Friday 8 May 2009

Verbs

Well I've downloaded a verb programme - I won't say what it's called yet because I want to give it a good test. It was a bit of a pain trying to install it but I managed in the end and first impressions are that it's going to be a great help with my progress in learning Spanish.

You have so many options on the way that you can choose to learn with it but the one that I'm trying at the moment is to hear the verbs in a sentence form - in both the present; past & future. The rest of the verb conjugations I'll go through at a later time but I feel the minimum I need at the moment for the maximum effect is to be able to talk in those three tenses. It certainly is very versatile and you can choose how many seconds you have before you answer the questions and how many times it is repeated etc.

I've really intensified my studying this year - after all after 24 years I should really be speaking it a lot better than I do! I have to admit that 'teaching' my friend Spanish has encouraged me a lot more as I have to concentrate a lot more on what I am saying; how it is pronounced correctly etc.

Also our weekday TV viewing of Cuentame has helped enormously with tuning my ear to the spoken word and listening daily on my commute to podcasts in Spanish and Spanish music - favourites Joaquin Sabina; Alexandro Sanz; Selena etc etc - all help to immerse me in the language.

Reality has finally hit me and if you look at my countdown to retirement widget you will see that those 8 years will certainly go by quickly and I want to be as fluent as I can get between now and then.

Oh and not forgetting it's only 6 weeks before we go and visit our Spanish friends :-)....

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