistas" because much of what I learned has been in taxis.
Disfrutenlo!
I've begun translating some of my blogs into Spanish, using Ultralingua on my computer, and will be incorporating a link to the translations for my latin friends when I figure out how I want to do it. I run each blog by my teacher and she helps "clean it up," often laughing at my expressions and saying "Oh, we never say it that way!" I like to read it aloud after the "cleanup" so she can correct my pronunciation too.
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