Another Missed Opportunity

Streak continued - another class that came and went without more complicated verb tenses being taught. Today's class (class 28) dealt mainly with lodging vocabulary. Different types of lodging were discussed (hotel, hostel, inn, etc) as well as types of rooms a person can reserve (single, double, etc). David and Jimena attempted a bit of role playing to demonstrate how an interaction between a hotel manager and a disgruntled guest might play out. It touched on how to complain about your room in a polite manner but didn't really discuss anything new.

It seems as though Bueno, entonces... Learn Spanish has gotten sucked into spending more time developing the storyline of David and Jimena than teaching conversational Spanish. Today's class played up the pseudo-jealousy Jimena has for David when it could have instead taught us about the past tense. The soap opera between the program's main characters has been a nice diversion at times throughout the course but should not be a substitute for content. Dense content interspersed with comic relief allows the listener to learn while having fun at the same time. Comedy without content can be obtained from much better media than language learning software.

Enough of my ranting. Let me tell you a little about the feedback I've been getting on my Spanish lately. I met with a new partner this week to practice my Spanish and got some really nice feedback. There are a still a lot of vocabulary I don't know and verb tenses I struggle with, but overall I am getting much more comfortable with what I know and am unafraid to attempt that which I don't know - learning a language comes much faster when this milestone/mindset is reached. Yesterday I travelled to Colonia, Uruguay with my family for a quick day trip. Using my Spanish I was able to navigate my way through renting a vehicle (souped-up golf cart), and even talking the rental car agent into giving us the special exception of dropping the cart off at a different rental location near our point of departure. The conversation actually went pretty smoothly, and made me happy with how my Spanish has progressed.