Poco a poco

Poco a poco — little by little, a favourite saying around here, meaning that you learn spanish a little bit at a time, but with only 3 weeks(!!) left of my time at Tico Lingo, I really need grande a grande else I feel I’m going to still be saying lo siento, sólo hablo un poco de español — I’m sorry, I only speak a little Spanish. I probably will always say that, even if I magically got to conversational level in the next 3 weeks.

El Profesor

Speaking of learning Spanish, this is Eric, our profesor de español who has been an absolutely awesome teacher. And the majority of the time he speaks only in Spanish, occasionally throwing in English where he knows or thinks we won’t know the word or concept. It genuinely feels amazing realising that. Then you go outside to a restaurant and try to order something and remember you know nothing!

I need to learn English before I learn Spanish

Another discovery I’ve made is I really don’t know English that well. “Is” is a verb. Hadn’t really thought of it that way. “Very” is both an adjective and an adverb, depending where it’s used — I may have known that once, but that’s long forgotten knowledge. Why is that important? Because when you’re learning reflexive verbs and perfect progressive past tense it really helps to know what they are in English first. 😂

For sure you don’t need to understand all that, especially if you’ve learned by long term immersion, but for fast learning you need to understand foundations to figure out how things are constructed, otherwise you end up saying I you buy to need fast water, and people look at you oddly.

Fortunately I think I have a good setup, the morning group classes are good as we learn Spanish together and learn at what I call the “usual” or “standard” way. We practice phrases and cover the rules, but usually by example. We learned how to say I like, you like, we like, etc, (a mi me gusta, a ti te gusta, a al le gusta) and learned the way to construct the sentences:

• A mi me gustan los carrors rápidos -- I like fast cars.
• A ellos les gusta el profesor -- They like the teacher.

But in the afternoons I have the private 1:1 lessons and my instructor Freddy likes learning the same way I do, so we go over the why and foundation rules for it. 

• <subject> <indirect object> <conjugated verb> <compliment> 

Don't worry if you don't understand that, I still don't either (and it's probably wrong!) -- we're going over it again Monday!

The point is however that the afternoon lessons let me take what I've learned from morning classes and make it so I understand why it is that way, and that's usually the final thing that I need to allow it to stick in my brain.

Next steps

It seems crazy to be now planning my next steps after Costa Rica, but I need to do this now, else I'll be sitting around with no place to go and nothing to do. I'm thinking of booking an Intrepid Travel trip through Guatumala, back down to Costa Rica, and then moving on from there down to Colombia. 

Going to do that this afternoon I think (running out of time!)