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I signed up for Spanish. Okay, okay - y'all think I already know this stuff, but you don't really know it until you have to use it day after day with, like, real speakers and all. I wanted to see how this works and I should have kept in mind that it's in beta-test because there are some little niggly things that annoyed me.
I went for Intermediate because I'm definitely not a beginner but I'm nervous about my abilities. So I started with Spanish 202. And what are they teaching? Telling time ... People, I'm telling you, it was Math!!!!! I have no trouble with the Spanish. I've taught telling time in Spanish. But I have to figure out what time it was a half an hour ago, etc.! Talk about sweating!
First they showed clock faces and had written underneath (there was probably some audio that went with it, but I don't have a way to actually talk so I was going to ignore the audio portions) the time, then what time it was such-and-such amount of time ago (which is the "it makes so much time" construction in Spanish). Then it showed people being in certain locations (use of the correct verb for location is a tricky thing for non-Spanish speakers) at certain times. Then they were in those locations a certain amount of time ago. Then you were asked if it were such-and-such time, with the response being, "Naaa, that was three hours ago!" Fine. That was just showing you what to do.
Next came the finding the correct response portion. You had to pick from four possibles the correct time or phrase represented by the sentence. Not too bad, I only screwed one of those up because the photo was missing and I wasn't sure if I'd clicked it. Tch - beta-test!
Then there was the magnet board: you translated a sentence by clicking on separate words made available. It was easy enough to find the first and last words in the sentence because they were capitalized and punctuated. I messed up once when I used the right words with the wrong punctuation in the "Is it blank o'clock yet?" "Naaa, it was blank o'clock fifteen minutes ago." Obviously, in Spanish the word order is different:
¿Ya son las 7:15? Hace treinta minutas eran las 7:15.
And I screwed something else up being careless. sigh. So, you ask, what's the point of this? It doesn't sound like such a great system. Ahhh, but you forget the social aspects. You are also required to make friends. When you sign up, you are given a few people to ask to be friends that either are taking the same language, or are native speakers. If you are the misanthrope I am, this is a painful process. I rooted about and clicked on three people that looked safe (female). One of them has already contacted me! She sent me a simple note in Spanish and I have replied. She's a nice granny, semi-retired, and brushing up her old skills.
Well, hot damn!
I also had the opportunity to look over someone's written composition (only about 7 sentences). Shhhhhugar! Her English is worlds' better than my Spanish! As a native speaker, I could correct it and/or give comments. What could I say? It was all excruciatingly correct, if overly careful. So I told her it was perfect and gave the full five stars. Other people had been giving marks as well and it showed her average star tally.Oops! I had written a short piece as well. I hope people are kind.
Also, I've noticed that there is a tote board that shows the rankings in each class of how many points students have accumulated. I guess that's for the terminally competitive. Me, I'm glad I didn't bite off too much by aiming too high in levels. Phew!
Hmmm, perhaps I should look into the German as well. Then again, Germans grade really hard. "Och, ja - nice of you to zend ze note, but ve don't use ze datif in zat case, you know ..."
Added later: Horrors! Someone graded my short written piece! They walked all over it! Then they sent another note and said they had misunderstood something and that other than a little tiny bit, it was good. Phew! You need a thick skin for this! Next time I will write le minimum. Fewer words, fewer mistakes.
