Learning a language is a very humbling process. The last 6 weeks have been intense and tiring: hours of one-on-one study with my 'maestro' (teacher), more hours of homework early in the morning or late at night, hundreds of mis-spoken sentences, thousands of mispronounced words.
The other day I was studying at Espresso Americano (the local version of Starbucks) and I was reading my Catrachito book... It is a reader for 3rd graders here in honduras and is perfect for where I am at. The stories in the book contain a mixture of all the verb tenses used in a straight-forward way. I usually read the stories, circle all the verbs, and write the tense of each verb so I understand how all the words are being used. The funny thing is, I don't think I could do this in English. I know more Spanish grammar now than I know English. I know the present indicative, the imperfect indicative, the preterite, the future, the pluscuamperfect (a completed action in the past), potential, simple subjunctive, etc. I guess I have learned more about english since I now know what all these tenses mean in english as well. It has been really great.
I am now done with all the main grammar. I have two weeks of school left, which will be mostly practicing all the tenses together. My homework now is mostly writing and telling stories so that I learn to use all that I have learned. One thought that always gets me exctited though is that I am over the hump! The hard part is over and it will continue to get easier from here on out. The important thing now is to have the discipline to speak my new language often and to read and write as much as possible. Lidia and my plan is to speak Spanish at the house when we go back to Tulsa. How exciting it will be to finally be able to say that I am 'fluent'!!!
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2 comments:
Way to go Matt!!! Alex and I wish we could read 3rd grade Spanish readers too. Great job. Beth
Ada will feel very complimented that you feel so grown up...she's about to start 3rd Grade. I don't say that to beat you down. Ada, as you know, is very fluent in English, she just needs to understand grammar and add vocab, so you are doing great!
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