Time 2 Learn Español with Visual Link™

As you would already be aware [if you read my Blog], I  chose to learn Spanish for the online course requirement for Module Three. Although, I did end up doing an hour of touch typing as well!

Reviewing the Chosen Course & Rationale for Choosing 2Learn Español with Visual Link™:

I tossed up between Spanish and touch typing. I was able to type fairly reasonably; not with the correct placement of fingers. Using a CD-ROM previously was found to be extremely boring, and very slow going.

With the kids on hoildays I believed I would be more motivated to participate if someone else was working with me. I also thought it would be fun to learn with the kids and practice what we had learned. Oh, how wrong was I! The only problem was that I was the one who ended up being more motivated and had to work hard at getting the kids to participate!

Reviewing the  Visual Link™ Spanish Course Information:

The course contained eleven free online lessons. These lessons were easily accessed by entering my name and email address. I was then given a username and password for future access.

The lessons we completed contained an introductory portion of a larger lesson on each of the following topics:

• Greetings
• Survival Expressions
• Locations
• Colours
• Becoming Acquainted
• Daily Objects
• Sentence Building
• Sentence Building II
• Advanced Lesson
• Numbers

Reviewing My Initial Objectives:

1. To explore the Spanish language – we certainly did this.
2. To complete as many of the eleven free online Spanish lessons as possible in the allocated time; 4 hours – we completed all of the available lessons [a few times over].
3. To be able to speak and understand some complete sentences in Spanish – we can understand single words and phrases but as for having a conversation; I think not. However, I can recognise some of the words and phrases we learned when I hear them spoken or see them written. My daughter has just told me that she had a partial conversation with a friend at after school care today, and then she promptly sprouted off numbers 1-30 in Spanish. It is quite obvious that she has learned something. I myself recognised a lady at the doctors the other day speaking in Spanish (she was an interpreter), as well as some clients at work who were having a hair colour done by the students and chatting to each other.

Reviewing My Prior Expectations:

1. Have loads of fun – not as much was had as we expected; the novelty wore off, and the weather outside was just too beautiful!
2. Lots of laughter – a fair bit as we tried to pronounce the words after our new best friend Maria (voice over on course). The favourite phrase is to ask where is the bathroom? [donde esta el bano?] May be quite handy to know if I ever go to Spain
3. Learn to speak a little Spanish; maybe a few sentences – partially achieved as mentioned earlier. We can speak a little to each other, but as for having a conversation; forget it!
4. No pressure; complete what we can in the available time – I had to apply a little pressure to motivate the girls. Surprisingly I had thought it would be the other way around.

The promise of Daily blog postings of learning progress was made.  These promised posts were indeed added to my Edublogs site.

Review of the First Post – Uno Update on Visual Link™ Español Lessons :

On this first day we learned completed all eleven lessons really quickly. We decided that a little repetition would help to embed what we were learning into our memory. As a result we decided to complete the lessons at a slower pasce again the next day. We were now very good at saying hello, good morning, good afternoon and goodnight.

Hola, buenas diaz, buenas tardes, buenas noches [I will check later to see if I am right as I did this off the cuff!].

Technofrustration crept in early on due to the discovery that the free lessons were only a small portion of the entire course. We were also referred to a booklet that we did not have! To get it you had to buy the full course. How wonderful.

Then we had to put up with the program getting stuck a couple of times. This actually made us laugh as the man sounded very funny at first. I can assure you that the novelty quickly wore off! We were unable to determine whether it was the program itself or the Internet playing up.

Review of the Second Post – Dos Update on Visual Link™ Español Lessons:

I decided it was a good idea to write down what we were learning as missing portions of lessons were sometimes referred to in later lessons. The girls began to lose interest, the weather was so beautiful I couldn’t blame them.  

The text on the screen was very difficult to read due to small font size. Again we were referred to a booklet we simply did not have! In the full version of the course the content is displayed full screen, which would be so much better, and obviously heaps easier to read.

Review of Third Post – Tres Update on Español Lessons:

By today we had learned to say hello, good morning, how are things? [Hola, buenos días, ¿cómo le va?] We had completed over four hours of the lessons. We could have continued to revise and go over what we had learned; but that would have been really boring. Repetition had certainily helped in retention as we were able to recite a fair bit of what we had been working on. We said goodbye [adios] to the Spanish lessons and moved on to other things. Hasta luego (until later) was our sign off post for the day.

Review of the Fourth Post – Cuatro Update on Español Lessons:

Again I used greetings written in Spanish to record my post. Hello, good afternoon [Hola, Beunas Tardes] was used. It was our final post and summed up the course as follows:

1. Did we achieve what we set out to?

We had some fun, and can say a couple of sentences in Spanish. We discovered that there are many versions of the Spanish language.

2. Were our prior expectations met?

We did not learn as much as we thought we could, and I found it difficult to motivate the kids to join in due to the beautiful weather we were experiencing at the time.

3. How did we feel about the course?

I believe that the full version of the course would be extremely useful and very engaging. The fact that we only experienced a small portion of each lesson made it a little difficult.

4. What did we learn?

We have learned quite a few individual words, phrases and numbers in Spanish. We are able to speak a few basic individual sentences, but are unable to have a conversation.

5. How long did it take?

Around seis (six) hours all up.

6. Did we encounter any difficulties?

Motivation as mentioned above, frustration with the technology due to freezing and slow internet connections – so much for high speed broadband

7. Was there any support?

None at all or so I thought being a free course. However there is online technical support via a link in the sidebar on the homepage.

Overall I feel that the course itself was o.k as an introduction only. If you seriously wanted to learn Spanish it would certainly be worthwhile to purchase the full course. The BIGGEST ERROR OF ALL – there was ABSOLUTELY NO FEEDBACK on pronunciation of language so it was impossible to know if we were getting it right! I imagine without the real person standing in front of you, this would be very difficult to simulate.

Further review and and a more in-depth evaluation of the course can be found in Section 3.4 on the Module Three Page.