Friday, June 16, 2006
Lesson One - June 15th
This was my first day of the class. I was both excited and nervous about the meeting because I have been vowing for-ever to take Spanish classes to revive my Spanish skills and regain my confidence in Speaking the language. Especially, after having gone to Guatemala in 2003 and finding that, while I remembered more than I thought in order to communicate, I didn't remember enough to communicate with a bit of charades while trying to express myself.
When I finally got to her apartment, I nervously knocked on her door; after all, this is going to be the beginning of a new relationship wherein I will finally be able to relearn a skill that has gone by the wayside throughout the last 30+ years.
She welcomed me in a very friendly manner, speaking a great deal of Spanish from the onset. Most of this I understood because I can communicate in general "small talk" format in Spanish, but when she asked me what I wanted to learn from my studies in Spanish, I had to revert to English because I was not remembering all the words to put my expressions into the Spanish language.
The lessons then began. We started with the fundamentals of the vowel sounds and general singular/plural and he/she type of rules of forming the words. Later some flash cards were brought out which were hard for me to do. She held the flashcards that said phrases in Spanish and I was to tell her what she said. I was having problems with the verbs (definately need to brush up on those words). I held the cards that had phrases written in English. I was to read the English phrase outloud and then figure out how to say it in Spanish. That was hard, especially, in being weak on my verb knowledge.
We are also going to work on reading and pronounciating words from articles written in Spanish. This should be interesting.
By the time the hour session was over, she was telling me that she would be emailing me my worksheets to work on this week and she asked me to write a paragraph about what I do at work in Spanish!
We had fun in the class and I am looking forward to meeting with her again next week. Until then, I have plenty to do, as well as (while driving) making rrrrrrrrrrr sounds with the tongue against the roof of my mouth.
In the meantime, hasta la luego!
When I finally got to her apartment, I nervously knocked on her door; after all, this is going to be the beginning of a new relationship wherein I will finally be able to relearn a skill that has gone by the wayside throughout the last 30+ years.
She welcomed me in a very friendly manner, speaking a great deal of Spanish from the onset. Most of this I understood because I can communicate in general "small talk" format in Spanish, but when she asked me what I wanted to learn from my studies in Spanish, I had to revert to English because I was not remembering all the words to put my expressions into the Spanish language.
The lessons then began. We started with the fundamentals of the vowel sounds and general singular/plural and he/she type of rules of forming the words. Later some flash cards were brought out which were hard for me to do. She held the flashcards that said phrases in Spanish and I was to tell her what she said. I was having problems with the verbs (definately need to brush up on those words). I held the cards that had phrases written in English. I was to read the English phrase outloud and then figure out how to say it in Spanish. That was hard, especially, in being weak on my verb knowledge.
We are also going to work on reading and pronounciating words from articles written in Spanish. This should be interesting.
By the time the hour session was over, she was telling me that she would be emailing me my worksheets to work on this week and she asked me to write a paragraph about what I do at work in Spanish!
We had fun in the class and I am looking forward to meeting with her again next week. Until then, I have plenty to do, as well as (while driving) making rrrrrrrrrrr sounds with the tongue against the roof of my mouth.
In the meantime, hasta la luego!
# posted by Kat Davis @ 5:12 PM 
