Blog 3

Chapter 3 I thought was kind of boring and not very useful in some senses. We didn't get a whole lot of new vocab, which was disappointing to me because we may not be very good at constructing good sentences yet, but at the very least if we knew some more vocab we could point and name things, or describe better what we want. I'm going to Chile soon, so I guess that's what brought it into focus. I can tell people what I do in the morning (seriously, who cares?) but I can't ask for directions, ask how much something costs, ask where I am, where the volcanoes are, or really anything that would actually be useful on my trip. I had really been hoping to have enough useful spanish by the time I was leaving, so it was kind of a let down. But the grammar was useful, I thought, especially the indirect pronouns and present progressive. The reflexive verbs were good too, but since they don't really have an equivalent in english I can't gauge how useful and how common they actually are. I think learning to say things with -ing endings will be really good, since that's more natural and closer to how people talk, at least in english.

I thought it was weird that they focused so much on education in latin countries. I mean, it's great to know and all, but what use is it, honestly? I'm not being mean, if I was Mexican or Brazilian I would not care at all about schools in America, unless I was thinking about a study abroad, in which case I would go find out on my own. Maybe they're trying to get us to think of the similarities in our cultures, but I'd rather learn about the differences, and the interesting things like music and dance and things that I might actually care to remember in a few years. It's not like I'm going to go to Chile and say "oh look, the colegio. but don't be fooled, that's a false cognate. ha ha ha!" It'd be way cooler if I could talk about their trade, their traditions, their holidays. This books just seems dumb. Or maybe it's just me. I took the class expecting to learn useful, applicable spanish by the end of my first year. I really am glad that Professor Zambrano will tell us what things are called whenever we ask, and I've learned way more useful words from her than I have from the book, and she tells us things that will sound natural when we say them to someone on the street. The book seems like it's teaching us the stiffest and most impractical way of speaking. I mean...naming things in a classroom? How about naming things that I'm going to have to find in a convenience store when my bag mysteriously disappears on an international flight?