Posts Tagged ‘learning Spanish’

Learning Spanish Week 8

Monday, March 7th, 2011

Unfortunately, there were only two lessons this week, therefore, there was not very much done. We continued learning Imperfect Tense in Spanish, getting more and more confused when it is supposed to be used. A lot of practice exercises maybe helped to produce some general knowledge but didn’t help much to understand the difference between Past Preterito and Past Continues. Ehhh…

We also learned about the gender in Spanish as very often the ending of the word determine the gender but as always there is a number of exceptions…

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Learning Spanish Week 7

Monday, February 28th, 2011

This week was probably the most painful. We were revising what we have learnt. I often felt that I cannot take anymore and needed to get out of the room. It is sometimes depressing how much work and time it takes to learn a foreign language and how quickly you forget it without practice. The grammar is obviously the most depressing part; you keep on asking yourself and your poor teacher “WHY?” What is the point of this stupid rule? Eh, life, pura vida…

We also leant Imperfect Tense in Spanish which seems to be rather easy grammatically (only three exceptions!!!) but has very confusing usage. Practice makes perfect!

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Learning Spanish Week 6

Monday, February 21st, 2011

This week was relatively easy, no more suffering from irregular verbs! YES!

We learned comparative sentences and the words and, of course, exceptions. Also we spent a considerable amount of time checking what we have learnt in the past. We should have an exam next week which is ought to reflect where are our week points. Let’s see how it goes!

Another big theme this week was dedicated to the usage of Spanish prepositions “por” and “para”. It is very confusing, to all the foreigners who are learning Spanish, to use correctly the above mentioned prepositions. We are not an exception and having difficulties using them.

Our teacher was very generous this whole week. She brought every new day some new typical Costa Rican food most of which we really enjoyed!

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Learning Spanish Week 3

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

Another week has passed; we are still working hard on our Spanish, though I am completely lost in verbs. I just don’t seem to be able to remember them. Anyway, I just need more practice.

This week was dedicated to learning irregular verbs in the present and in the past. There is still a lot of practice in front of us but we went through a lot of material. We also had a lesson about the usage of two verbs in Spanish that mean the same – “to know”.

Learning Spanish, I keep on asking myself why does this language have the reputation of being easy? Honestly, I don’t understand it. The nouns in Spanish can be masculine and feminine, singular and plural, the articles of the nouns can change as well as in plural the endings of the nouns. Talking about the verbs is another story. The verbs change in present and the past (it is what we have learned so far) depending on the pronoun. The amount of exceptions is rather fascinating. I understand now why, despite that a third of the world now speak Spanish (Spain and all Latin America except Brasilia), the international language remains English.

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Learning Spanish Week 2

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

The second week of studying Spanish went through mostly learning and remembering Spanish verbs: regular verbs in present, regular verbs in past, irregular verbs in the present. Ouch!

Special attention was dedicated to the verb “gusta(n)”. We also learned a “simple future”, an equivalent in English would be “I am going to”. We went through extensive vocabulary as well: useful words on the road, in the classroom, on the beach, in the restaurant.

I fear the biggest problem is that most Spanish speaking individuals speak so fast it is almost impossible to identify the words.

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Learning Spanish Week 1

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

This has been the first week of learning Spanish. The results are quite optimistic. At least if we are lost somewhere we are able to ask for directions or for a glass of water. There were five lessons, two hours each. Firstly, we learned all the numbers up to million, though it is still great fun to remember all of them. We also learned how to ask what time is it now and the possible answers. There were obviously a lot of new words to learn, last week we learned the vocabulary about family, body parts, food, days of week, months and colours as well as greetings and simply asking “How are you?”

The most important theme was around the verb “to be”. Apparently, there are five different verbs in Spanish for the verb “to be”: Ser, Estar, Tener, Hacer and Haber. All of them are used in different situations and unfortunately they change depending on the pronoun.

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