People often ask, with the full range of possible motivations and insinuations, why we moved to Madrid. (Why!?!) The answer is rather simple: because I wanted to learn Spanish. OK, there's more to it than that, and it wasn't just my decision, but moving to Spain to learn Spanish had been a long-standing ambition of mine that Kate, thankfully, was happy to go along with.
So here we are. In Spain. That's part 1 sorted. Now, part 2 - the actual learning. It was all going pretty well until Jan 2010, with Kate and I going regularly to lessons, but then something happened, I can't quite remember what around January this year. We just stopped. I thought that maybe, given we now had a solid grounding, we would just cruise along, slotting new vocabulary and idioms in to the grammatical framework we had acquired. However, by the end of the summer it was clear that this simply wasn't happening. So, I began to form a plan.
The problem with lessons had been that the ones we'd gone to were always in the morning, at around 10, finishing at 12, a good 45 minutes journey from our flat. Given that I was now working until 9 every night, this made for a long day, a rushed lunch and little time with Kate and Rosie. What would be great would be to be able to have my Spanish lessons at my place of work, immediately before I started work. That way it would be just a case of going into work a little earlier. My boss had no objections to me using a room there, provided one was free. So far so good; now just to work out how to pay for it.
Spanish teachers - like English teachers - are pretty thick on the ground here in Madrid. However, they also charge about the same - €20/hour more or less - so, unless I suddenly won El Gordo (the Spanish lottery) I was going to have to find some fellow students to split the cost with. So off I went on a recruitment drive among my fellow teachers at the two branches of the English Language Academy where I work. I was thrilled to find that at least 14 of my colleagues were interested; now came the headache of timetabling and level testing. Tuesday and Thursday, at my branch, from 1pm until 2.30pm was my ideal time; naturally then, after taking on board everybody else's preferences, the advanced class ended up being on Monday and Wednesday at 12 at the other branch. Oh well.
So, I now had my Spanish classes, at the outrageously cheap rate of €5 per 90 minute class. Bargain. The teacher was a friend we'd met while he had been training to become a teacher - we'd been his guinea pigs as it were. We had a space to hold the classes. All good. However, I also now found that I had, along the way ended up with responsibility for a beginners' group as well. Well, naturally - they didn't speak Spanish, so I had to do the negotiations for them.
We're now heading into our third month of classes, and they're going really well. We've reviewed past tenses, which are often confusing, and prepositions, which are always confusing. Next we'll be tackling the subjunctive. However the content of the classes has been the least of my concerns; it's keeping people at them that's been the problem. As the cost is split between those attending, if some students drop out it makes the class more expensive for those who stay on. This has become a problem, although not in the way I expected...
Among the other teachers who come to the advanced class with me, two have Spanish boyfriends. Another spent his Erasmus year in Granada, while another has been in Spain for over 3 years. If anyone was going to drop out of the classes, I would have expected it to have been one of them - after all they are already pretty good. But instead it's been the beginners that have been dropping like flies - from an original 7, they are now down to 3. I don't understand it - do they not plan to learn Spanish at all?! Perhaps not. Several have complained that they can't afford it, which I again fail to understand - we are all earning the same, yet they'll be paying less rent (living in shared flats) and don't have a wife and child to support. It's not like they'll find classes any cheaper elsewhere. Oh well; si los de mi clases seguen, me da igual.
Showing posts with label spanish lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spanish lessons. Show all posts
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Saturday, 2 October 2010
Fluency Schmuency - by Theo
Coming from a country with one of the lowest rates of knowledge of a second language in Europe, if not the world, it's hardly surprising that we should misunderstand what it is to truly master a foreign language. In England we talk about being "fluent" in a language, usually equating this with having complete control over said tongue.
Not so. Fluent, from fluid, simply means to be able to talk without hesitations or significant pauses in a smooth stream of words. Your pronunciation may be atrocious, you might put the emphasis in totally the wrong places, your prose could be littered with errors and you might be completely incapable of understanding the response you elicit. Doesn't matter; you're fluent, and as far as most English people are concerned, that's enough. Forget the fact that native speakers might be completely confused by your gnomic (yet, fluent) utterances, we feel we've done our bit by blurting out our foreign phrases in one, smooth go.
Before moving to Spain I was just as guilty of this, equating fluency with being able to 'speak' a language (also a bad term - after all it's not much good being able to 'speak' a language if you can't understand the response). In fact, upon taking one of my first classes for Spanish learners of English and finding all my students to be incredibly fluent and generally faultless in English, I was astounded to discover that they were studying for the Cambridge First Certificate in English. The First Certificate. There are two more, higher level exams after that, Advanced and Proficiency. As a rookie teacher I struggled to imagine what more these almost word-perfect teenagers had to learn about the English language. I mean they were fluent, what more did we want?
My own learning experience of Spanish and my continual struggles with French have enlightened me somewhat. I am now 'fluent' in Spanish, though I'm still a long way off being word-perfect, or understanding the majority of things said to me in Spanish. Hopefully though, after 10 months of intermittent self-study, I'll be getting back to Spanish lessons and striving to improve. Or rather I'll be bringing Spanish lessons to me, having persuaded many of my teaching colleagues to band together for an in-house teacher. Meanwhile, having been allotted 4 classes of Proficiency level students in this academic year's timetable, I'll be finding out exactly what more there is to learn about English beyond fluency.
Not so. Fluent, from fluid, simply means to be able to talk without hesitations or significant pauses in a smooth stream of words. Your pronunciation may be atrocious, you might put the emphasis in totally the wrong places, your prose could be littered with errors and you might be completely incapable of understanding the response you elicit. Doesn't matter; you're fluent, and as far as most English people are concerned, that's enough. Forget the fact that native speakers might be completely confused by your gnomic (yet, fluent) utterances, we feel we've done our bit by blurting out our foreign phrases in one, smooth go.
Before moving to Spain I was just as guilty of this, equating fluency with being able to 'speak' a language (also a bad term - after all it's not much good being able to 'speak' a language if you can't understand the response). In fact, upon taking one of my first classes for Spanish learners of English and finding all my students to be incredibly fluent and generally faultless in English, I was astounded to discover that they were studying for the Cambridge First Certificate in English. The First Certificate. There are two more, higher level exams after that, Advanced and Proficiency. As a rookie teacher I struggled to imagine what more these almost word-perfect teenagers had to learn about the English language. I mean they were fluent, what more did we want?
My own learning experience of Spanish and my continual struggles with French have enlightened me somewhat. I am now 'fluent' in Spanish, though I'm still a long way off being word-perfect, or understanding the majority of things said to me in Spanish. Hopefully though, after 10 months of intermittent self-study, I'll be getting back to Spanish lessons and striving to improve. Or rather I'll be bringing Spanish lessons to me, having persuaded many of my teaching colleagues to band together for an in-house teacher. Meanwhile, having been allotted 4 classes of Proficiency level students in this academic year's timetable, I'll be finding out exactly what more there is to learn about English beyond fluency.
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Pregnant with desire by Kate
There will be no pornography in this post, but the fact I just wrote the word should at least garner our blog a few hundred more hits than usual. That and the word sex, which will be repeated several times in the course of the piece. Look away now if a) the combination of intercourse and pregnancy upsets you and b) if a few intimate-ish details about other people's carnality tends to give you indigestion. The brave, the curious and the prurient, read on!
Sex during pregnancy is generally encouraged by the experts - unless you're very miscarriage-prone (in which case, the advice is to leave off for the first few critical months), they see no reason why the hanky-panky shouldn't continue unabated. That's not to say the couple concerned doesn't have issues with the whole area of How's Your Father, of course. Morning sickness, over-tender boobs and exhaustion can all contribute to a low mojo in the recently impregnated woman. Meanwhile, men can find the concept of "something else up there" a bit of a performance-dampener and as the foetus gets bigger, there are concerns about accidentally squishing the future offspring in-utero in the throes of passion. Then there are the women who feel like big lumps of unattractively wobbling flesh as pregnancy enters its later stages and the men who involuntarily envisage the Fat Slags in Viz and can't help making unflattering and enshrinkening comparisons with their expectant partners.
I'm pleased to report that none of the above problems have affected Theo and me. In fact, the only thing that's prevented the frequency of our sex life being as high as previously has been late night fatigue, morning medical appointments and early Spanish lessons. If anything, pregnancy has enhanced the quality of our carnal relations, despite the necessary diminuendo in acrobatics and the restriction of positions for bump-avoidance reasons. I don't know whether it's the pregnancy hormones, the yoga (which includes a move aimed at "freeing and encouraging the flow of sexual energy") or simple practice, but achieving climax certainly seems to have become more effortless in recent months, which has got to be a bonus. Not that things in that department were ever bad, I hasten to add, but considerably more time and energy was required to get there previously and I'm only human.
I think we're also aware that the days of our - relatively - unfettered and spontaneous sex-life are now severely numbered, so here's to matrimonial bliss and tranquility while it lasts. Not to mention the rumpy pumpy.
Sex during pregnancy is generally encouraged by the experts - unless you're very miscarriage-prone (in which case, the advice is to leave off for the first few critical months), they see no reason why the hanky-panky shouldn't continue unabated. That's not to say the couple concerned doesn't have issues with the whole area of How's Your Father, of course. Morning sickness, over-tender boobs and exhaustion can all contribute to a low mojo in the recently impregnated woman. Meanwhile, men can find the concept of "something else up there" a bit of a performance-dampener and as the foetus gets bigger, there are concerns about accidentally squishing the future offspring in-utero in the throes of passion. Then there are the women who feel like big lumps of unattractively wobbling flesh as pregnancy enters its later stages and the men who involuntarily envisage the Fat Slags in Viz and can't help making unflattering and enshrinkening comparisons with their expectant partners.
I'm pleased to report that none of the above problems have affected Theo and me. In fact, the only thing that's prevented the frequency of our sex life being as high as previously has been late night fatigue, morning medical appointments and early Spanish lessons. If anything, pregnancy has enhanced the quality of our carnal relations, despite the necessary diminuendo in acrobatics and the restriction of positions for bump-avoidance reasons. I don't know whether it's the pregnancy hormones, the yoga (which includes a move aimed at "freeing and encouraging the flow of sexual energy") or simple practice, but achieving climax certainly seems to have become more effortless in recent months, which has got to be a bonus. Not that things in that department were ever bad, I hasten to add, but considerably more time and energy was required to get there previously and I'm only human.
I think we're also aware that the days of our - relatively - unfettered and spontaneous sex-life are now severely numbered, so here's to matrimonial bliss and tranquility while it lasts. Not to mention the rumpy pumpy.
Friday, 13 November 2009
Português próxima
I've just finished reading Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier, which I really enjoyed. Essentially a story of a teacher of ancient languages voyage of self-discovery triggered by a chance meeting with an unnamed Portuguese woman it was very enjoyable and thought provoking, putting me in mind of Sophie's World (though without the massive plot twist). The book is littered with quotations and phrases in Portuguese, which I was very pleasantly surprised to find I mostly understood - most of the nouns are similar to their Spanish counterparts, while the verbs and articles follow the same rules as other Romance languages. Pronunciation is the major difference. Anyway, I think I'll make a start learning Portuguese next. When I've finally mastered Spanish of course. So 2020 then.
Actually I'm feeling more and more confident about Spanish. I still litter my conversation with mistakes, but I'm generally understood and I usually understand. As we've been negotiating our unborn child's process through Madrid's health service we've both been called upon to engage with Spanish with a greater frequency than before, while hanging out with some of my former students (who have a lower level of English than our Pueblo Ingles friends) has meant we socialise more and more in the language. We've also been going along to free lessons at International House again - really these are training classes for new Spanish teachers, but the need guinea pigs, so we get them free. We've made some good friends among some of the regular attendees, although why there aren't more people taking advantage of them I don't know; often there's been just 3 of us in a class. Still, it means we get loads of attention.
Actually I'm feeling more and more confident about Spanish. I still litter my conversation with mistakes, but I'm generally understood and I usually understand. As we've been negotiating our unborn child's process through Madrid's health service we've both been called upon to engage with Spanish with a greater frequency than before, while hanging out with some of my former students (who have a lower level of English than our Pueblo Ingles friends) has meant we socialise more and more in the language. We've also been going along to free lessons at International House again - really these are training classes for new Spanish teachers, but the need guinea pigs, so we get them free. We've made some good friends among some of the regular attendees, although why there aren't more people taking advantage of them I don't know; often there's been just 3 of us in a class. Still, it means we get loads of attention.
Saturday, 20 June 2009
swimming and studying
My plan to spend every morning/lunchtime last week in the pool was scuppered by an e mail Kate received on Tuesday night. Anabel, the training coordinator at International House, needed some extra students for her course for new Spanish teachers, with the lessons (which would be free for us) running from 9.30am until 11.30am every morning - were we available?
It was very nice of her to think of us - we'd obviously built up a reputation as 'good' students - but I was a little confused as at the end of the last course in May she had told us that there weren't any more until July. When we turned up on Thursday, it became clear that what she had meant was - "there weren't any more for your level." Kate and I, previously among the best students in our Spanish classes, are now firmly chasing the game, having joined a class that is clearly more advanced than our last.
Our very first exercise centered around a tense we'd never come across before, the pluscuamperfecto, which is formed by using the imperfect tense of haber as an auxiliary verb with the main verb in past participle. As this is basically the same as French, and as its usage is the same as the English past perfect, we were quickly able to grasp the salient points, though our usage continued to be clumsy as we'd only just got the hang of past participles, preterito and the imperfect tense, let alone using them in unison. Confused? So were we.
Here's an example:
Cuando llegre al stadio, el partido ya habia empezado = (when I arrived at the stadium, the match had already started.)
'llegre' here is in the preterito indefinido, the Spanish equivalent of the English present simple, 'habia empezado' being the pluscuamperfecto of empezar (to start); like the English past perfect its used to talk about a finished action in the past that had happened before something else happened. So in order to use this tense correctly we had to remember the endings and formation of three other tenses!
Later in the class we were thrown into verb collocations - which verbs are followed by an infinitive and which by a gerund. Seeing as we've never been taught how to form the gerund, this was definitely asking us to run before we can walk.... we're just about keeping up! However, I haven't let all of this set me back; I've still managed to go swimming 6 days out of 7 this week!
Our very first exercise centered around a tense we'd never come across before, the pluscuamperfecto, which is formed by using the imperfect tense of haber as an auxiliary verb with the main verb in past participle. As this is basically the same as French, and as its usage is the same as the English past perfect, we were quickly able to grasp the salient points, though our usage continued to be clumsy as we'd only just got the hang of past participles, preterito and the imperfect tense, let alone using them in unison. Confused? So were we.
Here's an example:
Cuando llegre al stadio, el partido ya habia empezado = (when I arrived at the stadium, the match had already started.)
'llegre' here is in the preterito indefinido, the Spanish equivalent of the English present simple, 'habia empezado' being the pluscuamperfecto of empezar (to start); like the English past perfect its used to talk about a finished action in the past that had happened before something else happened. So in order to use this tense correctly we had to remember the endings and formation of three other tenses!
Later in the class we were thrown into verb collocations - which verbs are followed by an infinitive and which by a gerund. Seeing as we've never been taught how to form the gerund, this was definitely asking us to run before we can walk.... we're just about keeping up! However, I haven't let all of this set me back; I've still managed to go swimming 6 days out of 7 this week!
Monday, 9 February 2009
Spanish lessons
We went to our first Spanish lesson this morning. 9.30am up at the International House branch Nuevos Ministerios. Naturally, being English, we were muy punctuales. There were only 5 of us to start with, outnumbered by the trainee Spanish Teachers giving us our free lessons as they practised their skills on us. Susan - a Canadian au pair, here for 6 months, who spoke even less Spanish than Kate and I - Ababacar - a student from Senegal, who seemed far too advanced for this beginner's group - and Ibrahima - the youngest at 16, also from Senegal, here to play football. The teachers were very nice, confident and clear, taking us through ice-breakers and basics - introductions, numbers and the alphabet. Nothing we didn't really already know, but it was good to have the formal structure of lessons. Plus we get to practice our French after class with Ababacar and Ibrahima!!
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