Wednesday 12 August 2015

Que Significa ... ? Intensive Spanish Learning Classes




In the beginner's Spanish intensive learning class we had two classes: grammatica and cultura y conversacion. And the names are a dead giveaway for what they entail.

Grammatica was our grammar lesson, teaching us the rules of the language, how to form sentences, how to conjugate, how to ask questions, this was the more rigid and structured of the lessons which moved along at a reasonable pace. It's a good lesson for those who prefer more traditional learning methods and more spread out subjects.

Cultura y Conversacion was our culture and conversation class. It was more free form and we had quite a lot of information to go through, we could be doing group work creating and acting out dialogues, we could be researching a notable Chilean, we could be looking at key phrases relating to money or transportation. Cultura y conversacion was very much where the information we learned previously got put into practice when we had to use and recall a lot of it. This is a good lesson for those who like a more casual environment and picking parts of vocab that interest themselves personally.

Intensive Spanish learning is definitely difficult, at the beginning it feels like you're floundering. Like anything really though, the more effort you put in the more you get out. If you have trouble with some areas, read up more about it and actively practice it in writing and speech. Being in a Spanish country gives amazing momentum to Spanish learning.

In retrospect we actually learnt quite a bit as a class in a short amount of time. We couldn't become fluent in two weeks, I don't think anyone expected we could, but we could be understood and get our meaning across to native speakers, which was a great result. So in the end I believe the intensive learning trip was a success. I definitely felt like I learnt quite a bit in a short space.

Chao for now.

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