FINALLY after almost 2 months here in Spain, I feel myself rounding a little corner with my Spanish. I HAVE learned lots of new vocab words but thats not really the corner I'm talking about. In one of my earlier posts I talk about how I was making mistakes that were so obvious and was mixing things up that I already knew. Well, I think I am starting to move out of that phase. I don't know what a linguist would call it but for the first several weeks I was mixing up the gender and 1st and 2nd person and all sorts of ugliness. Well, two days in row now I have had people I work with tell me that my Spanish is improving. I asked Lola what she meant by that because its hard to notice your own progress some times. She said that I am talking faster.
A few weeks back I was getting pretty impatient and frustrated with myself, so I put the word out that I wanted to do some intercambios. Now, I do 2 per week. One is with an 18 year old girl who is really cute and wants to better her English and the other is with a teacher from my school who has been helping me SO much by listening to me and correcting me nicely when I mess up and writing things down for me. And then, of course, my roommate Irene has helped me a ton. I learn lots of slang and cuss words from her daily. Thanks Irene!!! I mean it. She is really helping me to understand all the colloquial phrases and insults and what not. All necessary stuff.
Another really cool thing happened 2 nights ago when I got back from 2 hours of dance class in Spanish. I was trying to go to sleep and my mind wouldn't shut off like usual. But what I noticed right before I drifted off, was that I had been thinking in Spanish. YYYYEEESSSSS!!! You know what that means....yep, I'm on my way. And the next logical thing to happen is something I've wanted FOREVER and how people determine that they are fluent usually....yep, you guessed it, to dream in another language. Okay, I am gettin myself way too excited here. I just need to relax, keep doin what I'm doin and let it unfold.
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Linguists would call it the "U-shaped Learning Curve." Sometimes, as things get organized in your brain, they seem to get worse before they get better. They start out ok, then get all mixed up, then finally begin to work themselves out. (Hehe, this knowledge is a result of my MA TESOL program that has been much more focused on linguistics than I would have preferred, but I guess there are some benefits :)
ReplyDeleteWell, its sounds like they taught you right in your linguistics class. I didn't expect it to happen quite like it did and that phase lasted quite a few months. I felt like an idiot all the time. I am just now really starting to feel comfortable with the language and now its time to go. How much time have you spent abroad Zosha? I remember that you spent some time in Mexico. And are you going to be totally done with school when you come to Spain?
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