Personal Objectives

1)

A) My short term goal for this semester in Spanish 1 class is to become more comfortable using Twitter, Friend Feed, and Skype. By becoming more comfortable using these wonderful technology sites I think it will be much easier for me to start to communicate with students and teachers from other Spanish- speaking countries.

B)I will accomplish this goal by

• using Skype, Twitter, Tweetworks, and Friend Feed to communicate with native spanish speakers.
• using LiveMocha, Epals, Soziety, and Diigo to find new people and connect.
• e-mailing teachers and trying to get them to come aboard our project and speak spanish with us.
• chatting, using video, and calling native spanish speakers I have met through the internet.

C) I believe that I can accomplish this goal in 2-3 weeks.  I will know I accomplished this goal when I connect with a student from another country and start a relationship with them through technology.

My mid-term goal is to become more confident in my conversations while speaking in Spanish. Sometimes I find myself having trouble knowing what to say to a question and to fully understand what the other person is saying or asking me. It’s very difficult to have a full conversation with someone if  I’m not positive what they are asking and not confident how to respond. I definitely need to work on this if i want to become more comfortable speaking the language.

B) I can accomplish this by working really hard to focus on listening and picking out keywords. This can make me become more confident speaking in Spanish. Also, I can work on having conversations with people in my class and then as I get better with that, I can have a conversation with a native Spanish speaker via Skype calling feature. At first I can start out slow and with shorter conversations and phrases and as I become more brave have a little bit longer conversations.

C) I think I can accomplish this goal by about half-way through the semester. I will know I accomplished this goal after I’ve had a short conversation with someone in Spanish over the phone. This conversation will let me know that my hard work in learning pronunciation and phrases has paid off. This conversation should include telling about myself and asking about the other person and their culture.

My long-term goal is to be able to have a full conversation with someone from another country using the calling feature on Skype. I want to be able to completely understand what the other person is saying and have an actual intelligent conversation like I can have in English. I want to be able to entirely comprehend what the other person is saying so we can carry on a conversation.

B) I can work towards this goal by talking a lot in Spanish without using any English and listening to alot of spanish and picking out keywords. I will really have to force myself to not use English as tempting as it might be. The first couple of conversations I have on Skype may not be up to the level I would like them to be, but if I keep having conversations, they can only get better. Also, www.studyspanish.com/pronunciation is a website that can help me with my pronunciation if I come across a word in Spanish that I don’t know how to say.

C) I will know when I achieved this goal when I am no longer stuttering to speak in Spanish and when I’m not confused by what the other person has said. Also, when I know how to respond immediately right after someone has said something or asked a question. I believe that I can achieve part of this goal by the end of the semester. However, I think it will take a long time to become completely fluent in Spanish. It will take years of practice and determination.