Mi español

This post is really not about the kids but rather about me,
and my attempts at learning Spanish. The flash cards still haven’t arrived and the second set I made for the kids sparked little if any enthusiasm. Quite frankly I worry that they’ve stopped caring. Did I push them too much? I hope not. I guess I just need to find some middle ground between my own obsession-like interest in learning and the kids’ nonchalant attitude to the idea.

Nevertheless I keep going with my own studies. Earlier I have mentioned using electronic flash cards, MosaLingua, on my iPhone. They have been, and continue to be invaluable in my language adventure, but if I have any hope of becoming fluent I need to immerse myself as much as is possible in my situation. Since August I have been a registered member of a language social network site called ‘The Mixxer’ (www.language-exchange.com) . The whole point of this site is to provide language learners with partners, in many cases native speakers if the language you’re studying, which you may write with, or even better talk to using Skype.

My first contact on the mixer was Ana from Spain. She used to live in Norway a few years back and was interested in learning Norwegian properly. (Believe it or not she never learnt Norwegian while living here because she was a student in an international environment and thus could get by using English. A very common story for many international students in Norway…)

From August on Ana and I would write short messages to each other, I in Spanish and she in Norwegian. We would correct each other’s messages before replying. I believe these messages has helped a lot in developing my Spanish in that I had to use what I had learnt, and not least that I had to expand both my vocabulary and my knowledge of grammar in order to communicate.

We had talked ever since late Summer about Skyping but we kept putting it off because other things got in the way, and also because we were both slightly trepidatious about actually talking. On Thursday we spoke for the first time, and I won’t lie, it was awkward and hard, but I’m sure it will do wonders for the progress of both our languages. What was the hardest for me was to remember simple words and also conjugations. These last few weeks I have finally started to be able to talk about things in the past and the future but the second I wanted to say something about stuff in the past I couldn’t remember a thing. It wasn’t just me though. She struggled too. I don’t want to sound mean, but I like that we seem to be on the same level language-wise.

This first time we only talked about how weird talking was, and how embarrassed we both were that we couldn’t remember things. We also agreed to talk again on Monday and we agreed on a topic. I suggested travel or holidays. I suppose I should be studying vocabulary relating to travel now. I don’t even know what the different countries are called in Spanish :P

Right now I’m making an effort to get more familiar with hearing Spanish by listening to the wonderful podcasts ‘News in slow Spanish’. I can actually understand a bit, and I try as hard as I can to not translate in my head but rather just understand. I don’t know if that makes any sense at all.