Monday, September 14, 2009

5 Down, 25 to Go

I have to say that this class was a bit of a downer after the last one - more basic verb conjugations in the present tense and a bit of slang. On the bright side, it was nice to get some explanations on the different vocabulary used for comparisons. Although I do have a base of Spanish to work with, I feel that often times my speech (and writing) is very basic. Learning how to express subtle differences when comparing things will hopefully kick it up a notch and sound more refined.

So far in this blog I've done a lot of comparing Bueno, entonces... Learn Spanish to Rosetta Stone, however, most of it has been in favor of the former. While Bueno, entonces... Learn Spanish teaches "conversational Spanish" I actually think Rosetta Stone does a better job of using context to teach verbs and vocabulary. Rosetta Stone is much more visual. For example when demonstrating the difference between "aquí (here)" and "allí (there)," Rosetta Stone shows pictures of a yellow ball up close and a red ball far away allowing you to deduce the meanings of the two words yourself. I am a visual learner and that really worked for me. If you are a visual learner I think you may have some difficulty with Bueno, entonces... Learn Spanish. Yes, it does have some simple animation and displays all of the Spanish words in writing, but that is about it. I think you could listen to the sound without the video and nearly get the same out of it.

Back to Rosetta Stone - the one thing I really hated about it was how long it spent on the same concept or set of vocabulary words. You could spend over an hour on the same set of 3 words doing exercises in writing, grammar, speaking, etc. It would have been much better if the repetition was spaced out. Hopefully, Bueno, entonces... Learn Spanish does this and we will revisit a lot of the early concepts throughout the course. This, I believe, will give it a leg up on Rosetta Stone.

No comments:

Post a Comment