21 de diciembre de 2022

 

[How is your Spanish immersion going?]

Seccion llame "Goals para esta semana"

1. Tener una conversaccion para dos minutos
2. Leer siete libros de ninos 
3. Practicar mi pronunciación del alfabeto (primaria en las vocales)

Notas: Apologies for the long essay

Hey, it has been a while since I've written in this blog. So, let's start with a check-in since the last time I've blogged. Last week was a rough week, trying to balance and carve time to work on my Spanish. From that, I feel behind in my Activities and was playing the "catch up" game. I worked on my Spanish, but it wasn't my best effort. There were days, where it was part of my "to do list" so I felt like I was just checking it off my list and that it was not a priority. So, I worked on some activities in Duolingo, Language Transfer, and YouTube. (Honestly, I would give myself a "D" [being nice] for my efforts and progress. So, the next two weeks, my goal is to enforce my original routine to work on my Spanish in the mornings) Lastly, I had a lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and I wanted to speak Spanish with the waiter. I was afraid to do it, and it didn't happen. Part of me is afraid of making the ask because I believe that I might interrupt or disrupt someone else's day or that I might butcher the language. Afterwards, I kept thinking back to the Villains video, and that was all in my head. I don't know if anyone can relate to this?

This week so far has been a pretty good week. I've been staying on track with my lessons and activities. Recently, I've been adding more Spanish television into my immersion routine. Am I really a television person? No, but I tend to do other things when I'm on my laptop. My main goal has been to focus on my listening skills to recognize words and phrases. Eventually, I might make a log to take that progress because I know my listening and conversational skills are horrible! Those are the areas that I want to see a good improvement. 

Today, I watched/listened to an episode of Maya & Miguel (brings back childhood memories) and began watching Destinos. This is my first time watching it before, and I really like it. For the first episode, it begins by discussing how the program works. There is a storyline with diverse characters and plots while you are learning vocabulary. At the end of the episode, there is a section of Q & A for your comprehension. Even though the episode is listed as 30 minutes, I think the actual episode would be about 10 minutes long if that. Honestly, I put it on loop to replay to practice the vocabulary and to ensure that I understand what it is happening. However, the goal of the program is not for you to understand everything that is occurring but to get a gist of what is happening, which you can get from the characters' actions. I could go on about it, but I thought it is a cool program to watch as we are learning to acquire Spanish. Have you seen Destinos?

Also, I watched the "At the Doctor" scene with Dreaming Spanish. At first, I was a little apprehensive because of the Intermediate Spanish label, but I found that I was able to understand a great portion of what they discussed either from my knowledge of the vocab or from their actions/pictures in the scene. To make it even better, it was very funny to watch.

Lastly, I took a Zumba Spanish class on Duolingo. The class was entirely spoken in Spanish with few moments of English. I like it. We did some dance moves from various Latin dances (salsa, vallenato, etc.) I had moments, where I tripped over myself. 😹 I had fun, but it was tiring.