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miércoles, 30 de enero de 2019

The Language Exchange and Learning Spanish



Every Friday, except for when we have projects or holidays, we hold a language exchange in the Las del Tul office. If you are interested, it’s Friday 17:30 to 19:00! It gives an opportunity for Spanish people to practice their English and for us or other foreigners living in Granada, to practice Spanish. We have a series of games we do every language exchange and we switch between languages, so we all get to practice.

The best game is the story cubes I think. They are tiny icons on each side of the cubes and you have to tell stories based on how you throw the cubes, or you go in a big circle and everyone has to develop a big story together. Usually it ends up pretty ridiculous, like raptors invading Leroy Merlin or aliens riding a meteorite, but it is also a nice challenge.


We never only do the same things, so we have played around with speed dating in the past which can be very funny. We also like to play the game Charades with the phone and that is usually a mix of intense and loud explanations and clueless staring. There are many other games we enjoy and now we are trying to broaden our repertoire to keep things exciting for the returning participants. Participation remains low, but we have a few people who come on a regular basis.

The language exchange helps us volunteers improve our Spanish, but I feel like it is not enough. Sadly, we only had one month of language classes when we arrived and there is only so much Duolingo you can do before going insane. During work, our main language is English and my housemates (AKA, the other volunteers) also speak English. Of course, it would be nice to meet more people to practice Spanish with, but I’ve been rather antisocial lately and I usually go hiking in the mountains instead of making friends.

The conclusion which I’ve reached quite some time ago, but never quite acted upon is that language exchanges are very useful, so I should go to ones organized by other groups, not just ours, in order to improve my Spanish. I guess that’s a goal for February!

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