Once upon a time, I took a night class for "Learning Spanish" at the university. I knew going in that it wasn't "tourist" or "conversational" Spanish, so I steeled myself to get serious. The first two classes were simple stuff "My name is..." , counting, identifying colours. I felt quite confident and cocky. The third class the professor wrote a sentence in Spanish and asked to identify the prepositions, the adverbs, and other grammatical bits. I can barely do that in English! I dropped the class.
Ah, si, si. I did try other classes. After that university class with its "fighter jet" learning curve, I took a couple of community classes where the learning curve was like a soggy balloon. I decided I might have to do it on my own with various computer courses...and that idea is still "mint in the box". Sigh.
Yeah sometimes you just need to do things at your own pace - honestly the best way to learn is just to skype up someone who speaks it and just talk! That's how we learn as kids
I always laugh that one of the first words you learn in early vocab lists is "library," as if I'm going to have anything to do in a foreign language library in my LANG101 condition.
If you have to learn words like Architect and Audiophile in week 2, you are in the wrong language class.
But my experience is that learning the most important at least 1000 words early on just makes a huge difference. It becomes way easier to use a language if you aren't constantly trying to paraphrase what you actually want to say.
Once upon a time, I took a night class for "Learning Spanish" at the university. I knew going in that it wasn't "tourist" or "conversational" Spanish, so I steeled myself to get serious. The first two classes were simple stuff "My name is..." , counting, identifying colours. I felt quite confident and cocky. The third class the professor wrote a sentence in Spanish and asked to identify the prepositions, the adverbs, and other grammatical bits. I can barely do that in English! I dropped the class.
ReplyDeleteAw. Shoulda stuck with it! Español es muy bueno
DeleteAh, si, si. I did try other classes. After that university class with its "fighter jet" learning curve, I took a couple of community classes where the learning curve was like a soggy balloon. I decided I might have to do it on my own with various computer courses...and that idea is still "mint in the box". Sigh.
DeleteYeah sometimes you just need to do things at your own pace - honestly the best way to learn is just to skype up someone who speaks it and just talk! That's how we learn as kids
DeleteBut... but... IIV ain't no Roman numeral...
ReplyDeleteOh REALLY? How do you think the Romans wrote the number fleven then??
DeleteI always laugh that one of the first words you learn in early vocab lists is "library," as if I'm going to have anything to do in a foreign language library in my LANG101 condition.
ReplyDeleteIf you have to learn words like Architect and Audiophile in week 2, you are in the wrong language class.
ReplyDeleteBut my experience is that learning the most important at least 1000 words early on just makes a huge difference. It becomes way easier to use a language if you aren't constantly trying to paraphrase what you actually want to say.