Monday, July 11, 2011

Active learning

As I mentioned in my previous post, most of my Spanish learning these days is inactive – reading and listening. There’s definitely nothing wrong with either one, but I feel I don’t progress as much as when I write or speak in Spanish on a regular basis.

Since my time is limited, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to work on the skills noted above. While I would love to speak in Spanish face-to-face with a native speaker, I realize I just can’t at this time. On the other hand, I do have access to the wonderful Internet and all its possibilities. One site that came to mind when I started thinking about this post was Lenguajero.com.

Lenguajero.com is an online community for those who are learning English and Spanish. That’s it… English and Spanish. I like this. Nothing wrong with language exchange sites which offer a multitude of languages, but I appreciate the simplicity of just having just these two to choose from.

Here’s the embarrassing part… I’ve been a member for over a year and I haven’t had a conversation through the site. I also haven’t used the text chat app and probably will not too often. On the other hand I have participated in their Writing Club… once. It was a very positive experience though. I chose to write a little something about myself as an introduction to the community. Within days I had feedback from Spanish language speakers which was so helpful.

So, here’s the thing. I’m going to put myself on a schedule of sorts. I’m going to start off by writing again in Spanish at least twice a week and then more frequently. During that time I’m going to also try to set up a conversation schedule with a couple of my Lenguajero “friends.”

I’ll write about my progress here. Wish me luck!

Where to go:
Lenguajero.com

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Best of luck with your endeavours, Karen!

I can really sympathise with this, as I just don't seem to have much time at all these days to keep up with my Spanish learning.

All the best

Graham.

Karen said...

Hey Graham,

Good to hear from you! It is difficult to find the time these days, that's for sure.

Learn Spanish For Kids said...

I've been reading through your archives, I do hope you'll keep writing this blog when you have time. It's nice to see someone who looks like you trying to do the same thing you are.