In my last Spanish class, we started to learn the alphabet. I was somewhat perturbed by the fact that there were so many letters to learn (26 is quite enough thank you!) but in fact it was actually fairly painless to remember the letters – especially when we recited them in order, as a class.
But as soon as the teacher asked us to spell our names to each other, my brain went to mush and I pretended to be very busy correcting a previous exercise. As we were ‘in a three’ instead of a pair, I managed to continue with this avoidance strategy until the exercise was over. Pheww!
It’s the same with numbers. I can recite 0 to 100 no problem – but give me a random number or ask me to give you my telephone number and I just can’t do it. Or can’t I? Back in the safety of my own home, I had a go at spelling my name and saying my telephone number and actually, the issue isn’t that I can’t do it– but that it takes a lot longer than I think it should and I make mistakes! Ha! Caught myself out there! How childish of me!
I’m sure that if I’d actually done the exercise in class, I’d have managed to string something together – particularly with the help of my partner. Determined to ‘try harder’ next week, I turned to the internet to see if there were any programmes that could help me learn. The internet abounds with games, songs, videos and tutorials but my personal favourite after searching for about AN HOUR (I actually had a good excuse for surfing the internet…) was this song from the album En Espanol Basho & Friends by Bashe Mosko.
https://www.youtube.com/watch…!
Not everyone likes listening to kids songs to learn new things and there are plenty of more ‘serious’ free resources on the net. Do share your favourite learning resource below – they don’t have to be Spanish!
Ah – day – ee- oh- esse!