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
12 A Can
13. A Have you finished reading the newspaper yet? C Could you stop making so much noise.
14. A My friend asked me if I spoke English
16. A We have a large garden. Do you know where our garden is?
G I can’t find my textbook. Have you seen it anywhere?
18. A used with gerunds
19.What … your parents ... when I rang E were ... doing
20. Complete the sentence:
The more you practice speaking English, you will do it. E The better
21.Choose suitable prepositions:
One of the world’s longest auto tunnels, passing Mont Blanc, was opened 1965. E Through/in
1. I like eating vegetables.
2. I like swimming in the swimming pool.
3. I like reading fairy tales.
4. I like jumping by the skipping rope.
5. I like listening to CD.
6. I like feeding my cat.
7. I like walking outside with my friends.
8. I like playing my computer games.
9. I like watching TV-set.
10. I like cooking different cakes for my mom.