Wednesday, August 5, 2009

How I'm Improving My Spanish in 15 Minutes with a Study Partn

I have a Spanish study partner. Her name is Ino. She's from Puerto Rico. She's a friend I've known for a long time through my husband's friend. I've been very slow going in calling her just to practice Spanish.

Last Saturday I called her. We talked about our kids, she mentioned that she took them to the circus, and she talked about plans for a birthday party for her daughter. The conversation was great, but it was all in English. I told her, "Ok, how are we going to do this Spanish practice. I would not have a clue on how to talk about what we just talked about in Spanish."

So, she reviewed everything we talked about in Spanish and had me repeat words and phrases. If I didn't understand what she wanted me to repeat, I said, "No entiendo." Then she helped.

I enjoyed it.

She also gave me study and practice help:

1. Watch the news in Spanish or telenovelas. She said that's what she did when she was learning English, and that's all she would watch.

2. Have a Spanish word of the day and create as many sentences I can using that word. For example, house. The big house. The little house. The pink house. The house is over there. Come to my house. So, in Spanish this exercise would be casa. La casa grande. La casa pequeña. La casa rosa. La casa está allí. Ven a mi casa. (The next time I speak with her I'd ask her about using allá and aquella for over there.)

3. She also recommended a website called Live Mocha - where you can study Spanish (or any other language) for free and have community members help correct your usage. I'm trying it now, and will write a post about it later.

¡Hasta luego!

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