First week highlights

Velar, Palatal, Alveolar, Fricative, Affricate, Bilabial stop, and Interdental are all words that have been thrown at us this first week. I remember them from a Basic Linguistic class I took at Northland (Hated that class), but you just don't use those terms on a daily basis.

For example: "Class, notice the labiodental 'f' in the word 'faria'."

For this first week, we have mainly focused on phonics and the mechanics of speaking Spanish. My mouth hurts, due to the new sounds I need to make with different muscles. Like I have said before, I am very grateful for some past Spanish language exposure and training, but RGBI takes a totally different approach to language learning. The first emphasis comes on listening, then to speaking, then reading, and finally writing. This has been a totally opposite philosophy than my high school and college Spanish courses.

RGBI's logic for this approach is that:
-Correct grammar will be rendered, to some degree, meaningless, and the person often misunderstood, if the pronunciation is bad. On the other hand, those who may use some incorrect grammatical features, but who have good pronunciation habits, not only can be understood, but also can be more easily corrected.

Half of our day is spent in class learning about the mechanics, and the rest is spent in the listening lab (above) practicing those sounds over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over (below).





Our lab professor, Moises, carefully listens to each of us and corrects our mistakes (every one, every time). He has to be a very patient man to listen to 12 people "murder" his language all morning long.


Yesterday we finally received our student ID cards. They allow us to check out books in the library. As part of orientation, the students were giving a tour of the library (if you know me at all...I was in heaven). RGBI has the largest volume of Evangelical Spanish books in the USA (that's what they told me at least). I took J & B there today to check out some kids books in English & Spanish to read to them this coming week.


Our children were able to continue on in their AWANA book on Wed. night, since Valley Baptist Church has AWANA. They had a great time again, making new friends and participating in the children's ministries.

To sum up, my highlights this past week have been:
-Attending a Spanish church
-Meeting new people
-Watching my kids run down the sidewalk to greet me coming home from class everyday.
-Learning new things and concepts
-Oh, yes...the library

Continue to pray for me in my studies. With each passing day, there will be more assignments, more phonetic rules to memorize, and many opportunities to practically use what I have been learning.