Thursday, January 19, 2012

Tough Stuff

10 Jan 2012

As anyone who has ever studied a language knows, some things are harder than others to learn...

Typically, anything that your native language has but the second language doesn´t (or it´s different) is going to cause problems for learners.

For English speakers learning Spanish, things like gender, the two past tenses (imperfect and preterite), subjunctive, etc... tend to cause problems.

We´ve hit a crucial point with our 6th graders.

They're studying "there is/there are," and they're having a lot of trouble getting the form right.

In Spanish, it doesn't matter if the object is singular or plural. It's always going to be hay. So we've gotten a lot of "There are a castle." or "There is gardens." A lot of phrases that we--as English speakers--take for granted.

On top of this, the past tense is being introduced! So they have to figure out if it's "there was" or "there were."




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