OK, this is the last result graph before the exam. I’m going there next Saturday (Nov 22nd).

Everything seems fine – I’m just a bit worried about Speaking. The rest, however, looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

I have just come back from Lublin where I registered for the Nivel Inicial exam. As for now, there are two candidates on the list do I won’t be alone!

The date of the exam is Nov 22. Taking into account all my efforts so far it’ll be quite weird if I actually fail the test. I’m still gonna learn a lot to be as well prepared as I can.

With a short delay I sat down to write another Nivel Inicial mock exam. This time I chose a test dating back to April 2005, which had a strange taste of antiquity.

The Listening recordings are of very poor quality. So poor that it definitely impinged on the final result. As for Reading and Spanish In Use, they were really easy and the mistakes I made are only due to my carelessness and too much of self-confidence (I need to beware of that during the big exam in November).

The scores can be read on the new graph below.

The exam part which turns out to be very tricky in a teacherless method is without any doubt Writing. Therefore, I’d like to ask you to correct my pieces.

Be merciless and pick up every single mistake. I intend to learn the correct version by heart later!

Querido Miguel,

?Quieres cenar conmigo en el nuevo restaurante en el centro de Pulawy? Tu has dicho que te gusta nachos y pozole. Pienso que el restaurante sirva comida mexicana.
El esta en un Calle Centralna 9. Esta cerca de la panaderia en que tu compras el pan maravilloso.

El restaurante esta abierto desde nueve por lo tanto nosotros podemos quedar a seis al frente del restaurante. Llamame si ya tienes planes por la tarde.

Besos,

Miguel

If you take a look at sample DELE Nivel Inicial exams, you will notice that some of them are marked with the word Escolar. Escolar, as basic language intuition suggests, means ‘school‘. Every independent student such as I will ask ‘So they are easier or what?‘.

Well… it turns out to be quite a challenge to judge whether they are. The vocab items used in Escolar tests are not much different than on regular tests. I couldn’t say difficulty is an issue here.

As for my scores, the Escolar ones are on average:
2% better in Reading,
9% better in Listening,
10% worse in Spanish in Use.

So… is there a real difference in level? Probably not. That’s good news because in this way I have three more sample tests to learn from!

The exam is getting closer and closer so I decided to work on the writing part a bit. So far I’ve ignored since there was nobody to correct it. But this time is over.

From my English learning experience I know that one of the keys to successful writing is the use of some scaffolding langauge, e.g. linking words.

Here are some that you may find useful:

Contrast:
but – pero
however – sin embargo
nevertheless – no obstante
in spite of – a pesar de
whereas – mientras que

Addition:
and – y
moreover – ademas de
besides – aparte de

Generalizing:
generally – generalmente (surpirse! surpirse!)
in general – en general
all in all – por lo general

Phrases to start a letter:
Formal:
Dear Mr Franson – Estimado Sr. Franson
Dear Sir or Madam – Estimado/a Senor(a)

Informal:
Dear Miguel – Querido Miguel

Phrases to end a letter:
Formal
Looking forward to hearing from you – Espero ustedes respuesta

Informal:
Kisses – Besos

As you might have read in ‘My Method’ posts, in the middle of every month I do my Nivel Inicial mock exam. The August one was fine, yet far from a dream one.

This time as my mock exam I did the official Nivel Inicial test from August 2007. I must admit that it was generally not extremely difficult, yet Listening was a bit tricky. However, Reading and Spanish In Use were quite easy.

So here’s my updated Nivel Inicial graph:

Happy Birthday to me! I’m 27 now. Wow!

I have taken a quick look at the Spanish songs for this happy occassion.

The first one is the Spanish version of Western Happy Birthday. This is the grass blues version:

Cumpleaños Feliz,
Cumpleaños Feliz,
Te deseamos todos,
Cumpleaños Feliz.

However, in Mexico the birthday box/girl would be awaken at 6 am with this lovely tune:

Estas son las mañanitas
que cantaba el rey David.
Hoy por ser tu cumpleaños
te las cantamos a ti.
Despierta, mi bien, despierta;
mira que ya amaneci&oacute.
Ya los pajarillos cantan;
la luna ya se metió

I guess most of us would agree thay independence is great. Having a total control over what you are doing is definitely something to strive for. However, independence also brings about responsibility for your actions. In order to be fully accountable for the process, you’ll be confronted with tough choices and sometimes you’ll find yourself deciding to do stuff you were not quite willing to do in the first place. In my case it is one of the learning techniques I employ. It’s quite painful and demanding but, it really does work. And this is learning Spanish texts off by heart. It definitely is a medieval way of learning but it’s extremely rewarding.

Why? Independent learning doesn’t involve a teacher, who is a good model of the language. The aim of memorizing is to create a supercorrect language model inside our heads. A text to learn off by heart usually will have some fixed phrases and expressions which by memorizing will get burned off in our brains. Let us consider this example:

(…) Todas estas características describen a Eduardo Díscoli, un argentino de 56 años que salió de Buenos Aires el 28 de julio de 2001 (…)

Take a look at prepositions in this text. If the text is somewhere in your head and has been repeated ample times, you’ll subconsciously feel that we use de when giving one’s age or a year date. This boosts your language intuition in Spanish which is one of the fundamentals in feeling confident in any productive skill (writing or speaking).

Usually the project you invested most time and energy in gives you most satisfaction. Hopefully we’ll find it in ourselves to defeat our natural willingness to reject such a menial task as learning of by heart just to be more fluent and correct in Spanish. Good luck, Guys!

This day is definitely a landmark in my Spanish learning process. After seven months of  vocab-learning, chat-listening and grammar-drilling I have had an unforgettable experience of having a REAL conversation in Spanish. With a real native speaker!

How was it? Absolutely, mind-bogglingly a-w-e-s-o-m-e! I was a bit hesitant at first whether I should even start a chat in Spanish but I boldly decided to have a go  and now I definitely do not regret having jumped at the opportunity. Although I don’t remember the name of my Spanish partner, I can proudly say that I understood and still remember most of the details of the conversation. Sure, it wasn’t about any profound ethical issue. But still, the most important conclusion is that despite learning individually I managed to hold quite an animated conversation on tourism of Spain. This proves once again that the alleged essentialness of having mates in learning a language is just BS.

The whole experience really uplifted my spirit. Your first successful attempts to communicate in a foreign language you learn are one of those moments that make you feel that trying new things in life really does make sense. Could there be a more optimistic conclusion of a post? Probably not.

END