Spanish
My Spanish book this semester is totally strange, it takes on some really heavy topics that are super difficult to discuss properly with 3rd semester Spanish. In my last Spanish book we discussed things like "Describe your family" and "What kind of food do you like to eat". We were able to try out the vocabulary words and get comfortable with the grammar without having to struggle to think about the topic too much.
In this Spanish book we have things like "Do you agree with the social changes made in the Industrial Revolution?", "Do you think the increase in technology is a good thing or a bad thing? Why?" or "If a man doesn't have children is he still a real man?". Now these are subjects that I could write a 10 page paper on but I don't have the skills to say something like "The Industrial Revolution caused a disconnect between people and what they were making and the increase in product specialization meant that people were removed from their personal connections with each other and what they were producing." I'm in my 3rd semester, I'm able to have simple conversations about basic topics.
Fortunately the TA also thinks this is a bit over our heads and doesn't really pay much attention to the content of what we are saying, just the structure of how we are saying it. I understand that when people learn a new language they sound like they are 5 years old and that is just the process that it takes in order to learn a language later in life. It would just be nice if they didn't try to make it harder on us than it already is.
In this Spanish book we have things like "Do you agree with the social changes made in the Industrial Revolution?", "Do you think the increase in technology is a good thing or a bad thing? Why?" or "If a man doesn't have children is he still a real man?". Now these are subjects that I could write a 10 page paper on but I don't have the skills to say something like "The Industrial Revolution caused a disconnect between people and what they were making and the increase in product specialization meant that people were removed from their personal connections with each other and what they were producing." I'm in my 3rd semester, I'm able to have simple conversations about basic topics.
Fortunately the TA also thinks this is a bit over our heads and doesn't really pay much attention to the content of what we are saying, just the structure of how we are saying it. I understand that when people learn a new language they sound like they are 5 years old and that is just the process that it takes in order to learn a language later in life. It would just be nice if they didn't try to make it harder on us than it already is.