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Language is a huge challenge, epecially if it is not your wn native tongue. The first few months I have sent studying, speaking and learning in Castillian Spanish here in it's home country, Spain. Addressing this challenge has included social interaction, home study, and english classes with my two younger host sisters.
To begin with, social interaction and conversation has been one of the best learning tools. The first few weeks here were close to impossible. School was a blur of the people who made an effort to speak slowly and clearly to help me understand and the teacher who couldn't afford to slow down at all. Interestingly enough, both sides helped e a great deal. Those that spoke slowly taught me specific words, conjugations and local slang and idioms while the quick speaking teachers forced me to learn to understand as quickly as they were speaking.
Second, Home study provided me with a concrete way to improve my school performance by memorizing and studying vocabulary and verb conjugation. A lot of my own time in thee past months has been spent studying language boks and websites. Although home study does supplement the learning of a language, you do have to be aware that practical application is a completely different story. When a teacher is lecturing with what seems to be 1000 words a minute, the word you saw on the 473rd page of your dictionary last night probably won't register.
The thrid method of study that proved helpful for my school performance was English classes. Some say that the best way to learn is to teach. for my study abroad program, I won over 2000 dollars for a teaching scholarship. In being awarded that amount, I agreed to teach English 5 hours a week. These classes turned out to be helpful in two main ways. First, I wa steaching very basic language skills. In order to teach those skills it is necessary to know them in Spanish. The second was that it helped me was that I had to learn to explain and...