Pam's Blog

Today is the last day of Spanish class. The lessons have been one on one, first with Martha for a week and then with Adreana. Martha covered some basics with me and Adreana has built on that, included a lot more conversation, of which she does most of the talking. There’s been homework every night, which is quite helpful, and a review of that the next morning.

Over the weekend I wrote a couple of pages of notes. It was really just a list of words to learn/memorize and continue to pronounce. I took it along with me during my site seeing and practiced while waiting for the bus. Every day I learn new “verbos” and other words and every day I have a little glimmer of recognition of something in the conversation at dinner. Most of the time I can understand the jist of the conversation but asking a question or contributing is really still out of my realm of possibility.

The teachers are incredibly patient and, I think, do a good job at making the four hours one on one go fast. My criticism is that it is all Spanish all the time and when there’s a difficult concept to explain, it would be more appropriate in English. There are times when I “no comprende” the concept and repeating it in Spanish doesn’t help. The other thing that would really help is a conversation partner. It would be nice to have someone to practice the day’s lesson, or even last week’s lessons.

I can tell that it’s sinking in, though. In my head I can complete full sentences. My pronunciation is better and my vocabulary is increasing. I’m guessing I know at least 200 words, judging from the cheat sheet I made over the weekend. I’m having trouble remembering English words. Today it must’ve taken me a full five minutes to remember “iTunes” while Adreana was using a YouTube video for part of the lesson. I wondered if the group’s music (Jesse y Joy) was available. And, when I bought my plane ticket online, it took me several beats to remember my own phone number. This is exactly one of my goals for this trip – to have my English suffer and my US life fade. Another mission accomplished.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2012 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.