Thoughts of LoWriter

One Semester of Spanish

Someone at work told me to check out the One Semester of Spanish Love Song on YouTube.

I find this hilarious for several reasons. First, I can understand almost all of the phrases he's using, and he's speaking about the same speed I can understand. I also love the fact that there are pictures so that, just in case I forgot what blanco means, I can see a picture of his white cat to remind me. Ha! Finally, I enjoy the part where he has to start speaking in English because he doesn't remember the words. :)

I took Spanish for two years, actually, but I played hookey through most of the first year and slept through most of the second year. Several schools in my rural county shared a Spanish teacher over ITV, which was sort of like closed circuit television as I understand it. I don't really know. Basically, the teacher was in a school about 20 minutes away, and she taught one session to three different schools. So, basically, anytime any club had a meeting, we all "had to go" to the meeting. She wouldn't give us any homework for the day, and we'd hide off camera (or go to the meeting as the case usually was with me since I was in everything). It was great. The other trick I used was to ask if I could go to the restroom. A minute later my friend would ask if she could go to her locker, and we'd meet up and wander the halls for awhile. It was awesome.

During my second year, one other guy and I were taking Spanish at my school, and then he stole some computers from the school and got sent to juvie. Then it was just me and a bunch of people in Red Lake Falls, including my then boyfriend. I zoomed the camera way out and sat in the very back so that you couldn't see my face. Then I would prop my head on my hand and it would look like I was intently studying the book when I was actually speaking.

Basically, the problem with this method (aside from the fact that you learn almost nothing because you're screwing around most of the time) is that you can't actually hear how things are being pronounced. I know more than one person from my high school who has scored so high on the written exam that they ended up in a Spanish class that was higher than their spoken comprehension level.

So, mostly, I just want to say puedo ir al bano (with a squiggly line over the n, don't forget) and ochenta. I think it's very important that you remember that as you want the YouTube video again.

Posted by LoWriter at January 23, 2008 10:38 PM