Misc Spanish Update

So I've been really enjoying my Spanish Adventures lately -- feeling like it's a bit on an upswing again, which is always a win ;).   That being said, pluses and minuses...   I found a new Spanish teacher I'm excited about, but went through a couple way less fun trial lessons before this one - one of which was super demotivating.  Booo.  

Sheesh - thanks Duo.

Anyways - this instructor sent me a few documents after our lesson; one was the notes from the class (all my previous instructors have just used google docs, but if he wants to do it this way that's fine too); one was almost a report card of the lesson?  This one was interesting as it had two examples in each of "red" "yellow" and "green" categories of things I said with the why it was or was not correct and how to fix it.  That, to me, is just a lot more work on his part, but moderately interesting (only moderately because my knowledge way exceeds my speaking ability so as soon as I see it, I know what's wrong).  And the third one was a summary of my objectives and level.   

So that last one, I wanted to clarify some details.  I debated whether to do so in English or Spanish 😂. I'm reasonably certain this instructor is fluent in English, but I haven't actually heard him speak it.  So I figured I should give writing in Spanish a solid try.   And I did, and I was reasonably pleased with it - if for no other reason than it was a decent length.  Most of my Spanish writing to date is a sentence or two at most.  

And then I got a response that was very long and all in Spanish.  😂. It's amazing how my brain just shut down at that. I've read literal novels in Spanish, an email w a few paragraphs is not, in fact, an issue.  But I def went omg that's way too many words.  Lol when calmer me, not standing in line on my phone, looked at it, it was a non issue to read and reply.   But I'm still amused at my immediate reaction.   Was also pleased -- he correct and returned my email and it wasn't NEARLY as bad as I'd expected it'd be ;).  Some minor things of course but they were conceptually minor.  So yeah - excited to start lessons with this teacher.  We shall see.

Along the same lines -- the Story Learning site that I generally follow just released an "Upper Intermediate" class (aka B2) that I'm *really* enjoying.  It's the first online one I've found that really helps hit the picky details that make a difference and makes me feel like I'm learning "new" stuff again instead of just trying to continue to improve the same beginner topics endlessly.

And then re beginner topics, I got re-hooked on DuoLingo when I was at the cottage; I tested out of the final one which opened the full tree and all the stories, but now I'm going through and testing out of each level individually.  If I can't do it w/ a score better than 90% I do the next step up too.   I figure this is getting me more review on the details I need in a moderately amusing fashion.  I'm loving the daily quests and the friend challenges.   It has more than doubled the size of the tree since the last time I did it, so I'm looking forward to the more advanced topics at the top of the tree.

The big gap remains, of course, speaking practice.   *sigh*.  It is the primary goal of my new lessons is to help bridge the gap between my comprehension abilities and my speaking abilities.   Fingers crossed.

So yeah - all the things :).   This is a hobby that definitely goes in waves for me, but on an upswing atm and really enjoying it.  We'll see how it goes...