Language Challenge 180

I’m quite excited about the Language Challenge 180, which is a challenge over 180 days, to either get serious about the language(s) you are learning or refreshing and building on the second language skills you already have. I suppose I could have focused on English for this, but as we have so much English around us anyway it made more sense to work on our Spanish. This challenge is set up by www.multilingualliving.com and there are some 650 families/people participating in it. It is great to have someone send you e-mails twice a week to ask how you’re doing and give you that little nudge that can be, and often is, much needed. In addition we now have the opportunity to share experiences and resources with other learners, and also native speakers, which is great!

For us this first week has been less organized than I would have liked, simply because I haven’t had the time to fill in the forms that we got, which are meant to help us get a clear view of our targets and resources, but never the less, it has been a good week for Spanish for most of us. Ben let me read to him from the bilingual story books (“Ricitos de oro y los tres osos” and “El gato con botas”) and even wanted to play “Done está?”, which is a vocabulary building game we play using “My first 1000 words in Spanish”. And for Christi I managed to find two different Spanish teen magazines, both with One Direction on the front of their March issues, but unfortunately I don’t how to get hold of them. :P I need a Spanish connection, i.e. someone who can physically go to a kiosk and get the mags and send them to me.




As for my own learning this week hasn’t been great. I’m very busy reading for my half term tests in pedagogy and didactics, but as soon as they’re done it’s all Spanish all the time, because on Monday 19th I have a compulsory oral test in Spanish for my university course. If I don’t pass that one I won’t be able to sit the exam in May.