Driving Question: How to grow in Spanish in a fun and unique way?
Project Description: For my project, I wrote a short story in Spanish using the skills I developed this school year. For inspiration, I used the nights spent under the stars in Patagonia and the odd assortment of dreams that came with them.
What were your goals for this project? How did you achieve them? My first and foremost goal was to learn Spanish, but I had no idea it would evolve to what it ended up becoming! To achieve this rather ambitious but straight forward goal I ended up employing multiple different techniques.
First I used the tried and true Duolingo learning app. While it did help it did not cover the topics I wanted to explore nor did it start at the level of Spanish I was at. For most of my Australia term, I ended up using the Duolingo stories since they contextualised the language more and were more interactive for my style of learning. I also ended up watching multiple Spanish language movies that were provided on Netflix with English subtitles. One that stood out to me was ‘El Hoyo’ about a futuristic prison.
Eventually, I ended up just writing and revising my Spanish with native Spanish speakers as they were able to answer my specific questions.
What are you passionate about that lead you to choosing this project? I wanted to challenge myself and as someone who did not excel in language studies in my previous school and even went as far as to quit Spanish and get a Pass in French to avoid my grade. I wanted to prove my past self wrong and to prove my present self that I could learn to love languages.
Did your project develop and change from your initial idea, if so how? My project changed significantly from primarily focusing on speaking to writing once the Chile term was changed. I previously hoped that my Spanish would improve once in an environment that forced me to start using the words I learned. However, later on I opted to focus on writing as it was something I could do more independently.