Spanish: Take Two
03.15.10
Well, I ended up dropping the Spanish class that Russel and I were taking last semester. Turns out that it was a “Hybrid” class. No lecture time. The class was only 90 mins and in that 90 minutes, our instructor would zoom through vocabulary and some grammar explanation and be packed up and was the first one out of the door waiting for everyone to leave so she could lock up. 90% of all instruction and homework was online at our Spanish books publishers website. The site was good, but only if you totally understood the lessons that were explained, just the one way. The instructor did not have The best people skills and would answer any questions that we would have very impatiently treating each person with a question, like an idiot. Anyway, I wasn’t doing totally horrible in the class, but I felt as though I was floundering and just getting by. I was doing a whole lot of studying and it was like nothing was sticking. I just didn’t feel as though I could move on to the next class with enough true understanding of the basics that I was trying to learn and would end up “just getting by”, instead of actually learning to speak Spanish, like I want to do.
So, this semester, Russell and I are taking Spanish 1 all over again and this time in a traditional course. Have to say, this format suits me much better. The instructor is engaging, informative and compassionate. She seems to appreciate those of us that are there to actually learn to speak the language instead of those that just need the credits. I still study all of the time, but I actually have a better understanding. We have had two tests already and thus far I’ve gotten a 90% and a 93%. Granted, the material so far is the same stuff that was covered in the other Spanish class, but it’s really clicking in my head this time. I’ve found an awesome app for my IPhone that has helped me so much! It’s a flashcard generator. I’m able to make an Excel spread sheet of my vocabulary words and upload them to this site and then upload them to my IPhone. It’s been totally invaluable. I spend anywhere from 90 mins to 2 hours in my car going to and from work and I use that wasted time to study my vocabulary.
It’s Spring Break right now and our instructor sent us home with our Chapter 2 test…Open Book! An almost guaranteed “A”. I say “almost” because the first part of every test is listening to dialogue and answering questions pertaining to the dialogue. I suck at that! Put it this way, on my last test, I got a 93%. I could have gotten a 99% if it wasn’t for the dialogue portion. When we get back from Spring Break we have a map quiz on Mexico, Central America and South America. We have to be able to fill in a blank map naming the countries and capitals. I’ve already bookmarked a few websites that help with this…now just need to make the time.
Tags: dos mundos, Eastfield College, language, loli, Russell, Spanish