Sunday used to be a day of rest but today it has been a day of more Spanish.  Why not eh, I am on a roll.

After my preaching yesterday about getting into a routine and sticking to it I made very sure that is exactly what I did today.  So first thing this morning I was on the internet looking for a Spanish Radio Station to listen to.  I usually tune in to an Adalucian station which has lots of chat but today it was playing music so I eventually settled upon a Colombian station which was probably on its late night/early morning stint given the time I was on the laptop.

I am not sure whether it is a characteristic of Colombian Spanish, the fact it was the middle of the night for the DJ or whether he just spoke slowly but I found the pace of the presenter extremely comfortable to follow.  From listening to him speak for a few minutes I could guess that he was talking about great scientific discoveries and the impact of some of the great minds on our civilisation.

Now don't go and be impressed with my understanding of Spanish, I figured that out by hearing the words "Einstein" and "Hawking" several times together with the word "Scienfico".

Anyway after a bit of tuning in (highly recommended by the way), I went through a couple of podcasts, took my notes, generated some more flash cards and reviewed everything I had learnt.  Through the day I tested myself with the flashcards (even when I went for a walk with my girlfriend and her dog!) and generally felt quite smug about my progress.

So how would I judge my progress?

Well even though I have learnt quite a lot, it is still in the Pidgin Spanish realm.  I can hold a basic conversation and make myself understood but that is only because I have memorised quite a few words and expressions.  I would struggle to speak outside my current box of learning and the reason for that is because I have adopted a memorisation approach to the language by memorising vocabulary and basic phrases.

Even though I have just done that I can still communicate but like a Spanish version of Tarzan.  To develop my communication abilities I now need to start understanding more about the structure of the language so that I can start forming longer sentences.  This is an important part of being able to speak another language, in this case Spanish, if you want to move towards levels of fluency.  At school being taught the intricacies of the language really put me off because the last thing I really wanted to learn was grammar, sentence structure and verb conjugations.

However now I am starting to become curious about how the language is formed especially when I memorise some phrases that translate to having the word "I" in them yet none have the same word that would correspond to "I". My curiosity has been stimulated by this and now I "want" to learn more about grammar as opposed to having it stuffed down my neck right from the beginning.

Anyway the point is I am about to become a grammar bore! 

Verb conjugations anyone…..?