Welcome everyone!
Join me on my adventure as I dive into the world of learning Spanish.
Back in 2016, I spent roughly 5 months travelling through South America. Within that time, I traveled to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. I can honestly say this was the best time of my life. I was captivated by the beautiful culture in these Latin countries. This stemmed from how smooth and romantic the native language is, which is why I chose to learn Spanish through our semester in EDTC 300.
As I did travel to Spanish speaking countries for 5 months, I did not learn as much Spanish as you would think, or that I was hoping for. As a solo traveler, I would often stay at popular hostels to meet other tourists from all around the world. As this was a great way to meet people, the default language we would always speak was English, hindering my learning of the native language. I would say I do know more than the average Joe but not as much as I would like to know. My vocabulary is decent, especially when it comes to a restaurant setting, as I needed to learn this quickly to be able to order food when I went out on my own. I also have a pretty strong understanding on how to conjugate verbs but could definitely improve on that area as well. Where I lack is forming fluent sentences. When I attempted to speak Spanish, most locals had an idea of what I was trying to say because I could piece together a few words, however I was unable to make them flow smoothly into a sentence. I also found that the pronunciation on many worlds could use some work.
Throughout the last couple of years, I have used the app called Duolingo. As I have used this in the past, I don’t think I have ever been overly consistent while using it. Once again, I found this app was great for the vocabulary aspect but not great from sentence structure. Maybe as I get further into the app, this would change. I have also taken one Spanish class here at the University of Regina. Outside of that, I haven’t really explored any other resources to assist me in learning the language. Throughout this semester, I am hoping to not only become a more consistent user on Duolingo but am also eager to find other online resources that can assist in my learning. As of now, I am unsure in what resources I am going to explore but will keep you all posted in the up coming weeks! If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!
Until next week, bye.
I also took Spanish at University and the struggle was REAL!! Duolingo did help me quite a bit (enough to pass the class) but I did not nearly as much as I hoped. I look forward to seeing what apps you find as Spanish is still something I would love to learn.
That’s awesome that you traveled to 5 countries in South America! The only country I’ve been to in South America is Ecuador, but I want to go to Peru someday. I spent a few days in Quito and the rest of the trip somewhere in the Amazon Jungle. My Spanish is very limited so I’m grateful that there were Spanish speakers in the group that could translate. I’ve always been interested in learning Spanish – maybe one day I’ll take the time to learn. Best of luck with learning Spanish!