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Old November 05, 2012, 10:15 PM
MeghanArleene MeghanArleene is offline
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Smile Idea. . .

Hello,

I'm new and haven't really participated yet, but I looked around at the different threads, and I think this forum looks like an excellent way for me to learn Spanish. I only had one suggestion though. I'm a member of another language forum, and one thing I noticed they had on that forum that was popular and helpful that tied a lot of of the vocabulary, grammar, etc. together, was they had a sentence of the week. It was a simple sentence, and progressed each week. It could be something like "I would like ____." My _____ is _____." etc. This could turn into "I would like an apple." "I would like a book." "I would like a black shirt." "My shirt is blue." "My mother is tall." etc. It just gives people a chance to make as many sentences with a certain structure, and it gives them a chance to learn to vocabulary, and use it in context right away. . .and learning the grammar, etc. through repetition right away. It's interesting to see what others come up with, and on that other forum, those who knew the language fluently, or others that had mastered that part would help to correct the newbies, etc.

Meghan
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Old November 06, 2012, 12:36 AM
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Rusty Rusty is offline
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Thanks for the suggestion, Meghan. This sounds like it could be both beneficial and fun, as long as language learning is kept in mind.

I believe you could start us off, and may already have some ideas about how it might work in a forum environment.

Here's what I think might work.

1. Start a thread in the 'Practice & Homework' forum (or in the 'General Chat' forum) called 'Sentence of the week - English/Spanish'.
(Another thread, called 'La frase de la semana - español/inglés', could be maintained by someone else who is comfortable with writing everything in Spanish.)

2. Provide some instructions, like
a. Post an English sentence that includes some blanks.
b. Explain that others are expected to fill in the blanks with grammatically-correct parts of speech (subjects, verbs, objects, adjectives, etc.) and then translate the completed sentence into Spanish.

3. You may want to provide a list of words to help others complete the sentence ('Word List:').
a. For more of a challenge, you could include words that will not work and you could jumble the words up so that their roles in the sentence will be harder to determine.
b. In addition to the list of words, you might want to offer hints about what parts of speech could occupy the blanks. For example:
My _(singular subject)_ sees the _(plural object)_. -or-
The boy _(third-person present-tense verb)_ the _(singular object)_.
c. If desired, you could Hide the word list (find the option to Hide text in the tool bar above where you type). That way, members could take a peek at the list only after they've run out of their own ideas.

4. Include your translation of the completed English sentence into Spanish.

5. Invite others to provide corrections to your solution and to your translation.

6. Tell them it's their turn to complete the sentence, using a different set of words, and provide a translation.

7. When the week is over, provide another sentence (with another list of words, hints, etc.).
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Old November 12, 2012, 08:44 PM
MeghanArleene MeghanArleene is offline
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Hello,

That sounds like a great idea! And the rules should probably also encourage people to write as many sentences as they'd like, because that would give them more practice.

I agree, the focus should be kept on language learning, so people should keep it simple and impersonal (such as, no talking about an argument they had with their spouse, etc.). My advice, because of my experience with the other language forum, the sentence of the week should start out very basic and get more complex as the weeks go on so that any new people that join can look for the first sentence of the week, and be able to eventually catch up to everyone else.

I totally agree with needing a list of words for the sentences. There should probably be a vocabulary list of between 10-15 words that should be able to relate to the sentence. If the words don't relate, they won't be able to use the words, and they'll easily forget them. Also, a verb or two should be given, but not with all of the conjugations necessarily, because that would draw it out too much. If you want to write the verbs out and their conjugations for reference, it would probably be better to keep that in another topic, each verb having it's own thread. But to keep things simple, the sentence could focus on using one or two tenses of the verb if it's the missing word is a verb. By time the forum reaches the 52nd week (1 year), people will probably be able to write more complex sentences and use words other than those given in the vocabulary list, but the vocabulary list would still be necessary to continue building one.

A good example of a simple sentence could be, "Me gusta ______." They could write "Me gusta las moras." Eventually as they learn more vocabulary (and some may look up a word or two on their own to add), they could play with it and say "Ya no me gusta las moras." They should definitely write the English translation next to their sentences though, especially if they use other words that aren't included in the vocabulary list.
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