Ponchado El Verano de '68This is the story I have been reading my myself and with my Tata so far it is about a man going back to his girlfriend's house to find a young man there. I am reading this slowly to understand not only what it means but also the grammar he is using.
Some artists I have been listening to |
My Spanish studyMy spanish study is new this year and I am so excited to continue it, the honeymoon phase of this project is still going strong. It took me awhile to get started with this project but nevertheless I started it I can say I really like it. Like I mentioned on page 2 this is a very family oriented project, my Tata (Grandpa) is my mentor which is awesome because he has always wanted me to speak spanish with him, his friends and people in the community of El Paso. I just never got that in depth in speaking it, my friends in El Paso were not entrenched in the language, then I moved up here where I am not surrounded by the language making it is harder to learn.
Besides that I started talking with my Tata about books I could read in spanish and he offered to send me a copy of his book Mas Sabe El Diablo, a book of short stories that he wrote in spanish. I was obviously excited for the opportunity, so he sent me the book which I eagerly started to read. I had not taken spanish since freshman year so you could say my spanish is a little choppy, most of the vocabulary he uses I am not familiar with, to actually understand I keep my computer or a spanish to english dictionary around to look up words I don’t know. “La Manda” is the story I originally started with because it is the first story in the book, to my surprise and slight lack of attention it is also one of the longest stories in the book. When I was talking to Tata he brought up the fact that that story was probably not the best place to start and that I should start on a shorter story. My plan was to Skype with my Tata three times a week but so far it hasn’t worked out that way but we have consistently met two times a week for the past few weeks. When we meet we start off with simple conversation, very repetitive so that greetings and the other aspects of everyday interactions come faster to me. After this I read from Mas Sabe El Diablo in spanish a paragraph or two, then Tata reads it in spanish so I can understand how to pronounce everything correctly. Once I read it until I get all the pronunciation correct I read it in english, or what I think it says in english, then he reads it in english and I ask questions that I have about wording or other things. This quarter was mainly about getting a grip on the language. As well as reading this book I have been using Duolingo three days or more out of the week and have been listening to a lot of music in spanish to understand the pronunciation and because I just like it. |