Spanish Steps – Ordering Tapas and Ordering at a restaurant
As I continued with the Spanish Steps course today, I have noticed that the degree of difficulty of the course has increased.
I have noticed that as you progress through the Elements and Units, the course assumes that you now have knowledge that has been taught from the previous Units. This is especially the case with Grammar. In the first few Elements, the course introduces the Learner to simple grammar such as ‘un’ and ‘una’. As the learner progresses through the course, learners are taught about the different applications of ‘el’ and ‘la’ as well as the plurals of ‘los’, ‘las’, ‘unas’ and ‘unos’.
As I progress through this course, I continue to discover learning techniques that are helpful for my favoured learning orientation of read/write. Examples include printing transcripts out and repeating the words with my mouth, writing the English translations to every Spanish phrase and reviewing transcripts before every new lesson I take.
However, I have also had problems with the activities in this course. This is no more evident in Activities 2,3 and 4 in each element, when they introduce new words. I find it quite overwhelming when new words are introduced into these activities, as it was quite a task to learn the new words and phrases that were taught in the opening scenario of each Element. Another affect that I noticed when introduced to new words in these activities was the lack of motivation that I experienced. This comes from completing the activities incorrectly because they are based on the new words taught in the activities, rather than the words that were taught in the original scenario’s of the Elements.
