Increasing Language Skills

The View From My Roof (Where the dogs live)

I seem to have a reputation in my Spanish class to be the one that whenever called upon makes some sort of immediate reaction noise to the question, and then goes silent and stares at the teacher as if this is sufficient. While the reenactments of these moments are quite humorous they are also pretty accurate of what happens daily to me in Spanish. Perhaps the biggest example of this was during our hands on training activity where all twelve environment volunteers made a compost pile in the back of the training center. We were given proper instructions of how to layer the brown, greens, and poops in Spanish and then our Environmental Technical Trainer asked if anyone of us would like to facilitate the process. I jumped at the volunteer opportunity before realizing what it fully entailed, and even surprised myself by how enthusiastic I was to volunteer. Monica, the tech trainer, handed me the scale to weigh the bags and says ok Maddy I want this compost piles to be great. It is one thing to facilitate a bunch of kids to do what you want them to in a nurturing environment, but the prospect of facilitating a group of people my age, whom I am just getting to know and should probably make a good impression with was a bit daunting. I took a deep breath and declared ‘alright we need three groups of…’ Monica quickly interrupts me and with a giggle shakes her finger and says ‘no no no Maddy in Spanish!’ My stomach does a summersault, and I all too quickly realize I'm in way over my head. I proceed to make some sort of bawk and then just stare for a good few seconds. The next thirty minutes mostly consisted of sounds of distress and confusion pouring out of my mouth.  No matter how hard I tried every time I said ‘browns’ in Spanish it came out differently. I had to resort to smiles,  mis-conjugated verbs, a lot of pointing and jumping up and down to try to promote excitement for working.  We got the compost piles made, and people seemed to be in good spirits, but I was slightly embarrassed by the exposure of my language abilities.

Me and My Spanish Teacher

Why is it that every time I go to talk I come up with a total blank? For the most part I can understand what is being asked of me, but when I go for the answer I literally have no words, and I don’t think it is due to a lack of vocabulary. I thought about this for a while when my frustration overwhelmed me later after the compost struggles. I started to realize that when speaking in English I am the classic case of talking before thinking, and usually I can talk through my thoughts to form a sentence. However even in English I find myself creating the most unique and strange compilations of words,that I can often pass off as humor. Unfortunately this lack of forethought becomes extremely apparent when in another language. I am excited to respond to a question and prove that I understand, but my meandering streams of words just become fragmented sound effects in Spanish. I am having to teach myself to slow down and think, to form a sentence, conjugate the verbs in my head, and then say the sentence. This whole process seems very time consuming and forces me to be way more organized then my brain was designed for.  No longer is my language class a lesson on vocabulary and how to say the three goals of Peace Corps in Spanish, but its more about having patience with myself, taking deep breaths and trying to express myself clearly. My teacher very bluntly described my Spanish skills as having a lot of creativity but not advancing much, to which I responded with a short back of the throat cough/laugh and then a quiet stare of understanding. I can only hope that when my Spanish decides to advance it will not only be language skills that increases, but also a better awareness of how to clearly express myself to others. For now however, I still find great enjoyment with communicating in sound effects.

Our Water Storage Tank

Here are a few highlights of Pictures:

My Three Year Old Sister Ariana

Hard at Work Building a Tree Nusery

Our Tree Nusery

Our Environmental Sector Team