I will survive in spanish or will i?
The British have a reputation for being bad at learning languages, but is it really true? I work for a newspaper which was doing a series of articles about this. As an experiment, they asked me to try and learn a completely new language for one month. Then I had to go to the country and do some ‘tests’ to see if I could ‘survive’ in different situations. I decided to learn Spanish because I would like to visit Spain and Latin America in the future. If I go, I don’t want to be the typical Brit who expects everyone else to speak English.
I did a one-month intensive course in Spanish at a language school in London. I was a complete beginner but I soon found that some Spanish words are very similar to English ones. For example, ‘hola’ isn’t very different from ‘hello’ and ‘inglés’ is very similar to ‘English’. But other things were more difficult, for example the verbs in Spanish change for each person and that means you have to learn a lot of different endings. My biggest problem was the pronunciation. I found it very difficult to pronounce some letters in Spanish, especially ‘r’ and ‘j’. I downloaded sentences in Spanish onto my phone and I listened and repeated them again and again.
When my course finished I went to Madrid for the weekend to do my tests. A Spanish teacher called Paula came with me and gave me a mark out of 10 for each test and then a final mark for everything.
These were the tests and the rules:
Tests
You have to…
1 order a drink and a sandwich in a bar, ask how
much it is, and understand the price.
2 ask for directions in the street (and follow them).
3 get a taxi to a famous place in Madrid.
4 leave a message on somebody’s voicemail.
Rules
– you mustn’t use a dictionary or phrase book
– you mustn’t speak English at any time
– you mustn’t use your hands or mime or write
anything down
. There were two men in the room. One of them was writing something while the other read a newspaper. 2. Hedid not to tell me that he received a message from her. 3. I had asked him if he knew where she lived. I said I did not know her address. 4. He asked me if I could give him your address. 5. She said that hegave her the wrong address. 6. I asked him where he put my letter. 7. He told us that they had spent all the money. 8. Iwas sitting in an armchair and thought of my coming trip across the North Sea when the door suddenly opened and an old friend of mine whom I have not to seen for a very long time entered the room. 9. She came to see us just at the time when we have had dinner. It was the first time I have seen her. 10. I have seen him just as he left the hotel. 11. I have not seen him before we met at the concert. 12. He had left the house before I had time to ask him anything. 13. After spending several days in Paris he felt lonely and wanted to return home. 14. I thought he had already gone home. 15. I found the old man in the garden. He was talking to some children who stood around listening to him. 16. He spoke a language we had never head before. 17. He told me he had learnt it from the newspaper. 18. He entered the room, took something from the desk and went out.
1. She said that she had finished all her work. 2.She asked him why he was looking at her like that.
3. His mother ordered him not to play with matches.
4. Tom told his father that he would clean the car the next day.
5. Garry asked his wife where she had been.
6. He told me that he had been working for the same company since 2000.
7. She asked me if i knew Garfield.
8. Jane asked Helen if she had seen that film.
9. Fiona said that she had had an argument with Mark the day before.
10. He suggested playing chess.
Объяснение: