Spanish & Illinois

by Ann Abbott Do you have to hand in an end-of-the-year activities report? Do you hate doing it? Does it feel like bean counting? I know the feeling. But looking at the numbers can actually be helpful. Your community partners have to do this kind of reporting all the time when they apply for and report back on grants and within their internal and external communications. There are many ways to measure activity, importance and impact. Numbers do not tell the whole story. But they are one piece of the puzzle. And here are my numbers regarding teaching and program coordination for academic year 2010-11. (OJO: the numbers represent available spaces in the courses I teach/coordinate; I did not count actual enrollments in each and every section. Hence the phrase, "up to.") 5 courses taught/coordinated  SPAN 202 Business Spanish SPAN 208 Oral Spanish SPAN 228 Spanish Composition SPAN 232 Spanish in the Community SPAN 332 Spanish & Entrepreneurship 725 (up to) stu...

by Hanna Perhai Hello, once again! Now, unfortunately, for the last time. The semester has flown by, especially my time in Spanish in the Community. I'd just like to close the semester with some highlights from my experience with S.O.A.R. My favorite thing, by far, has been getting to know my student. Over the months, I've learned how he learns best, where his strengths lie, and what he likes to do. I know that mental math is not his strong suit, but he almost always gets the right answer if he just writes out the problem. He reads very well in both Spanish and English, but he understands the story better if he reads it in Spanish. We got the chance to read through a substantially long book in Spanish about Bambi. This was one of the best parts of my time with my student. We switched reading every page so that he would get practice reading a difficult book, and then I got practice reading out loud in Spanish. I honestly think that if a person were to liste...

[Note from Ann Abbott: As an extra project, one of the "Spanish in the Community" students watched the videos that accompany  Comunidades: Más allá del aula  and has blogged about several topics that emerged for her. You can see the videos yourself: click on this link for Comunidades: Más allá del aula By "Welcome," choose "Unidad 1" from the dropdown menu Hit the "Go" button Click on "Videos" in the left navigation column] by Haley Dwyer Topics Although the accents were the most challenging part of watching these videos, the range of topics was the most interesting for me. The vast majority of the topics that were discussed during the videos were both informational and pertinent to the information that I have learned throughout the semester. Because many of the topics that were discussed are not things that I normally talk about, in English or in Spanish, my knowledge of the Spanish language was truly tested. The main thing that...

[Note from Ann Abbott: As an extra project, one of the "Spanish in the Community" students watched the videos that accompany  Comunidades: Más allá del aula  and has blogged about several topics that emerged for her. You can see the videos yourself: click on this link for Comunidades: Más allá del aula By "Welcome," choose "Unidad 1" from the dropdown menu Hit the "Go" button Click on "Videos" in the left navigation column] by Haley Dwyer Accents Throughout watching these videos, the one thing that I believe challenged my Spanish the most is the varying accents that I heard. Because most of my Spanish language learning has been spent in a classroom and not traveling the world, I have only been exposed to a few different accents. Listening to the different accents was both frustrating and enjoyable. Not only did the accents make what the speakers were saying easier or difficult to understand but I also noticed that t...

[Note from Ann Abbott: As an extra project, one of the "Spanish in the Community" students watched the videos that accompany Comunidades: Más allá del aula  and has blogged about several topics that emerged for her. You can see the videos yourself: click on this link for Comunidades: Más allá del aula By "Welcome," choose "Unidad 1" from the dropdown menu Hit the "Go" button Click on "Videos" in the left navigation column] by Haley Dwyer Language Learning Along with our Spanish in the Community textbook comes a supplemental website that is full of interesting resources that I was unaware of. For example, there are about thirteen different sets of videos from native Spanish speakers. These videos cover every topic imaginable with speakers from different parts of the Spanish-speaking world. Watching all of these videos taught me many different things.  Because I have not been exposed to that many different types of speakers, it w...

by Kendra Dickinson Hello all, As some of you may know, I have been working in the Extension Office of Hispanic Outreach as part of my Capstone Project for my minor in the Environmental Fellows Project. Over the semester I devoted myself to projects such as a Water Quality Survey given to Spanish-speakers, a Latin American Literature Reading Group, researching world environmental, health and hunger problems, translating and editing materials in English and Spanish, and a project called Scientific Animations Without Borders, working on scripts for videos in English and Spanish. Looking back on the semester, I remember when I first approached my minor advisor, looking for a project. He suggested that I find a project to fulfill my minor’s Capstone Project that combined my major, Spanish, and my minor, Environmental Studies, in order to do a multidisciplinary project that used my strengths and put to use my studies here at the university. Overall, I could not be more happy that I did th...

by April Nwatah Hey readers! Can you believe that this semester is coming to an end?! Spring semester always seems to fly faster than fall, and every semester that brings me closer to graduation (Spring 2012) seems to fly faster than any other. It was a surprise to look at my calendar the other day and realize that my last day of volunteering was upon me. Today was my last day volunteering with Salt and Light Ministries and I’m generally not too good with endings. It makes me sad to think that I may never see certain people again. I’ve gotten used to seeing the same kids and families every Monday. It still hasn’t really sunk in that I’m finished… I guess it’s a good thing that I have plans to keep working in the community! (= As a student living on campus, it’s generally pretty easy to get caught up in what I like to call “the campus bubble.” In previous semesters at the university I found myself not leaving campus for months at a time. During such periods, I would tend to get quit...

by Haley Dwyer Well, my time at the Refugee Center has finally come to a close and I’m sad to say that unfortunately I have had to call it quits earlier than I thought. Over the past three weeks, I have been getting sicker and sicker. Recently, I found out that not only did I get lucky enough to get mono in the last month of the semester but also I now have a sinus infection along with the mono. Being sick is not fun. When you are sick, going to class, talking to friends, walking up the stairs, and even eating lunch is painful. Add in speaking a foreign language with a native Spanish speaker and it can get overwhelming very quickly. I have learned a lot from being sick and working at the Center over the past couple of weeks. I learned that it is important to take things slow. When you are sick, there is a large part of your brain that is devoted to simply attempting to deal with being sick, so mistakes are made easier. Although making a mistake is not the end of the world, it can be ...

by Haley Dwyer Hi all! I’m back and it’s sad to say but my time at the Refugee Center is coming to a close. I have done a lot at the Center over this semester and learned a lot from my experiences. One of the skills that I will take out of this experience is the ability to translate documents. At the Center, they translate all sorts of documents in every language. Over the semester, I have translated everything from birth certificates to divorce certificates to diplomas. Through these experiences I have learned a lot about the art of translation. When translating federal documents to English I have learned the importance of word choice. Different types of documents use different types of words so it is extremely important that as a translator, you realize what type of document you are translating. Because federal documents use specific words that I am not always familiar with, I use  wordreference.com  often to attempt to choose the perfect word. On  wordreference.com ...

by Hanna Perhai Hello, yet again! As the semester is quickly coming to a close, I only have two posts left to reflect on my experience.  In the past, I've talked about my goals for this semester, the organization that I'm working with, and some of the challenges that I've faced so far. Before my final, closing post (which will come sometime next week), I'd like to focus on not only my experience in the community, but how it has worked in conjunction with my time in the classroom.  To be honest, I never was very excited to have a classroom portion of this course.  I only really wanted to work in the community and get a chance to improve my Spanish.  However, I now realize that having a classroom portion has been extremely beneficial in getting the most out of my experience in the community.  For example, before my first real day of tutoring in Spanish, we learned different math vocabulary like addition and fractions.  Little did I know, I would use those ...

by Kendra Dickinson   Hello Everyone! I have been doing so much during the past few weeks that it is difficult to even know where to begin. As the school year comes to a close, I am beginning to wrap up the projects that I have been working on. Most importantly, there is still much left to be done for the Water Quality Survey that I have been working on, so I am trying to get as much accomplished as I can before I graduate. Right now, we still need about 100 more people to fill out the survey, so I have been working hard to make that happen. As I described in my previous post, it was very labor intensive to go out onto the street and talk with each person completing the survey individually. While this method is ideal in the sense that it creates a person-to-person connection and fosters a better understanding between the researchers and the people completing the survey, unfortunately it is not the most efficient way to carry out the Water Quality Survey. Francisco and I talked th...

by Marlee Stein As the semester is coming to an end, I definitely feel as if it was a wonderful and rewarding experience.   Although my placements started out a bit rocky, I learned a lot because I was able to work with a number of different students.    The last 5 weeks or so I worked consistently tutoring with one girl, and really created a bond.   She was a very intelligent girl and helped me learn a lot of Spanish, despite her knowing very little English.    I got to work in classrooms for both 3 rd , and 4 th grade students, but didn’t use very much Spanish.   Nonetheless I gained insight into how best to help the students with homework and learning English.    By subbing at SOAR I worked with girls of all ages and of all abilities.   I even had to teach a girl who knew absolutely no English how to add fractions.   It really forced me to use everything I knew in the Spanish language to explain the difficul...

by Hannah Perhai Hannah here, once again! I'm back to blog about my work in S.O.A.R. this semester. So, in my last post, I promised to discuss the difficulties that I have encountered while volunteering as a tutor for a Spanish-speaking second grader. These challenges come in two categories: language-related and behavior-related. I'll discuss behavior-related problems first. As with any young child, you're going to have some difficulties here and there keeping your kid in line, especially in an after-school program when the kids are exhausted or hyper after a full day of school. Luckily, my student behaves fairly well. While most of the boys in our class act out (and the girls behave like little angels), my student mostly spaces out. I consider myself lucky in that respect because I don't have to yell at him to stop breaking rules all the time, but when it comes to getting homework and reading done, his lack of attention can be challenging. I've f...

by April Nwatah Hello Friends! So from what I’ve been told, this is the first semester that Spanish 232 has worked with Salt and Light. In a sense, me and my two other class mates that volunteer at Salt and Light are pioneers in this project! However, being a pioneer isn’t always simple. When we first started working there, there wasn’t very much for us to do. On Mondays (the day that I volunteer) they give away clothes. The way it’s set up, its kind of like a thrift store – except everything is free. With the large amounts of people that come in to receive clothes, the area gets quite messy. Therefore, for our first couple weeks we simply organized the racks of clothing. When clothes would fall off of the hangers (percha in Spanish, as I’ve learned through my time there) we would put them back on. There weren’t too many opportunities to speak Spanish and it was getting kind of frustrating. While at Salt and Light, we noticed that a lot of kids would come in with their parents and...

by Ann Abbott In their seminal book, Where´s the Learning in Service-Learning,  Janet Eyler and Dwight E. Giles, Jr. identify the learning outcomes of service learning. Eyler and Giles explain that well-designed service learning forces students to confront "ill-structured problems," which they define as "complex and open ended; their solution creates new conditions and new problems. Such problems require, first and foremost, the ability to recognize that the problems are complicated and are embedded in a complex social context, the ability to evaluate conflicting information and expert views, and the understanding that there is no simple or definitive solution" (16). "Traditional academic programs," they state, "however, have not resulted in moving most college students to the levels necessary to cope with complex issues and information (King and Kitchener, 1994)" (17). On the other hand, their research on service learning indicates that, ...