Quisiera decirles “Hola a todos!” Thank you for coming and reading my blog about my ELI and the process of learning the Spanish language from the ground up. So far we are over a third of the way through the semester, and that is kind of terrifying. Having learned French already, I know that to have a confident grasp in a language takes a lot of time, and I am very worried that I won’t be able to accomplish as much as I want to in this ELI. I always knew I would have to continue to study the language after this semester is over, but I wanted to be able to at least hold conversations. I still have 11 weeks to practice, but a lot of that time will be spent compiling my portfolio.
Despite these complications, I have truly enjoyed studying the Spanish Language. I have just met with my mentor, Irina Kappler-Crookston, with whom I spent ten days in another country and got to know well. She told me to officially rank myself on my level of Spanish in each of the four facets of language (reading, writing, speaking, listening) according to the ACTFL guidelines. This will be useful so that both of us are aware of where I truly am and how far I can reasonably advance. I’m excited to have an actual measurement of my progress. It is kind of unfortunate, however, that I did not have this at the very beginning of the semester. I know I have become a lot better since then already, and so we won’t be able to get a really accurate sample from start to finish.
Thanks to a suggestion from Mrs. Mullin, I have decided to start finding out about the different cultures and language aspects within a lot of different Spanish-speaking countries. I never really thought about it, but it is really amazing that the influence the Spanish from hundreds of years ago had spread throughout almost all of the Western Hemisphere. Because Spanish is so spread out, it is not surprising that there are lots of differences throughout the world. There are different accents, pronunciations, and meanings of certain words. Irina enlightened me on how confusing a conversation can become between two people from different countries. I will have to choose a certain accent, or regional dialect, to base my comprehension of Spanish on, because it would be too difficult to learn everything all at once. I have heard that Ecuadoran and Bolivian Spanish is the clearest and most standardized, so I am going to be sure to look more into those.
French was the language that really inspired me to want to learn languages for the rest of my life. I knew it would be a logical succession to go from French to Spanish, as those two are the most related languages and I have the most resources to learn the two of them. The thing I like to keep in mind when I am studying languages is how many more people I will eventually be able to communicate, and after a while, connect with. The more adept you are at speaking another person’s language, the better you will be able to connect with them. Because there are so many people who speak Spanish, and most of them live in places I want to go to, I can’t wait until I will be able to call myself advanced.
Gracias por leer mi blog! Espero que entienda por qué estudio el español.
~Ethan
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