First of all, thank you so much for coming to class! I truly enjoyed hearing your opinions and seeing you express yourselves. 💙 @Tony K @Kari P @Susan McArthur @Salima Hamirani Today, someone told me I'm very smart because I understood what they said so quickly. 🙂‍↕️ But honestly, the truly smart ones are YOU! Every class, you impress me with your willingness to learn and participate. See you in the next class! 🫂

I've been slowy (VERY SLOWLY) reading El Invencible Verano de Liliana. Its a gorgeously poetic and intense piece: A non fiction story of a woman who returns to Mexico to investigate the murder of her sister and in the process, recreate her sister's life. It's very advanced, so its definitely for later on in your spanish journey. It's way way above my level. But, I wanted to share how I'm using it for intense study (versus extensive reading, which consists of written input much closer to my actual Spanish level- I just read without saving words or worrying to much as long as I can follow the story). Intense study kinda sucks in all honesty. But its helped me bridge the huge gaps between comprehension levels. Once you reach intermediate there's this massive rift between what you can understand and truly native content and sometimes it feels insurmountable. So - I read a chapter in Spanish, then I read it again but using the English translation, then again in Spanish picking out words or phrases that were difficult for me. I save those. And study them. Later on, when I've finished the book, I'll sometimes listen to the audio version. Obviously its an intense amount of work and I only have about 30 minutes of brain space for it at any given moment. But my comprehension of written Spanish sky rockets whenever I have the grit to do it for any length of time. You can also intensely study audio or written words just slightly above your level and its not so tedious and suicide inducing!

These are two much more difficult podcasts but they've been my "intensive" study focus the last few months and probably into the future for some time because they're hard! Sometimes I can just listen to them without stopping to look anything up, but mostly its still a struggle. Especially the first podcast because of the varying accents. Radio Ambulante - which has stories from all over the spanish speaking world: https://radioambulante.org/ Second, and very Puerto Rico specific, La Brega. This is mostly to help me access country specific terms and phrases but its very well produced. https://futurostudios.org/podcasts/la-brega/

¿Por que estan aprendiendo el español ustedes? Me fascinan las razones que tienen la personas por aprender español... Para mi, quiero aprender para mi trabajo. Tengo muchos clientes y compañeros con fabricas y empresas en México, Guatemala y otros países en latinoamerica. A veces necesito comunicar con hispanohablantes de esos países y me ayuda si puedo hablar con ellos en su idioma. Llevo unpoco mas que dos años estudiando español, y ahora casi siempre puedo manejar reuniones con ellos en ingles o en español, aunqué tengo dificultades todavía en el español... Dime: ¿Cuales son las razones quieres hablar español?

This will for sure be a fun one! Don't miss out! You can join here -----> https://www.skool.com/spanish-fluency-club/calendar?eid=191a0cf6eb6541bcab0a1f38faf01dda