Physical Science building. my first real class at UCSC. the room filled with undergrad students, many of them freshmen. i’m excited.<\/p>\n
the teacher turns out to be a man of my heart. (does one say that in english?) he speaks no word of english in class, and his announcement that he speaks very little and bad english in general, reveals itself to be true when he reads the names of students (but he is playing, imagine for instance how non-english you can pronounce “jennifer”) and when he is dealing with students after the class (here the misunderstandings get a bit worrying, like when he is trying to say to a student that she must “wait” and she keeps understanding “why” and repeats him her reasons over and over again…). but more than that, he starts with a mini-lecture on the importance of grammar. my hero of the day. in the states and here at UCSC, he says, when you learn a language quieren hablar hablar hablar. be able to speak as soon as possible and have conversations. but you don’t manage to speak a language well because you don’t learn grammar<\/a>. and you don’t manage well with grammar because you don’t know english grammar. there is nothing particularly difficult about spanish grammar, but it is grammar. so it’s difficult because you’re learning about grammar for the first time, while you’re learning a new language. but there is no escape, you must know about grammar. (and all of this in spanish)<\/p>\n i instinctively love the guy.<\/p>\n i was expecting and kind of looking forward to learn spanish in one of its latin american forms, as in most of the classes here, but guess what, alvaro is from madrid. don’t worry, you’ll get used to my accent, he told the students.<\/p>\n it’s not sure yet that i can stay in the class. there seems to be a real problem with non-students taking classes when they are full, and this one is. but alvaro is helpful, advises to stick around for at least another week or two, and by then students always drop out. meanwhile monday there’s another examen de nivel. i’ll be studying spanish grammar all weekend…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Physical Science building. my first real class at UCSC. the room filled with undergrad students, many of them freshmen. i’m excited. the teacher turns out to be a man of my heart. (does one say that in english?) he speaks no word of english in class, and his announcement that he speaks very little and … Continue reading “spanish II”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}