What, Are You Going to Type All Day? (Or Are You Going to Practice Your Spanish)?

For some reason the YouTube video contains the same skit twice.  Just hit stop after first run.

 Remember Charo?  Boy, you must be old! (Just kidding).  Above is a skit she did on the Carol Burnett show way back then.  It's pretty funny. 

I've added a music file to this blog.  It's actually a very energetic and pretty instrumental with a Spanish rhythm.  To play it, just click the forward button on the little window on the right of the home page.  If it's not your taza de té, just hit the stop button.

I'm having second thoughts about adding all this multimedia to my blogs.  I've noticed that it now takes a few seconds longer for the blog to load, and I wonder if this is a real problem for readers with slower Internet service.  The purpose of my blogs has never been to showcase technology, but rather to talk about learning languages.  I'll have to re-evaluate all the bells and whistles as I go.

I read a lot of material on language acquisition.  Just as with any other topic, the opinions vary widely and one 'expert' will completely contradict the findings of another.  I think the reason for this is that everyone has her own reasons and goals for studying a specific language.  For example, right now I'm more interested in learning to comprehend spoken Spanish, either in movies or TV shows or in real life conversations with fluent speakers.  Another person, on the other hand, may be more interested in learning to read Spanish or Latin American literature or needs only the basic vocabulary and grammar for a trip to Barcelona or Mexico.  They may have no interest in watching films in Spanish or in carrying on an extended conversation in Spanish.  Perhaps all they want is to have the satisfaction of ordering a meal in a Spanish restaurant.  For each of the purposes, the learner may need to adapt a learning program that is primarily centered on her goals.  For my own purposes, I've concluded that I need to listen to and speak in Spanish every day.  Instruction material that have me reading and typing or writing all day seem to me for the most part counterproductive for my goals.  I use the all-audio Pimsleur system and spend several hours a day watching TV or films in Spanish or listening to Spanish audio recordings and songs.  That's not to say that I should completely eliminate all non-oral activities.  Reading is the best way I know to bolster vocabulary and writing grammar exercises helps solidify my learning.

So the point is that there is no one specific method that is tailor made for all learners of languages.  I registered for the Babbel online courses and though I'm a little disappointed that so much of it entails reading and typing, I do like their pronunciation tips and drills and the voice recognition.  Their written exercises are interwoven into typical conversations, a technique which avoids introducing vocabulary and sentence structures that are isolated from real conversation and context.  Still, I feel that all the typing is interfering with the aural component that I need to focus on.  But I'm supplementing that with Pimsleur and my YouTube viewing, so I should be fine.  It's all very logical:  If you want to read or write Spanish, find an instruction method that emphasizes that; if you want to understand spoken Spanish and eventually speak it, find a method that has you doing more listening and speaking.

I found that Google Hangouts is a good compromise.  Though it involves typing messages back and forth, because of its immediacy one does get the feel of having a conversation.  I feel that I've learned quite a bit from my daily pen-pal interaction in Hangouts.  Try it, if you have a Google account.