We Are Crazy!

So apparently it’s been a while since my last blog post! It’s probably about time to fill you in on what language class looks like these days…

Now that we are able to construct sentences in Tagalog, we spend a lot of time discussing pictures. Hannah and I take it in turns to say something about the picture we are looking at. Our teacher then helps us correct our sentences when necessary. As well as using words we already know, we are able to learn many new words by asking what something is or what someone in the picture is doing.

We started with using the pictures in a wordless story book and I discovered that sometimes my Tagalog speaking skills are better than my picture interpretation skills! After saying a sentence about the fact that the boy was lying on the bed and dog was lying of top of him, I was informed that I was, in fact, wrong. Apparently the boy was lying on the bed and dog was standing on the bed next to him. Whatever. At least my sentence was grammatically correct!

Many of our sentences are incorrect, though, and this often provides us with a good laugh. I think the funniest mistake I have made so far was when I said that the cake was going to eat the boy, rather than vice versa. (I then realized that there is only one letter difference between those two statements!)

Now we are talking about photographs from some excursions that we took together before we started formal language learning. Some of the photos we took are rather boring, but this one totally cracks me up…

I am possibly a little too excited about the fact that I am now able to say, “The man is hiding behind the curtain because we are crazy”! Although "crazy" may not be the most useful word I've learned thus far, I'm sure it is one I will nevertheless use a lot! 

Back to Preschool

We are now in our second week of formal language study, and we have had a lot of fun so far. I think this is as close as we’re going to get to being back in preschool! We have learned the names of colours, animals, body parts etc. and can (usually!) follow a series of two or three simple instructions. One day we even played “Simon Says”! And we have a break and “snack time” in the middle of our session… Seriously, all that’s missing is nap time. :-)

The main activity in yesterday’s session was a “grand review” of everything we had learned so far – we now know over 200 Tagalog words! This picture doesn’t show everything we have learned, but I think it includes all the items that could be gathered together on the table.

We have also learned the names of various pieces of furniture and parts of the house (which couldn’t be put on the table for obvious reasons).

Of course, these are only the nouns we have learned. We have also learned a number of verbs and prepositions, which are what really makes our sessions interesting and fun. For example…

Some of my favourite moments so far:

1) Scattering “body parts” (flash cards that point to different body parts) around the room (“Put the arm behind the door…”). We were so focused on comprehending the instructions that it took a while to realize how weird this was…

2) Throwing “animals” around the room (because when else, except in language study, can you throw a cow at the ceiling?!!)

3) Our teacher telling Hannah (after we’d just learned the verbs “hold” and “look at”): “Hold the knife. Look at Rachael”. Not creepy at all! Haha.