One of my life goals is to become fluent in Spanish. I've been taking Spanish classes since the 7th grade, and I have an undergraduate minor in the language. I also studied intensively in Guatemala for seven weeks several years ago, and I had to pass a Spanish translation exam as part of the exit criteria for my Master's program. I've read a few full-length books in Spanish, in addition to plenty of short stories and news articles. I've also traveled to Mexico twice and Costa Rica once, and I live in a place where Spanish is not uncommon. Yet somehow, I'm still not "fluent."
I feel like I can read more or less fluently, and I don't do a terrible job understanding spoken academic Spanish, but throw in some regionalisms or speak at a quick pace, and I'm lost. I've been watching Masterchef España, and although I don't have any trouble following along with the program, I can't honestly say that I understand more than 60-70% of what's being said, and sometimes that number is much lower. When it comes to actually speaking Spanish, I stumble a lot and make mistakes. While I feel like I'm capable of communicating any idea I need to (as long as the vocabulary isn't too technical), that communication will be really messy and difficult.
I find this to be tremendously frustrating. I've devoted hours upon hours to studying Spanish, both formally in classes and at home on my own. I use Memrise to improve my vocabulary (1000+ words and phrases added to my vocabulary at this point), I read Spanish when I can, and I try to watch Spanish-language TV shows. I've become more aggressive with my learning in the past year or so, and I've noticed some considerable improvements, but I still feel like that vague goal of achieving fluency is still very far away.
That's why I signed up for Spanish conversation classes at a Spanish school down the street a few weeks ago. But I went to my second class yesterday, and I've decided I won't be going back. The classes costs $136 per month with two hours of instruction per week, which I think is reasonable but is still a major expense for me. I would be willing to pay that if I thought the classes would make a difference, but I don't think they will. Most of the other students are stuck at about the level I am, and the instructor doesn't seem to have any plan for helping us to progress. I was basically paying to hang out with a native Spanish speaker and talk about whatever topic came up, with his attention divided between four or five other students. It wasn't working.
I don't want the structure of a traditional classroom because I don't want to spend all of my time going over grammar I've already covered or doing reading assignments that I could do on my own at home, but I also need some kind of plan. I need an instructor who will introduce a common vocabulary we can use and build upon, with a range of topics we can discuss. I also need someone to correct my mistakes, which this instructor didn't do. I can speak Spanish at home for free; I was paying for someone to help me improve, and I wasn't getting that.
My plan for Spanish now is to continue what I've been doing, building my vocabulary and working on the grammar little by little with the plan to go back to Guatemala next summer. In Guatemala, I can pay for one-on-one tutoring for four to five hours per day, and I'll be immersed in Spanish everywhere I go. That seems like the only practical way to build my speaking skills, so that's what I'm going to rely on. Thank goodness I'm a teacher and have the time off to make this possible. Whether I ever have the opportunity to take the foreign service language test or not, I'm going to do everything I can to master this language!
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
The Red Cross, Waiting for the School Year to Begin
Last week, I attended the Red Cross new volunteer orientation, and today I was contacted by one of their coordinators about the positions I expressed an interest in. First off, let me just say that getting started as a volunteer with the Red Cross is not a quick process; you can't just show up at your local chapter and start handing out juice boxes to disaster victims. I'm going to have to complete at least two more 3-hour classes and fill out a lot more paperwork before I can begin doing anything at all. And that's what I like about the Red Cross. I think I'm going to be able to gain some real job knowledge and do meaningful things with them because they require a lot of training and a serious commitment.
I don't have much information yet about the international casework position, but I did hear from the disaster action team leader today, and he gave me a general overview of how the shifts work. I'm limited to the weekend shift because of my job, but I'm also worried because the weekend shift starts Friday night and lasts until Monday at 7:00am. If you're called to a disaster site, the call can take several hours to complete, which wouldn't allow me a lot of time to get to work by 8:00, especially considering my long commute. I'm guessing I can get a substitute if that happens; it likely wouldn't be more than once a month, and only if something happened in that Monday morning timeframe. We'll see how it goes.
I'm really excited about being part of a disaster team, and some of the duties sound like they could relate to what consular officers do in American citizen services, so I think volunteering will help me toward my career goals while also giving me an opportunity to help in my community. The only problem is that I have to wait a month until the next training opportunity, so it's business as usual until then.
On the job front, I went to my first department meeting yesterday at the school where I'll be teaching, and I had the opportunity to see my classroom. It was nicer than I expected, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it full of middle schoolers working hard to fill their little heads with new language skills (if there's any room left with all the hormones pulsing in there). I know that it won't be as smooth or simple as the image I have in my mind, but I need to focus on positive thoughts before the full reality of the situation sets in. Two more weeks to go. It seems like all I do anymore is wait!
I don't have much information yet about the international casework position, but I did hear from the disaster action team leader today, and he gave me a general overview of how the shifts work. I'm limited to the weekend shift because of my job, but I'm also worried because the weekend shift starts Friday night and lasts until Monday at 7:00am. If you're called to a disaster site, the call can take several hours to complete, which wouldn't allow me a lot of time to get to work by 8:00, especially considering my long commute. I'm guessing I can get a substitute if that happens; it likely wouldn't be more than once a month, and only if something happened in that Monday morning timeframe. We'll see how it goes.
I'm really excited about being part of a disaster team, and some of the duties sound like they could relate to what consular officers do in American citizen services, so I think volunteering will help me toward my career goals while also giving me an opportunity to help in my community. The only problem is that I have to wait a month until the next training opportunity, so it's business as usual until then.
On the job front, I went to my first department meeting yesterday at the school where I'll be teaching, and I had the opportunity to see my classroom. It was nicer than I expected, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it full of middle schoolers working hard to fill their little heads with new language skills (if there's any room left with all the hormones pulsing in there). I know that it won't be as smooth or simple as the image I have in my mind, but I need to focus on positive thoughts before the full reality of the situation sets in. Two more weeks to go. It seems like all I do anymore is wait!
Friday, August 9, 2013
Reading List, Volunteering, Spanish
I finished Americans in Waiting last night, so that's another book to check off the Foreign Service reading list. Since I'm interested in the consular cone, it's especially important that I understand immigration issues, and I know that I learned a lot from this book. The legalese weighed me down in parts, but overall it was an easy read and very useful. I'm going to be teaching middle school ESL this year, so immigration policy has a huge impact on the lives of my students and their families, and this book helped me understand those issues better.
After finishing Americans in Waiting, I immediately started reading A Peace to End All Peace: The Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. It's a page-turner so far, and I'm not being sarcastic! It's much longer than the last couple of books I've read, though, so it will probably take a while to finish this one.
Aside from my reading, I've spent most of this week attending the Learn2Inspire academy, which is a week of summer professional development for teachers in my district. I used my commute to listen to the BBC Global podcast and PRI's America Abroad podcast, and I think it was a great use of my time.
The academy itself was interesting, and I'm excited to start teaching later this month, even if it's going to cut into my study time. I also picked up a couple of teaching books that I want to read before classes start, but I think they'll be quick reads and shouldn't interfere too much with my foreign service reading.
After one of the sessions on Wednesday, I drove to the medical district for the Red Cross new volunteer orientation. The presenter and most of the other volunteers were all retirees, which is what I usually find when I do volunteer work. It would be nice to meet some people my age, but I don't think that's ever going to happen for me; my friends tend toward the geriatric. The orientation included information about some of the different work they have available, and I marked that I was most interested in doing international case work, which involves trying to reunite families that have been separated by natural disasters, war, or other catastrophic events. I'm not sure exactly how to go about that, but they offer training. It sounds like it would involve making a lot of phone calls to refugee camps and hospitals abroad. I also marked an interest in being part of a disaster action team, which would mean being on-call at certain times of the day and night and going out to disaster areas (mostly fires, they said) to check up on victims and offer them whatever services they might need that the Red Cross can offer. Ideally, I'd like to do both of those jobs. There might also be an opportunity to give presentations about international humanitarian law, which sounds really fun, but it wasn't listed on our job sheet, so I added it at the bottom of the form just in case it becomes available. The Red Cross is a fantastic organization, and I'm really looking forward to volunteering with them and taking some more of their classes. I'm still waiting on their volunteer coordinator to call me and discuss the possibilities in greater depth, so hopefully that will happen soon.
In addition to all of that, I just signed up for an advanced Spanish conversation class that meets Saturday mornings. Tomorrow will be my first day. I'm not entirely sure that I'm an "advanced" Spanish speaker, but I figure I can bring myself to that level with some practice, and I'm up for the challenge. I've taken advanced grammar and composition and advanced speaking classes at university before, and I've read a couple of Spanish-language novels in the past few months, so I don't expect to be completely out of my league, but we'll see. The school is less than half a mile from where I live, which was one of the deciding factors when I chose it: it doesn't get much better than that, especially if I have to be there at 9 AM on a Saturday.
Meanwhile, I'm plugging away with my vocabulary work on Memrise.com, and I just started developing a grammar course for myself on that site. I'm not sure how well grammar will work with the way the site is designed, but just entering the information is a form of studying, so it can't be a total loss. I'm working my way through an "essential Spanish grammar review" document that I found online, and it's going well so far. I can recognize everything without much trouble, it's just a matter of using it in speech. That's where I struggle, and that's what I'm hoping to improve with this Saturday class.
I know I'm going to become incredibly busy once the school year starts, and some of these projects might have to fall to the wayside, but right now I feel full of energy and ready to tackle all of this head-on. Hasta la victoria, siempre!
After finishing Americans in Waiting, I immediately started reading A Peace to End All Peace: The Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. It's a page-turner so far, and I'm not being sarcastic! It's much longer than the last couple of books I've read, though, so it will probably take a while to finish this one.
Aside from my reading, I've spent most of this week attending the Learn2Inspire academy, which is a week of summer professional development for teachers in my district. I used my commute to listen to the BBC Global podcast and PRI's America Abroad podcast, and I think it was a great use of my time.
The academy itself was interesting, and I'm excited to start teaching later this month, even if it's going to cut into my study time. I also picked up a couple of teaching books that I want to read before classes start, but I think they'll be quick reads and shouldn't interfere too much with my foreign service reading.
After one of the sessions on Wednesday, I drove to the medical district for the Red Cross new volunteer orientation. The presenter and most of the other volunteers were all retirees, which is what I usually find when I do volunteer work. It would be nice to meet some people my age, but I don't think that's ever going to happen for me; my friends tend toward the geriatric. The orientation included information about some of the different work they have available, and I marked that I was most interested in doing international case work, which involves trying to reunite families that have been separated by natural disasters, war, or other catastrophic events. I'm not sure exactly how to go about that, but they offer training. It sounds like it would involve making a lot of phone calls to refugee camps and hospitals abroad. I also marked an interest in being part of a disaster action team, which would mean being on-call at certain times of the day and night and going out to disaster areas (mostly fires, they said) to check up on victims and offer them whatever services they might need that the Red Cross can offer. Ideally, I'd like to do both of those jobs. There might also be an opportunity to give presentations about international humanitarian law, which sounds really fun, but it wasn't listed on our job sheet, so I added it at the bottom of the form just in case it becomes available. The Red Cross is a fantastic organization, and I'm really looking forward to volunteering with them and taking some more of their classes. I'm still waiting on their volunteer coordinator to call me and discuss the possibilities in greater depth, so hopefully that will happen soon.
In addition to all of that, I just signed up for an advanced Spanish conversation class that meets Saturday mornings. Tomorrow will be my first day. I'm not entirely sure that I'm an "advanced" Spanish speaker, but I figure I can bring myself to that level with some practice, and I'm up for the challenge. I've taken advanced grammar and composition and advanced speaking classes at university before, and I've read a couple of Spanish-language novels in the past few months, so I don't expect to be completely out of my league, but we'll see. The school is less than half a mile from where I live, which was one of the deciding factors when I chose it: it doesn't get much better than that, especially if I have to be there at 9 AM on a Saturday.
Meanwhile, I'm plugging away with my vocabulary work on Memrise.com, and I just started developing a grammar course for myself on that site. I'm not sure how well grammar will work with the way the site is designed, but just entering the information is a form of studying, so it can't be a total loss. I'm working my way through an "essential Spanish grammar review" document that I found online, and it's going well so far. I can recognize everything without much trouble, it's just a matter of using it in speech. That's where I struggle, and that's what I'm hoping to improve with this Saturday class.
I know I'm going to become incredibly busy once the school year starts, and some of these projects might have to fall to the wayside, but right now I feel full of energy and ready to tackle all of this head-on. Hasta la victoria, siempre!
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