Spanish school - what's it like? (and more pics loaded

Date: June 16, 2007 12:05 PM

It was suggested to me that I write about what going to school is like. Well, it’s alternately great fun and one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever done to myself, (except for trying to take algebra again).

The maestros (teachers) have for the most part been great. For some reason, the male maestros seem more easy going than the female maestras. The only one we’ve had that drove me absolutely crazy was a woman named Carla. She came bursting in to class the Monday we changed to her, rattling español a mile a minute, wouldn’t talk *at all* in English, and gave all her explanations of what she was trying to teach us in español. This was only our 3rd week. I wasn’t quite ready to not be able to understand a thing being said. Needless to say, I got real frustrated, real quick and when that happens, my brain flips a breaker and shuts down. She eased up on jueves y viernes (Thur & Fri), but I don’t know if that was because of the letter we wrote her miercoles noche (Wed night) asking her to please slow down and review what she had been talking about or if she had already planned on doing that.

Our favorito maestro has been Miguel. I’ve got a picture up of him on Flickr. He’s very sweet. He speaks slowly and is willing to tell us in ingles when we are not getting something. Interestingly, though, he’s also the one that gives a ton of homework. I spent about 4 hours doing his assignment 1 night. He also likes to talk about aspects of Guate culture and society and seems to enjoy hearing about how things work in EEUU. (That’s the Cent. Amer. abbrev. for the US-took us about 2 weeks to figure that out. We thought they were talking about the EU.) He wants to come to visit the US someday, so we gave him our address and told him he could use us as a sponsor if he needed to.

My spanish vocab and grammar have definitely improved, but I still have a terrible time understanding anyone when they speak unless they speak very slowly and happen to use the few verbs and nouns I can remember. I think that is the hardest part for me--remembering what something means. There are words I *know* I’ve looked up 3, 4, maybe even 10 times and I see it and I have no idea what it is! It’s very frustrating! Oh, to be 20 again and doing this. It would be hard, but I don’t think it would be as hard as it is now, with all those millions of brain cells gone that I’ve killed over the last 30 years.

There are 2 aspects of the school process that really frustrate me and to a degree make me angry. The 1st is the terrible copyediting job done on our workbooks. They have given us a handbook that explains stuff and has exercises and also a grammar and vocab workbook. They are both riddled with errors and exercises that are poorly explained, so that you have no idea what to do. For example, they give you a list of words to use in an exercise, say 10 sentences and 10 words we’re supposed to use to complete the exercise, but they will use 1 or 2 of the words more that once and 1 or 2 of them not at all. But no hint that some words may not be used. The worst editing is when the sentence is just flat-out wrong or so badly written you can’t even figure out what is supposed to go in there. A native español speaker would have no trouble figuring out what was wrong or what it was supposed to be, but it’s nearly impossible for a beginning student.

The other issue that I have been having, and I may have mentioned this in a previous post, is that I would prefer to cover less material more thoroughly. I feel like we get 2 or more new grammar concepts a week and I don’t have time to digest and understand 1 before we are moving on to the next one. This is being reflected in the tests I’ve been taking. I have asked them to test me approx. every 2 weeks, so I can gauge my progress and when I return I have some benchmarks to show UK, but I’m not doing very well on the tests. I don’t seem to be able to anticipate what will be asked plus the problem of memory that I spoke of earlier dooms me to not get very many things correct. At this point, I am sincerely concerned that UK will not pass me based on the exams. If they take into account the volume of work along with the exams, they might pass me. I try not to worry about it too much, but being the overachiever that I can tend to be, I hate not doing well. I’ve already decided that if I fail I’m going to enroll in the ind. study spanish and start it right way because my reading and understanding has gotten so much better, I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble with it. (Hey, if my friend Allan can pass it, I’m pretty sure I can. -- Hi, Allan, if you’re reading this.)

All in all, tho’ I like the school and really like the people associated with it. They are the most incredibly patient people I think I’ve ever met.

And that’s what school and my learning process has been like.

Hasta luega, chicos y chicas!

mel