This was officially the hardest class I have taken in Spanish. It rivals my Engineering courses as far as homework (lots) and the amount of material that our professor managed to include in the month long course. At the same time, this was the best Spanish class I have ever taken and I would take another class with this professor in a heartbeat.
What made this class so special? It was a Public Speaking class taught in Spanish by a psychologist who gave presentations on a weekly basis for a local television show. With her background, she was able to teach public speaking with a psychology perspective, which was really cool. She also gave informative, well planned, and entertaining lectures.
We learned how to give a toast, how to introduce speakers and presentations to a crowd, how to hold a lecture, symposium, panel, and how to act when speaking in public. Where to look, how to stand, what to do and more importantly what not to do with your body movements. She also helped us with pronunciation: what is the point of speaking in public if your audience cannot understand you? She also emphasized grammar, adjectives, and Spanish phrases that may not be exactly the same in the direct English translation.
Also, this professor did an evaluation on the first two days to determine if we belonged in the class or not, if we were at the appropriate speaking level. Thankfully, I was told that my grammar mistakes were normal for someone at the advanced level. My professor also told me that I stutter when I speak Spanish. That was news to me, although it was because I didn't pay attention to it, not that I didn't actually stutter. We talked in class about the phenomenon that happens when some people speak new languages such as: they learn better in English in the morning and learn better in Spanish at night, they may stutter in the new language, or a number of other psychological events. It was quite interesting.
Ironically, we watched "The King's Speech" in Spanish, which was about King George VI's stutter and how he overcame it. I knew that my stutter was because I was simply not comfortable speaking Spanish and that I had some issues with the pronunciation, together making me too self-conscious to speak well in Spanish. I worked on speaking in Spanish and improved them 10 fold throughout this course. What helped me most was that every day, we gave at least two speeches. They could be big 10 minute speeches or small 5 minute speeches, but we couldn't read from our notes. They had to be freely-flowing, yet organized speeches. After almost a month of speaking in Spanish in front of a class, your ability to speak is guaranteed to improve.
We also had a few big projects in the class. For the first project, we had to read an 80 page Spanish book (or part of a book) about public speaking, then present on that. Now, I absolutely hated public speaking, especially in Spanish. A few days before this speech, I was giving a short, less than 5 minute speech, and my nerves got ahold of me. I couldn't say more than two words at a time. How embarrassing! I wasn't going to let that happen again, especially for a big presentation, so I practiced as much as I could for the book speech. So much, that I practically memorized the material. Not necessarily in the sense that I would be saying it word-for-word, but in the sense that I knew all of the main points, the pronunciation of the words, and the organization of the presentation in general.
When I got done with my presentation, my professor was impressed and told me in front of the whole class that I did really well, better than expected and she could tell that I worked hard on it. When we were reviewing everyone's speeches at the end, she said that my presentation was the best out of everyone's. I was so proud! I still am, actually. It was nice to see that my hard work paid off.
For the second project, we had to write, edit, and read a fairy tale in Spanish. I did the Three Little Pigs. Now, maybe I didn't remember the original correctly, or maybe there was a change in the Spanish version, but in the versions I saw, the wolf tried going down the chimney of the brick house in the end, got burned by a pot of stew that was cooking, and ran away. So, I incorporated my Spanish and the Spanish I learned by reading various Spanish versions and recorded "Los tres cerditos" for my class. Some of the other students were really good at changing their voices to match the characters and it was a lot of fun to do to work on pronunciation and see what other people had managed to do.
Our final was a 50 minute presentation. We picked the topic on Tuesday and I had to present on Thursday. Two days was not enough time for me to prepare for this presentation, but I gave it my best and did pretty well. I presented on the three different types of biking (casual, mountain, racing) and the parts of a bike.
This month went by so fast. I couldn't believe that I only have one more month left before I leave Costa Rica! It's just become my home. How can I leave? But, I had my Spanish for Business class to look forward to. This was the class that I had been looking forward to since I signed up for classes. Goodbye to public speaking and hello business!
No comments:
Post a Comment