IN YOUR STUDY. HOW TO STUDY SPANISH SO IT WON’T BE GREEK TO YOU... Top Ten Tips for Studying at Home Foreign language is a skill that requires constant drill and practice both in the classroom and at home. Plan on spending one half hour each night on your Spanish. If you’ve finished your written work, put into action some of the tips cited below. They will help you to reinforce what you are learning. Remember that waiting until the night before a test to study is simply not effective. As William Moulton once said: “Cramming for a foreign language test is about as sensible as cramming for a swimming test.” list of vocabulary words you need to memorize: a. Make a second list with the translations of the vocabulary words. Cover the translations and test yourself to see if you can correctly define each word. Put a dot beside those words you can’t remember. Make a second list in which you narrow down the vocabulary. These are the words you need to spend more time with. b. Try making a list of all the words you can remember for a certain category such as family members or clothing. Review your list against the required vocabulary and fill in those words you forgot to mention. 2. STUDY OUT LOUD. 8. USE MNEMONIC DEVICES TO IMPROVE YOUR MEMORY. You double your efficiency when you study out loud. a. In a first year language class, recite new vocabulary out loud. Also, read out loud the dialogs. Hearing yourself speak will help you remember new vocabulary and grammatical structures. b. Record your work. If you have a cassette player, record the vocabulary, dialogs, and comprehension questions. (Better still, have someone who is proficient in the language do this for you.) When you record, leave pauses after each word or question. You can use these pauses to test yourself later. 3. LISTEN TO THE TARGET LANGUAGE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. The rule of thumb for effective foreign language study is to use as many senses as possible. How can you listen to the foreign language at home? Play back your recording of new vocabulary and visualize the meaning of each word when you come to a pause. Play back the dialog and comprehension questions then fill in the pauses with the correct answer to the question. If you have trouble, go back to the dialog in print and review it by reading it one more time. 4. WRITE OUT THE MATERIAL THAT YOU NEED TO LEARN. Writing out the material that you need to study helps to engrave the information in your mind so that you can retrieve it later. Write out the vocabulary, making sure to include the definite article with nouns. 5. STUDY WITH A FRIEND OR MEMBER OF YOUR FAMILY. One of the best ways to study a foreign language is to study with someone else who has had experience with the language. If there are oral questions you need to drill, have that other person read them to you so that you can answer them orally. If there is a situational dialog you need to rehearse, have the other person take a part so that you can role-play together. 6. DIVIDE YOUR STUDY INTO SMALL UNITS. Both your attention span and memory begin to decrease after one halfhour. For this reason, it is better to study in small units rather than in one lengthy time block. In studying for the mid-term exam, for example, two hours divided into half-hour sessions will produce far better results than 120 minutes of intense studying. 1. STUDY ON A REGULAR BASIS AND ALWAYS INCLUDE REVIEW 7. TEST YOURSELF. FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW. It is to your advantage to find out what you don’t know. Let’s say there is a Mnemonic devices are simple ways that you can improve your recall of information. The Greeks and Romans taught mnemonics to their students over 2,000 years ago. One example is: Acrostics: Let’s say that you have to learn the five major rivers of Spain, El Ebro, El Duero, El Tajo, El Guadiana, and El Gualalquivir. To start, simply memorize the first letter of each river and then make up a sentence. For example... EDTGG.......Every Day Trees Grow Greener (You may recall learning the colors of the spectrum with “Roy G. Biv” or the music scale with “Every Good Boy Does Fine”...) 9. LEARN GRAMMAR IN CONTEXT AND, WHEN POSSIBLE, LEARN A FORMULA. Thinking about the rule for a grammatical structure is simply not enough. As with learning vocabulary, it is important to use it actively. Review those exercises in which you are required to use the structures. Again, do them out loud. There are other things you can do: a. Try memorizing one sentence for each grammatical structure you’re learning. If you are learning the immediate future, memorize a sentence like “Yo voy a visitar Puerto Rico en el verano.” Try to recall this sentence when on the test/exam you are asked to convert sentences to the immediate future. b. When possible, reduce the grammatical structure to a formula to help you learn. For the same immediate future tense, memorize the following: FORM OF ir + a + INFINITIVE... When you get a test, write these down immediately so you can refer to them later in the test. 10. BE CREATIVE. Put your imagination and artistic talents to good use. For example: a. Make labels. If you are studying vocabulary for the house, make signs for things around your room so you can read them on a daily basis before a test/quiz. b. Make flash cards. Put the vocabulary word on one side and draw a picture on the other. If you can’t draw, cut out pictures from a magazine or use computer clip art. Drill yourself or have someone else at home help you drill the words. Show these to your teacher; she may even want to use these in class. In short, don’t be afraid to be creative in your studying. tO tHe PaReNt: Our new textbook, BRAVO, is based on the Natural Approach to learning a foreign language. It is student-centered and communication-oriented. The following guidelines for the Natural Approach will be used to encourage students to learn a second language. 1. The teacher will provide comprehensible input. Students take part in dialogs and interviews, listen to and read stories and articles, give and receive instructions, describe situations and feelings, and participate in games and other activities. 2. Comprehension will precede production. Students’ ability to use Spanish is directly related to the time and opportunities they have had to listen to and read Spanish in meaningful contexts. Their passive skills (listening and reading) will develop more quickly than their active skills (speaking and writing). 3. Speech will emerge in stages. The three stages are: comprehension (students show they have understood what was said), early speech (students respond with single words or phrases), and speech emergence (students understand and produce more). 4. Speech emergence is characterized by grammatical errors. It is normal for students to make errors when speaking a foreign language. Instead of overtly correcting the error, the teacher will rephrase the student’s response and expand on it so the whole class will hear it correctly. 5. Students will be studying in a low-anxiety environment. Your child will be more motivated to speak out in the second language if he/she feels a mutual trust and respect among everyone in the class. Being in a relaxed academic environment will require that each student do his/her best to behave in a responsible manner. 6. Interaction will be encouraged and group work will create a sense of community. In the large classes we have today, more students have opportunities to speak the language as they work in pairs or small groups. 7. Grammar plays a supplemental role. Simply knowing about grammar and talking about grammar rules will not contribute to language fluency. However, grammar may help students learn the language by organizing the material so that the student can understand it more readily. 8. The goal of the Natural Approach is proficiency in communication skills. The more students experience Spanish--listen to it, read it, speak it, and write it-- the more they will acquire. Types of materials available: You may want to buy or borrow some of the following materials to aid in your child’s language study: books stories rhymes and songs information books dictionaries (also, picture dictionaries) dual-language and bilingual books audiocassettes* video cassettes* CD-ROM* Games* *When shopping for technology that may be of use to your child, be careful about buying materials that are too advanced for your child at this beginning language level. Translation programs have not been found to be helpful to students at this level of second language acquisition. When purchasing audio/video tapes or computer software, look for sound effects, native-speakers’ voices, interaction (where the student can provide his/her own voice to be analyzed), and animation. You may wish to purchase the CD-ROM that accompanies our textbook ¡BRAVO! so that your child can practice at home with the same technology he/she uses at school. Culture: Through activities we aim to: • • • • • • encourage curiosity develop empathy for other peoples respect other ways of doing things look for similarities as well as differences understand that the value of words may differ between cultures develop awareness of his/her own culture Realia: Encourage your child to collect realia, though it’s not necessary to buy things. Many things relating to the language and its culture are free. The following are some suggestions you may want to consider: • • • • • • • • • • some catalogs for toys, food and furniture are now bilingual travel brochures contain photos of food, towns, trains, etc. maps and timetables foreign magazines foreign language newspapers special promotions of food, etc. for pictures, flags, etc. food products with labels in two or three languages chain supermarkets with trilingual labels on food and clothing post cards foreign language rhyme and storybooks from a local book store