I’ve been seriously neglectful
jewel March 16th, 2009
I just realized today that it has been more than a month since I blogged. It wasn’t intentional, I’ve just been really busy with small patches of lazy to counter it. Also, I haven’t gotten out of the house much yet this spring, so rather than droll on and on about what I wish I were doing, I haven’t been writing much at all.
I have been busy, though. On top of working full time and keeping up with the domestic (read boring) stuff, I’ve been working out 5 days a week and also been attempting, once again, to learn Spanish. I’m more optimistic about the Spanish thing this time around.
I ran across this program called Fluenz. They are a fairly new competitor of Rosetta Stone. I’ve tried Rosetta Stone for other languages, but I didn’t really care for the format. Rosetta Stone seemed more concerned with learning the words rather than how to use them, so I quickly lost interest. I’ve tried a number of other methods of learning Spanish, none of which I stuck with for more than a few weeks. One method was an Adult Education program. I loved it in concept, but in practice I found it moved way too slow and it became tedious. Only meeting once a week, I felt we spent way too much time reviewing than we spent on learning new stuff. After 5 weeks of being drilled about the verb ‘to be’, I simply couldn’t take it anymore. Surely Spanish has more verbs than that!
So far, I really like the Fluenz method. I’ve done the first 6 lessons in about 2 weeks and I feel like I have learned a lot. Presently I feel comfortable enough for a bit of small talk and also to order food and drinks in a restaurant and generally interact with a waiter. Since much of our last trip to Mexico was spent talking to waiters, I’m loving this. We’ve also covered how to ask a few other questions and what not. Where I’ve presently left off covered a lot of “where” questions and close vs far, small vs large, with vs without, here vs there. And a whole bunch of nouns.
It is my hope that I continue through this program and actually learn to communicate. We’ve planned our next trip to Mexico for later this year, so I have better keep it up!
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You’re forgiven.
Life takes over and then all of a sudden time has flown. I’m certain I owe you an email, actually.
Thanks for the info on Fluenz, I had been flirting with Rosetta Stone for awhile but not gotten started. I will definitely check out Fluenz as well!
Have a great one –
Life really does take over sometimes — much much truth in that statement. Years have been known to pass me by that way.
I really am enjoying learning Spanish this time around. And I’ve even got a couple coworkers that are native speakers that help me out every now and again.
As Mark says, that’s life! I am usually good about my e-mail, but sometimes I get busy and neglect it. Then I start getting the “Are you OK?” e-mails.
Good luck with the Spanish. I make periodic attempts to revitalize my very rusty and basic German, but so far no attempt has really taken hold. I see the Fluenz does not offer it – at least so far. For me, I think a total immersion approach would be most helpful, although even having a few friends I could converse with would be helpful.
Clear skies, Alan
I’m horrible at pretty much any means of communication, actually. Email is the easiest to keep up with, but I often don’t manage it either. I’m such a slacker.
I took a couple years of German back in high school. I’ve forgotten nearly all of it by now, but I wouldn’t mind picking it up again myself. A few years ago, I picked up the Rosetta Stone German and also Russian (I took a bit of Russian in college) with the intention of relearning them, but as I mentioned I really didn’t care for the format. I just sold the German set, actually.
There are a couple people where I work that are native German speakers, too, so if I did decide to pick it back up, I’d have people to talk to, which is always nice.