As our Panama Trek Team makes preparations for this summers July 18 - August 2 trip, several of the team members are making a serious effort to learn a "little" Spanish before we go. Team members have purchased Rosetta Stone Level One, (About $250.00) and Level One of the Visual Link Spanish course ($133.00) and one of the members has made an arrangement with a friend from Cuba to teach each other their native tongue. We will have a report on how these different courses/learning methods worked out.Learning another language is a difficult undertaking - even if you only want to become "conversational". We are hoping that our efforts will pay off in deepened relationships and understanding with the people we are working with in the field. If you have any experience in this area please make a comment!
Andrew Burnett
Director
1 comment:
I have been on 3 mission trips to Mexico. After the first one I developed a desire to learn Spanish. I learned a lot of nouns and phrases with a product similar to Rosetta Stone.
But, it still wasn't enough to converse. So, I enrolled in the local junior college and have now taken Spanish 101 and 102.
You have to learn verbs in order to really communicate. And I found that I needed to be in a classroom setting with an instructor and where I could actually speak to other people before I really was able to move closer to conversation.
Another thing I've done is tried to meet native Spanish speakers and spend as much time with them as possible.
Listen to Spanish TV, radio, music.
Text your classmates or friends in Spanish. It all helps.
I return to Mexico in October of this year. I can't wait to see how much my classes have helped me.
It really does help in developing deeper relationships.
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