Allie Wagner

I have come to the conclusion that I definitely preferred learning a language in an actual class like I did with French. I found that it was a little harder to find the resources that I wanted and wasn’t completely sure what would be considered “most important” as I took notes. One thing that actually did end up helping me while adding to my notes was the “tips” section on the lessons on Duolingo. Some of those sections had helpful charts and explanations that were similar to having a teacher for the language. This past week I focused again on going over my notes and trying to memorize more of the words and phrases that I had written down during previous weeks. While I am definitely not at a place where I am fluent, but some of the basic phrases that I practiced this week are easier to remember than they were last week. Even after trying to lean Spanish for eight weeks I am still having a little bit of trouble with wanting to pronounce some of the letters like I would pronounce the...

This week I switched back to just doing lessons on Duolingo, in an attempt to please the Duolingo Owl. I worked more on some of the common phrases as well as worked on lessons for speaking in a restaurant. I learned that the Spanish word for bread "pan" is very similar to the French word for bread "pain" which made is easier to remember that particular word. I have found that other than that the only word that came naturally for me to remember was the word for apples, which is manzanas, though I have no idea why that word stuck and some of the others took a bit more work. At the end of the week I decided to buy an extra lesson with the apps currency that I earned from completing lessons. The additional lesson that I started was flirting, but it ended up being a lot of really cheesy pick up lines. While they were funny to look at and try to translate I do not think that I will ever be using any of them. I did however learn how to ask for someone's name: "có...

This week I again used Duolingo a little bit. In addition to that I took notes on verbs, specifically -ar verbs, with Quest helping me during the class time. The different forms of verbs are very similar to how verbs are changed to match the subject in French. I had a little bit of trouble getting used to how exactly you change the ending if a verb. During the lessons that I completed on Duolingo I noticed that I am still having a little bit of trouble quickly thinking of simple phrases. I often want to translate them into French instead of Spanish. I am still hoping that in this next week I can kick that habit or at least be able to correctly translate the sentence a little faster.

This week I used Duolingo to start learning some new vocabulary. I decided to work on the lessons with vocab involving travel. As I did with the last vocabulary that I started to learn, I took notes on words that I didn't know or words that I thought would be useful. I am disappointed in myself because I forgot to bring headphones on the day that I was using the actual Duolingo app so I was not able to hear any of the pronunciations. I tended to think of the words with a French accent which I do not think was very helpful. However, I did realize that the words for bus in French and Spanish are very similar, so hopefully I will at least be able to remember that word. With any luck I will find more words that are familiar or are at least similar to words that I already know. Another thing that I have realized is that I am way better at translating a sentence from Spanish to English than I am at trying to make my own sentences. I am hoping that I will be able to getter better at that...

This week I really tried to go over the notes that I took from Duolingo. I have a list of words and some phrases along with definitions that I carried in my school folder and looked over when I had time. I think that I will continue to do this, but also will try and set aside more chunks of time to sit down and study. While I did look at those notes I didn't actually try and learn anything new or go onto Duolingo very much. That is definitely something that I hope to get better at doing more consistently. I believe that I would be doing a lot better if I practiced and tried to learn new words more consistently.

This week I did more on Duolingo than I had been previously doing. I did a lot of work in the "phrases" tab and feel somewhat confident translating some phrases if they are given to me. However I tried to tell my mom what I was working on and have come to the realization that I do not really have them memorized very well.     Hopefully I will be able to get better memorization of these phrases in the next week. While I was completing Duolingo lessons I was also taking notes on words and phrases which should help me to study. I am finding that I am still trying to replace some Spanish words with French, but hopefully as I study Spanish more I will be able to get rid of that habit.     Another thing that I had trouble with was remembering the accent marks for some of the words. This problem doesn't surprise me because when I first started to learn French I had the same issue. I added a Spanish keyboard to my phone to try and help me remember where to put accent mark...

I completely lost track of time this week. I had planned to do more lessons on Duolingo and look into some more vocab type words, but that completely slipped away from me. During the only time I worked on Duolingo this week I came to the conclusion that so far I am better at using context and piecing together what Spanish sentences say than actually making my own. In addition to that while I was on the bus going to golf I asked on of my teammates, who has taken Spanish at the school, what I should do next. She showed me a video on YouTube that sings the Spanish alphabet. I listened to the song multiple times and think that I am starting to catch on, at least a little bit.

After taking four years of French class I was really hoping that I would catch on to speaking Spanish quickly. That has proved to not be the case and the most important phrase that I need to know is: “no hablo Español.” This phrase will let people know that I do not know how to speak Spanish, even though I am trying I definitely would have difficulties having a conversation with someone in Spanish. Sometimes I even feel like the Duolingo owl is disappointed in me for how badly I am doing at this. Some things have been made easier by already knowing another langue. One of those things is distinguishing between the masculine and feminine versions of words. I do wish, however, that I could get myself to stop trying to pronounce things more "French."