The ramblings of an old, fat, red nosed, white haired Briton about the things he notices around him in Spain.
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Tuesday, February 14, 2023
A long, long grind
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
Spanish language stuff part 2: Learning Spanish
How much you try to remember is a matter of personal choice and willingness. Richard Vaughan, quite a famous teacher of English here in Spain, always stresses that learning common words pays dividends over learning less common ones. The example I've heard him use more than once is between the verbs to sleep and to be. To sleep isn't exactly an obscure verb but in comparison to the verb to be it is. The trouble with that theory is that certain words are common under certain circumstances. You hardly ever know when the circumstances will arise when you will need more words. The verb to fry and the nouns egg and chip aren't particularly common words (In the Richard Vaughan sense) but in a greasy spoon, when you want fried egg and chips, they are.
Use and repetition is important too. Once upon a time I used Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. I was never good with them but I knew the basics. I haven't used them for years now and I wouldn't have the faintest idea where to begin with designing a simple database. You may think that living in Spain I would use the language all the time, and I do, but most of my conversations are very simple transactions. In the supermarket, in the bar, where a couple of stock phrases will suffice. I often greet people in the street and exchange a few words about their family or the weather but it's very seldom that the conversation strays to the movement of refugees or US Foreign Policy or even a bit of gossip about some event in the area. In this sort of case Richard Vaughan's common phrases and words theory works well. It's like the Spanish waiter or waitress on the coast. They speak to their British customers in English but most of those waiters and waitresses don't really speak English, they speak the menu.
All this said my Spanish isn't too bad nowadays. I can nearly always get what I want though there may be a lot of fumbling and stumbling along the way. I can read a newspaper, listen to the radio, watch the TV and even read the car handbook. With the online conversation I can even practise real conversations. But my Spanish is still far from good. If I'm watching a film at the cinema I can lose the thread completely. Understanding the lyrics of songs is usually beyond me unless I see them written down and even in something as commonplace as watching the TV news my understanding lets me down from time to time. While I can overhear, and understand, something said in English through all sorts of extraneous sounds and in all sorts of unfavourable circumstances I need a following wind to not lose the thread in Spanish.
After all this time and all the effort it is frustrating beyond belief.
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Four syllables bad, two syllables better
When I was teaching English to Spaniards I was once asked to explain verb inversion. I didn't know what it was but it isn't actually all that tricky. Verb inversions happen most commonly in questions. Apparently something like -they are working- is considered to be "normal" while -are they working?- is considered to be inverted. That wasn't what the students were asking me about though. No, they were asking about an obscure but essential element in their curriculum at the Official Language School where they were all doing their exams. Take a word like seldom. If you put seldom at the beginning of a sentence the word order has to follow a pattern. It's not good English to say -Seldom you hear a politician apologise. We change the words around and say - Seldom do you hear a politician apologise. It's the same with other words like never and hardly. Never have I heard a politician apologise. That was the verb inversion the students wanted to know about.
I was a bit surprised by this. It was something I'd never noticed in English. I was so impressed that I set up a little experiment. I asked a few English speaking pals in a bar to use the word hardly in a sentence to see if we all, intuitively, changed the word order. My experimental design was poor. Everybody used hardly perfectly. The problem, for my experiment, was that nobody used hardly as the first word in the sentence. They didn't say -Hardly ever do I pay with cash- they said, instead -I hardly ever pay with cash. I went back to the students and told them to forget about verb inversions. I told them it was an example of archaic language that very few people use when speaking. Their response was an indictment of Spanish education in general. Not in our exams they replied. Ah yes, an education where trainee carpenters learn about, and are examined on, trees and the different qualities of wood they produce as well as the history of wood working tools but where they never quite get around to making a bread board or a shoe rack.
Back to my English pals in the bar. They did what I do when I'm speaking to the tutors online. I circumnavigate the difficult constructions with perfectly good, but simpler, phrases. Instead of saying -If I were to go to Madrid I would visit the Mercado de los Motores- I say -The next time I visit Madrid I'm going to go to the Mercado de los Motores. Or -I missed the bus yesterday because I got up late- to avoid the much more difficult -If I hadn't overslept yesterday I wouldn't have missed the bus.
For years my excuse for my halting conversation has been that I hardly ever speak Spanish. You don't need much language to do the supermarket shop or order a beer and I've always argued that my opportunities for longer conversations have been few and far between. These sessions will rob me of that excuse and only leave the reality of old age and fewer functioning neurones.
Wednesday, May 08, 2019
Looking for an easy life
The interviewer went on to ask how many of this bloke's students had become bilingual. To be honest my neuron deficient brain doesn't recall exactly what he said but it was some hideously low number - 10, 20, maybe 100 - out of about 25,000 students. He did go on to say that only about 2,000 had crashed and burned; absolutely incapable of picking up the most basic stuff. He reckoned the vast majority abandoned learning when they'd reached a level they were happy with, be that beer ordering or engaging in a heated discussion about environmental politics.
I recognise what this bloke is talking about. I've been trying to learn Spanish for ages but it's years since I've done any real study. I can't remember the last time I sat with a text book trying to memorise verb tables or understand maybe disjunctive pronouns or demonstrative adjectives. I still pretend to be trying to learn things. I often write down a new word that I've read or heard, I read books in Spanish and go to the cinema to see films dubbed into Spanish. My Spanish is alrightish but sometimes I can hear the mistakes I'm making as I fail to make myself understood and I sometimes don't understand. I still shy away from conversations if I can.
Recently I've become very aware of my inability to pronounce the R with sufficient vigour for most Spaniards. They hear the equivalent of "Is this chew weseived?" when I'm trying to say "Is this chair reserved?". Spanish is a language where the link between the letters and the pronunciation of the word is inviolable so the wrong sound in a word can cause profound difficulties. English speakers are used to dealing with inconsistent pronunciation. We read that some ancient band was happy to record a record without any psychological angst at the changed pronunciation of two words spelled the same. Pronouncing so, sew and sow the same (but not if it's a sow) doesn't lead to disbelief amongst the population of Bradford. Spaniards though do wonder how reed and read and red and read can be word pairs. What we perceive as a very close reproduction of the Spanish word can, at times, be almost incomprehensible to a Castilian speaker.
Anyway, unfettered by work I thought it was about time to put a bit more effort into my Spanish. I've found someone willing to exchange some Spanish for English and I'm paying someone to correct my conversational Spanish. It won't work of course. The language hasn't magically seeped in in fourteen years and it won't this time either. Just like the interviewee said what I really need to do is to put in some graft but I'm a bit off hard work so that won't be happening. I don't suppose it'll do any damage though.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Beep Beep Lettuce
The electrical goods in the kitchen are in open revolt. The kettle, bought eleven weeks ago, started to leak. I had the receipt. I took it back. "No, this isn't guaranteed," said the bloke in the shop. "It's the limescale that's done for it and improper use isn't guaranteed." I became very cross very quickly. "If you want me to ever buy anything, ever again, in this shop - I listed some of the several big things we've bought there - then you will take this back as part payment against a better make of kettle". He argued, I blustered. My Spanish held together remarkably well. I heard myself using a third conditional. I was impressed. We agreed the kettle was guaranteed and I came home with a shiny Bosch one.
As we drove across Castilla la Mancha I knew the sign said to watch out for otters crossing the road. Otter is not an everyday sort of word. I can watch a film in Spanish without too much trouble. I can read a novel in Spanish though I may miss the nuances. I can maintain a conversation - well sort of. Imagine if you can't. Imagine talking to an insurance company about the burst pipes in your house or opening a bank account or going to the doctor with a pain. What do you do when the instructions for the self service petrol pump make no sense to you and you need fuel and it's 2am. Having a conversation using Google Translate, with gestures, drawings, odd words and a lot of smiling is fine when you're on holiday but it's not so good if you need an O-ring for your pool pump and it won't help you decipher the letter from the bank.
I'm of a certain age. Lots of the Britons I know here are of a similar age. A friend, back in the UK, sent me a message minutes ago to say that someone I once worked with has cancer. We're getting to the time of life when death is not such an abstract idea. When chronic illness is probable as well as possible. Someone was talking to me about their concern that they may end up alone, lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by people they couldn't talk to and being subjected to processes they didn't understand. I know of lots of people who have decided that it's time to move from that rural house that looked so idyllic just a few years ago. Now the garden seems boundless. The drive in to town a real chore, and with failing sight and a gammy knee, a potential problem. Some have moved into Spanish towns, others have gone back to the UK.
I know that I write about language a lot but, as I look around me, I understand the British ghettoes, the low level of knowledge about the place we live, the effort that Britons make to find people to provide British television and doctors and plumbers who speak English. It wasn't just the fridge door that reminded me to write this same blog yet again. I am appalled at the lack of support for the boats cruising the Med looking to rescue refugees and migrants. Count the emergency vehicles for a derailed train and compare that to the lack of response to a boat load of people abandoned at sea. I am disgusted at the racist attitudes of far too many people. I heard some MP, on £77,000 a year plus expenses, asking why some refugees don't stop when they get to the first safe country. I wondered if he would have walked from Senegal to Morocco and then crossed the water in a boat from Toys“R”Us to get his job? He wouldn't get it anyway without speaking English.
Saturday, November 03, 2018
One volunteer is worth ten pressed men
My Saturday morning group are a nice bunch. Eight young people, from teenagers to twenty somethings trying to get a B1 English qualification. B1 is what my sister, an eminently sensible person, would call intermediate level. It's not an easy qualification; the B1 indicator contains the idea of being confident in speaking, reading, writing and listening to English at a sort of familiar level - about things you know, concrete things, things you may be interested in and things you may encounter when faced with real English speakers in everyday situations. The exam strikes me as a reasonable test of those capabilities.
At the moment I have a couple of groups and a few individuals at this B1 level. I also have one group at the slightly more abstract, less predictable, B2 level. Anyone who is truly B2 level would have very little problem getting by in an all English language situation.
Whenever I start a new course I always ask the people why they want to learn English. Most don't. Amongst the youngsters, the teenagers, the most usual answer is that they're doing it because their family wants them to. In the University student and early on in their career group the most usual answer is that they need a qualification. I understand that. I know, for instance, that teachers need an English qualification to get ahead. I have no idea why. Fair enough if a teacher is going to specialise in English it's a good idea that they have at least a smattering of the language but I have no idea why a primary teacher or a secondary science or PE teacher needs English unless they are working in a bilingual school where one of the languages is English. I think it would be a hard world where astronomers needed a grade 5 in piano or clarinet to be let loose on their computers or where cooks needed a Yachtmaster Offshore qualification before being allowed to handle a skillet. But, then again, what do I know?
So the hunt for qualifications is not my preferred answer. Much better if someone tells me they want to learn English because they have an English boyfriend or girlfriend or because they have been inspired by the film performances of Tilda Swinton. That person is much more likely to put in the sheer hard graft needed to speak better English than, say, an already employed nurse who needs a B2 to improve their promotion prospects.
I once did a course about the industrial archaeology of West Yorkshire. I've forgotten it all now but, for ages, I would remember some small detail from the classes as I drove past a lavish church on a barren Pennine hillside or a gabled house with tripartite windows. I joined the course because I hoped it would be interestings and I was receptive to the information because it was. I've also done a couple of food handling courses and a handful of first aid courses. They were well delivered by good teachers but I did them because I needed the qualification or, more accurately, because someone else required me to have that qualification. I don't remember the first thing about them. I am, on the other hand, eternally grateful to the YMCA training department for giving me the time and money to learn an extra, practical skill as part of my staff development programme. My typing may still be very two fingered but, without them, it would be even more hunt and peck!
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Pooh!
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Colloquial contractions, prepositions and phrasal verbs
It used to be that language teaching, English language teaching, in Spain was pretty straightforward. The teacher started with page one, went on to page two and so on. There was a lot of writing and copying and not much talking or listening. I'm sure it's no longer like that.
Having been brought up in another country it never struck me to teach in that traditional Spanish way. Even when we have a course book I tend to drift off the straight and narrow. I try to talk them through grammar. I don't think that a grammatical rule with one line of explanation followed by a page of exceptions is going to be very helpful to someone who has to juggle with vocabulary, structures, idioms, grammar, rhythm and pronunciation as they try to get something to eat in a café.
The other night I was having a bit of a discussion in a bar with someone who is doing an English course at the Official School of Languages. She had been told that unless she demonstrated her ability to use certain constructions, we talked about inversions, things like, "Not until I heard my name did I believe I had won the race" or "Hardly had I begun to speak when I was interrupted" would she be able to demonstrate that she had achieved a B2 level. What the B2 descriptor, of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, actually says is that someone at this level can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in their field of specialisation, can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers possible without strain for either party and can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.
Not much mention there of inversion. Obviously the text books have to try to build more complicated language into their various levels but the truth is that the CEFR is all about communication and not about grammar - the grammar is there to describe how the communication works. I saw a direct parallel between trudging through a text book as a way to teach English and a modern day student being told that the level of effectiveness in speaking English is in the complexity of the language.
At one of the places I work my boss said that a student had complained that we spent all the time talking and listening and reading stuff and suchlike in class and that what we should be doing was doing more exam papers, more filling in the gaps in grammar exercises. The complainer thought I should, certainly, be setting more homework rather than urging people to check those things they found difficult, to read things in English to help with structure and form and to consult grammar books to help them work out how to say the things they wanted to say or write.
Page one it is then.