🌟 Student of the Season - Autumn 18 🌟
Liz is our student of the season this autumn. Liz started learning Spanish in 2014 when her husband and her used to travel through Spain staying in small towns and paradors on their way to Portugal. As the towns were so small and non-touristy Liz decided she needed to learn Spanish so she could talk about where she’d been and stayed and be able to pronounce the place names properly and have people understand her. Liz would take her ‘Rick Stein’ Spanish food book with her and stop off at local delicatessens and markets, she wanted to be able to ask for food, ask the price of vegetables, meats and source the finest local ingredients. The college course is what Liz turned to first with teacher Lourdes and that started her on her journey into the Spanish language, having spent a long time on the present tense she was itching to get started with the future and past and have the chance to use them when she was abroad.
Liz cites her biggest struggle as wanting everything to be too perfect, focusing on prepositions, verb conjugations and vocab can be overwhelming and when you get it wrong it can seem like the worst mistake ever. Overcoming the fear of not always being right has helped Liz become more confident in the language and put far less pressure on herself when she’s speaking. Liz often finds now she is more relaxed that words come to her with ease rather than being stressed and having mind blanks. We often have a laugh when Liz comes up with a new word that sounds right instead of spending ages trying to think of the right word, this adds fun to the lessons and shows Liz that she doesn’t need to focus too much on the finer details.
As a grammar enthusiast Liz loves going over grammar and working through her green grammar book Private Spanish Tuition recommended for her. Her best achievement to date is being able to confidently converse about a variety of topics in a variety of tenses, she even managed a conversation about the social issues in todays society. Well done Liz! Liz’s forte is without doubt understanding the written word, her ability to write in Spanish is very strong and she enjoys being able to handle situations where signs or notices may not be in English with ease.
Liz's advice to fellow learners is that you know more than you think. Revision and repetition are key. Just don't panic - think of alternative expressions of the word in English and the Spanish is often near to one of those variants. For example, 'negar - to deny' sounds like 'negate'. She has thoroughly enjoyed being able to converse and focus on the details of the language at her own pace. She recommends the green grammar book (message us for further details) and often goes over and revises her BBC course she did at college.
In the future Liz would love to keep developing her spoken Spanish and she would love to improve her listening skills. There’s no doubt that Liz would easily become proficient in spoken Spanish in a short period of time. Well done Liz and keep at the Spanish, you’re doing brilliantly.
