Despite the late arrival and getting unpacked and set up for the week, some of us met at 7:15am for breakfast in the cafeteria, which is just a short walk away from the dorm.
At 8am we began the formal part of our program by being immersed, or in my case, dunked in a Spanish class for those with little or no experience with the Spanish language. I fit into the "no experience" category. I have had 3 years of Latin and 3 years of French, but no Spanish at all.
The instructor, Dr. Zaira Rivera began the class with round after round of Spanish words, phrases, sentences, questions and whatever else I could not understand. She did not speak one word of English the entire first part of the class. This was a scheduled 2 hour class. I was wondering how I was going to make it through the next 20 minutes, let alone 2 hours. We started out by learning personal characteristices and physical features. We also covered some basic personal pronouns and verb use. We found out that while the Spanish language is spoken in 21 countries, the same word or in this case pronouns, may not be used in all places. A certain word used in Puerto Rico may or may not have the same meaning in the Dominican Republic or Cuba. This class left me totally drained because you had to look and listen to every word Zaira said. What I took away from this first Spanish class was how I felt after the first 10 minutes of being totally frustrated as to not knowing what was being said, yet being asked questions for which I did not know the answer. Even if I did, I would not be able to communicate it because I could not speak Spanish.
I now have a better appreciation of how students in similar situations feel when they don't understand something and just decide to shut down after the first 10 minutes or so. Even if they have a question, they may not be able to express it.
Some people are visual learners; some auditory learners; some a combination of both. This class was done exclusively in an auditory style. I needed some visual examples of the words being said and what they meant. If you don't preview them for pronunciation and meaning then commit them to memory, you are not going to do well on a test or quiz. To apply this to this weeks'experience, it is going to be very difficult to walk around San Juan and expect to fit in with little or no Spanish vocabulary. While we did have a list of words and topics in front of us, we only received that at the beginning of the class and had no chance to review them before the class started.
As class ended, we were given a homework assignment (all in Spanish) to translate some paragraphs relating to Puerto Rican culture, multiple ethnicities and racial composition among the Hispanic culture, communication, and family culture in the United States. Due Wednesday.
I like what you said about how people are different types of learners. I am a visual learner and I agree that it was harder to understand what she was saying when it was only auditory. We need to remember that when we go back into our classroom because our students won't necessarily learn best the way that works best for us. In a classroom there is going to be a wide range in the types of learners we have and we need to take that into consideration when we are teaching.
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