Also another difference is the conjugation. In English the conjugation isn’t as prominent. I can elaborate using one common verb tener. In English and Spanish you change the verb based on the subject, but the difference is in Spanish the change is clearer and is emphasised more. When using the verb tener in the present tense, you change it to ‘tengo’ for ‘I have’, ‘tienes’ for ‘you have’, ‘tiene’ for ‘he, she, or you (formal) has/have’, ‘tenemos’ for ‘we have’, and ‘tienen’ for ‘you all have’. As you can see in Spanish the conjugation is more elaborate compared to English.

Two grammar aspects that were different were the punctuation and accents. It surprised me that in Spanish you needed 2 exclamation points or 2 question marks in one sentence. You need an upside down exclamation point or question mark at the beginning as well as having a regular exclamation point or question mark at the end of a sentence. For example in Spanish you would say ‘¡Me encanta mi familia!’ or ‘¿Cómo te llamas?’. The other thing that surprised me was the accents. Since I came from learning Chinese I expected the accents to dramatically change how you pronounce a word, but in Spanish it is really used for differentiating similar words in writing. For example you have ‘mi’ meaning ‘my’ and ‘mí’ meaning ‘me’. All of the accents are á, é, í, ó, ú, ü, and ñ. The last 2 (ü and ñ) are actually 2 extra letters in the Spanish alphabet that the English doesn’t have!

One other thing that stuck out to me was having the formal ‘you’. In English you use madam, sir, and proper grammar to show respect. In Spanish you highlight the respect by using the formal you. Using this form of you changes the conjugation all together so the respectfulness is easy to identify. Lastly, one surprising difference was that in Spanish you don’t capitalize the days of the week, months of the year, religions, nationality, and languages. These are 6 comparisons I observed during Spanish 1 and I can’t wait to find more as I pursue my path of Spanish. 

A second thing I found interesting is how important family is in the culture. In Costa Rica the children don’t move out until they are married, and once they do they normally live in the same town. In America it is usual for the children to move out when they go to college and live a couple states away from their own family. Also multiple generations live in the same house, so many of the day to day routines include the extended family. These activities include grocery shopping, meals, and babysitting. Another thing is parties are always a family gathering. The family gathers together with a meal, music, and dancing. Not only is the extended family close, the neighbors are also treated like family! That is because there is such a large sense of community in Costa Rica. I love how close the family and friends are and it makes you appreciate their culture for that! Peace and family are two main aspects of the Costa Rican culture that I wanted to emphasize my respect for!

The negatives of this course revolved around the teacher to student interaction in general. It was hard to transition from learning in a classroom to a computer. I ask a lot of question so for my it is hard to voice my concerns through text without being misinterpreted. I also didn’t like how most of the tests were computer graded. That is because if your answer wasn’t exactly the same, for example having an extra space or period, the question was marked wrong. A way to fix that would be to make the written response questions teacher graded. I know that would take longer and be more work for the teachers, but it would let the teachers get a better idea on how to help you and with the more specific critiques, it would easily give you a chance to fix those tiny mistakes. Not being able to talk to a teacher face to face did create difficulty in my learning. 

There are many things I can do to improve my Spanish. I can attempt at having conversations with others to improve my comprehending skills. This would help me become faster and more fluent at understanding the language. All of this would help elevate my skills. Also to improve my reading I can buy Spanish newspapers, and try my best to understand and hopefully as I learn more I’ll be able to read more of the paper. I can also start reading the back of packages to try to read the directions or the Spanish subtitles that all around me. When you start looking, you realize there is more Spanish around you than you think, you just need to take advantage of it. Once I take advantage of it and use it more often, I’ll be able to improve my own Spanish learning. 

There was one thing that would’ve helped. I feel when you submitted your speaking assignments, your teacher could have critiqued you harder and maybe even provided an audio comment. The audio comment would have helped me hear the difference between myself, a beginner, and my teacher, a fluent speaker.  Overall my teacher did an amazing job helping me through the course!

Kaiser, James. “Traditional Costa Rican Dancing.” COSTA RICAN CULTURE, James Kaiser, jameskaiser.com/costa-rica-guide/culture/.

“Our Students Attend High School and Middle School Classes over the Internet.” About Us: A Classical Online High School and Project-Based Middle Schoo- Williamsburg Academy, Williamsburg Academy, www.williamsburgacademy.org/about-us/.

“A Spanish Book.” Recommended Books For Spanish Learners, Idle Wild, www.idlewildbooks.com/recommended-books-for-spanish-learners/.

“Spanish.” Idlewild's Spanish Language Course, Idlewild Books, www.idlewildbooks.com/languages/spanish/.

“Spanish Tenses.” Simple Spanish Verb Tenses, Enforex, www.enforex.com/language/tense.html.