Last night we had a speaker come in who reminded all the students who began the process of learning Spanish with PICY of their first day in class.
Our methodology is 100% immersion, which means that from day one, each and every class is completely in Spanish. It makes for slow going at first, because you don't understand anything that's going on. Or at least that's what it seems like. But really, within the first few minutes you are speaking a foreign language, repeating phrases such as "My name is," "I grew up in," etc. It's amazing how much we can communicate with others without any language at all. Through the complete immersion process, the language acquisition speeds up because when the students learn a word or a concept, they really learn it; they don't just translate it. By the end of 10 weeks (750 class hours), students who began with NO Spanish are presenting their final project that they researched, wrote up, and present exclusively in Spanish. Of course the grammar is not perfect, nor spelling or accents or conjugation, but the most important aspect is that they are already able to communicate.
For those students who have had the experience of entering into an immersion classroom with no (or very little) prior knowledge of a language, but learn anyways, yesterday's workshop was a familiar atmosphere!
Here's a brief look at what the experience was like!
Our methodology is 100% immersion, which means that from day one, each and every class is completely in Spanish. It makes for slow going at first, because you don't understand anything that's going on. Or at least that's what it seems like. But really, within the first few minutes you are speaking a foreign language, repeating phrases such as "My name is," "I grew up in," etc. It's amazing how much we can communicate with others without any language at all. Through the complete immersion process, the language acquisition speeds up because when the students learn a word or a concept, they really learn it; they don't just translate it. By the end of 10 weeks (750 class hours), students who began with NO Spanish are presenting their final project that they researched, wrote up, and present exclusively in Spanish. Of course the grammar is not perfect, nor spelling or accents or conjugation, but the most important aspect is that they are already able to communicate.
For those students who have had the experience of entering into an immersion classroom with no (or very little) prior knowledge of a language, but learn anyways, yesterday's workshop was a familiar atmosphere!
Here's a brief look at what the experience was like!