My first blog!

As part of my honors by contract agreement, I wanted to share useful tools and tips that I have learned while studying the Spanish language this year, with other students that are studying Spanish.  Thus far, I can honestly say that my knowledge of the Spanish language has been broadened in just a few short weeks.  I have never felt this confident in studying Spanish before and I believe this is because of the unconventional tools used in this year’s class.  Instead of merely sitting in each class and listening to a lecture, of which I would usually fall asleep in, the class is much more engaged. From using twitter, to discovering the wonder of “word reference,” I can definitely say that I have learned a lot.

At the start of the semester, I was a bit surprised when I found out that I would be updating a Twitter Account in Spanish.  I thought it would be just another trivial part of the course, but it turned out to be much more than trivial.  I have found that making regular Tweets in Spanish has helped the language to be more incorporated into my life and I advise any student who doesn’t have a Spanish Twitter to make one.  It is a great way to learn new Spanish words and phrases by observing what other people have to say and is also a great way of learning how to communicate on an everyday basis with people, in Spanish.

Another tool that has really helped me is a website called “word reference.”  This website is very similar to a Spanish/English dictionary, but it is able to provide and define terms that are used as slang, in addition to non-slang words.  It gives multiple meanings of a word, as well as situations in which it can be used, how it is commonly used and in some cases how the word is conjugated.  Another helpful feature of this site is that at the end of each series of definitions, there are suggestions from other native speakers on how to say certain phrases that contain the word you looked up. For instance, if you look up the word “libro,” a number of different results appear, such as “librar”, “librarse” and “libro”, all of which have individual definitions, as well as how they can be used in a sentence.  Closer to the bottom of the page there are suggestions for phrases or other forms of the word that may be useful to know, according to other Spanish speaker, such as “al libro abierto” and “actuación de libro.”  So if there is a word that you're stuck on, in English or Spanish, I definitely suggest using this site!

I hope this has helped you as much as it has helped me!  I will have more helpful tips on the way, so keep a look out!