Aero: Brittany Gleason – Costa Rica 2014 – Life at School
Aero: Brittany Gleason – Costa Rica 2014 – Life at School
Aero: Brittany Gleason – Costa Rica 2014 – Life at School
Brittany Gleason
The school that I attended in Costa Rica was not what I expected when I got there on the first day. It was small, but I felt the instruction and the techniques were equally as good as those in the United States. Our class size was six, and included all of the girls that traveled abroad with FLCC this year. Our teacher’s name was Joxiny and her first language was Spanish, but she was also very fluent in English. She really did a good job working with our pronunciation techniques. I loved going to class because Joxiny always made the class experience fun. She told us that we were like little girls just learning to speak, as if we were really three year olds. A lot of things were review of what I had learned in high school but they were all very helpful because I definitely needed the refresher.
The first day of class we talked about ourselves in Spanish. She put us on the spot by having us sit in the front of the room and then everyone would ask any question they wanted to know about us and we would have to answer. This was only the second day in Costa Rica and I really enjoyed it because it forced me out of my comfort zone and made me speak in Spanish. It was the only way I was going to learn in order be able to communicate with my host family and the community. We also watched Sleeping Beauty and The Magic School Bus in Spanish because Joxiny told us the more we listened and tried to pick up words in Spanish the more we would learn and be able to understand.
Costa Rica 2014 Photo Gallery
My favorite part about attending class was singing Spanish songs. Joxiny printed off song lyrics with missing words in them. We would listen to the song a couple times to try and fill in the blanks. I usually couldn’t get very many but she said that it was okay as long as we listened it would get easier. As a class we would go over the lyrics and Joxiny would make us repeat the words so we were pronouncing them right. Then she would play the song and we would all sing along. It was a lot of fun and I actually downloaded some of the songs on my iTunes. Throughout all of the classes we did this about six times. On the last day of class we sang all of the songs that we had learned. It had gotten easier and actually helped me learn the language. Joxiny said a lot of people learn English by singing American songs.
Another thing that I liked about the school was that we took mini “tests.” Even though they said we weren’t being graded and it didn’t matter how we did on the tests it was neat because the first day we took one so she could see how fluent we all were. Then at the end we took a test based on the things that she taught us, as I was taking the test I could see how my Spanish had improved in such a short time span. If I were able to continue the classes and stay in Costa Rica I would have spoken the language better. I would encourage anyone who is learning a language to travel and speak to people. Just trying to speak to native speakers is way more effective than sitting in a classroom memorizing words, and trying to talk to classmates.
Learn More: Study abroad with Modern Languages @ FLCC: Costa Rica!
– Brittany Gleason
The LEAF Project
www.leaflanguages.org
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
