h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

20 April 2005

Well that didn't last! Cold enough for gloves and scarf again today - I'm really getting fed up with this. We are having an Open Day on Saturday and the forecast is rain and 10 degrees.

Just got back from my Spanish class - have to admit it was slightly better this evening, mainly because there were only seven of us there again. The teacher also gave us a break a bit earlier in the class, which made a tremendous difference, because it meant we hadn't yet reached the stage of being absolutely desperate for coffee, so we were all in a much better mood.

BUT - the teaching methods are still driving me up the wall. Today we were supposedly being taught the pluperfect tense. She announced this last week, explained very briefly (and not very clearly) what this tense was, and then did the first part of a listening exercise which was designed to present the tense. End of class. Homework: a series of exercises on the pluperfect (which we hadn't yet been taught).

This week: class begins with another, more detailed, but equally garbled presentation of the tense. Her main example sentence (which she appeared to make up on the spot) was such rubbish that even the people in the class who don't know anything about grammar teaching could see that it didn't work. It was: "When I came to Cambridge in 1999, I had been to the mountains a lot (in Spain)" (Cuando vine a C, habia ido much a la montana). See what I mean? Despite having promised myself I would not get drawn into it, in the end I couldn't stand the general incomprehension any longer and offered a new example sentence of my own. Thank goodness she seized on it gratefully and the moment passed. But really!

THEN, we did the second half of the listening exercise from last week. Two out of the seven of us there had been absent and missed the first part, but she didn't explain to them why we were starting in the middle of an exercise!

why the personal "a" before la montana, or does ver take an indirect object? (Sorry if I'm being dense, I did O level Spanish almost 20 years ago)(Cor blimey, was it really that long ago?)(Blimey)

What was your example sentence?

oh sorry, habia IDO. Hum-hum. Wake up, dagesh!

still want to know what your example sentence was though.

Not personal 'a' dagesh, it's the preposition 'to', as in 'a Cambridge' = 'to Cambridge'.

Just spotted a mistake: 'much' in the Spanish sentence should obviously be 'mucho'.

My example was: 'When I got to the office this morning, my boss had already arrived.' (Cuando llegue a la oficina esta manana, mi jefe ya habia llegado.) Feel free to put in your own accents!

OK, let's try (using the Alt Gr key, in case you didn't know, Annie):

Cuando llegué a la oficina esta manana (can't do the tilde), mi jefe ya había llegado.

Is that right?

It seems amazing that I learned Spanish 20 years ago.

Richard

Brilliant! Only missing one accent on 'oficína':
Cuando llegué a la oficína esta mañana, mi jefe ya había llegado.

Very impressive!

um... are you sure about the accent on oficina? Not according to the rules, surely? (And I've just looked it up in the dictionary and it doesn't have one there).

Richard

It is so hard for teachers to become passive students again.

And anyway, I have no Spanish but I guess French and Spanish can't be much different as to the pluperfect. And since French and English use it more or less in the same way..;

Calling it "language" teaching is misleading.

Oh for some sun and warmth...

I rarely have time at home during the day when the sun is shinning - but I spent two hours round the back this afternoon planting the daffies and cutting back the shrubs. I probably won't be back out for weeeeeks.

In the shop when the sun shines we cook and when the sun is hidden behind clouds or too low in the sky we freeze. From snow falling to plain chocolate ginger melting in one week.


Sue

Oops, you're probably right. Never bothered to learn the rules about accents - just tend to go on gut feeling ...

Very true martine - and I do try to be a nice, cooperative student. Really, I do!