Verb Conjugations.

Monday, June 14, 2010

In all of my planning of blog posts (which really isn't that extensive, trust me), I always thought this post would be about the last day of Spanish class, or at the very least the last day of Spring classes. However, I think you've probably heard me complain enough, or more than enough, about the misery that has been my Spring class experience, and decided to not subject you to any more whining. Please contain your excitement.

Instead, today's post will actually sortof praise Spanish. I know this is also a huge departure from the norm, but bare with me. I hope it will be worth your time.

Today I took my final Spanish oral exam. I've never been a huge fan of oral exams because speaking has always been my biggest weakness when it comes to the Spanish language. I can mostly understand what I read, and I can write a relatively understandable (though probably not grammatically correct) sentence, and I can semi comprehend what's being said as long as it's said slowly enough. But I am an awful speaker. This probably stems from my fear of saying the wrong thing and looking stupid; I think I've heard one too many stories of word mix-ups, when you say pregnant instead of embarrassed or something equally dumb, and these stories make my too nervous to practice speaking, therefore making me an awful speaker. Add to this nervousness the fact that oral exams are done in front of the professor for a grade, and the pitiful speaking ability I do have disappears completely.

In fact, I did so badly on my midterm oral exam that my professor told me, "you seemed to struggle with . . . Spanish." This was actually an accident; he meant to say I struggle with past and future verb conjugations, but those two things are such a major part of the language that his first accidental assessment was pretty accurate. However, I'm happy to report that I did better this time around. Marginally better, but better nonetheless. I think it had something to do with my improvement on my verb conjugations.

Really I shouldn't be grateful for those pesky things, because there are so many ways to conjugate a verb that it really makes the Spanish language, or any language for that matter, infinitely more complicated than it could be if it only had a few verb forms. However, strangely I am grateful for them. Even though I'm absolutely terrible at conjugating verbs correctly, and I have to cycle through all the forms I can remember before I finally hit on the right one, I still enjoy trying to conjugate them. It acts like a puzzle in my brain, and I like puzzles, so I'm grateful for anything that makes me enjoy Spanish just a little bit more.