Saturday, August 29, 2009

Repition and rebuilding

An example of the way the program uses colors and diagrams to help you visually structure sentences.

I'm now starting to get the hang of the structure of the class, and I'm liking the direction it's going. It starts by reinforcing what you learned last class, and throughout the next lesson offers exercises and games to help you remember the material. It really reiterates what you have learned before you move on. Last class we did informal expressions, and this class included formal expressions. The lessons also teach a lot of slang Spanish tough to help you speak with everyone in the streets, hostels, and shops.

Specifically, the class went through the differences between cual, que, and other question words that helped me understand it a bit more. It also explained accent reduction on consonants to pronounce them smoothely, not harsh. The guy in the video is still funny, but I can tell some people might get sick of him as it goes on. The product seems to be targeting gringo guys. Being a gringo guy I think it's pretty funny and keeps me interested, but I can see how girls would get bothered by it eventually. He hits on the hot teacher, like the entire class, haha.

Structurally, the color coding and diagrams to help you understand the organization and grammar of the words on the Magic Whiteboard are doing a good job. I'm a visual learner, so
the pictures and colors have worked out nicely. I also have a hard time aligning the words correctly in a Spanish sentence and not translating verbatim in English. The diagrams and English subititles are improving the way I hear the language spoken to me, and they help me visually structure it in my head. Speaking the language out loud, I think, is the fastest way to learn Spanish. You can read and write all you want, but its not going to help you as much when dealing with people face to face.

I have been able to put a couple of the lessons to good use. I am staying in a hostel in Rosario with a group of about 15-20 medical students from Córdoba. The second lesson went over emergency words like hospital, nurse, police, ayudar (to help), etc. Bueno, entonces... gave me some words to use in making conversation with them and asking them about school and what they studied specifically. Also, the lesson helps you with numbers, how to fill out forms, and pronounce addresses. It helps in the taxis and when asking for directions, and the instructions for filling out forms have been useful at Western Union.


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