We are learning Spanish…oh yes we do. But oh our old grey cells inside our much-too-full head…they have difficulties absorbing all those new words and grammars and structures. I really notice the differences compared to 16 years ago, when I was still young (ehm…) and started to learn Dutch. But I keep comforting myself by remembering my early Dutch-experience. That once you are inside the country and surrounded by the target language, it will all become much easier (if you keep talking, at least). Language immersion, practice and repeat; that should be it.
Sometimes Sky will join us when we are practicing with our Duolingo app. Or she would pick some words from the book “Spanish for children” and start to question us. But for her right now is English the main focus. She gets support from her school, which we are so thankful of (once a week an English lesson special for her) and we repeat the lessons everyday. Not always easy, but we try to keep it fun.
Next to books and app I also follow a short Spanish (beginners) online course from the library, and I try to listen as much as possible to a Spanish radio:
One proud moment for me was in February, when we were at the Girona airport waiting for our flight back to the Netherlands. I had been using Duolingo for about 55 days at that time. And I was able to ask the waitress automatically: “Tienes una cuchara?” (= do you have a spoon). Wow, that felt good! And now everytime I feel like I’m slowing down and not learning anything, I recall that memory and think about how nice would it be if I can actually having a conversation in Spanish!
Talking about language immersion. At the moment I publish this post Joop has almost finished his 2 weeks Spanish stay. He needs to stay there for a while to find a house (and yessss we found one! Our Spanish home!) and to arrange his NIE-number (also in the pocket!). In 2 weeks time he only wants to speak Spanish with his colleagues and people he met, and he feels like he has made quite some progress. From “do not understand at all” to “get the approximate context”. Well, every big journey starts from the smallest steps… 🙂
'Little' van Tuil 