BALANGA 1

BALANGA, Patricia Mae B.

EN10 Personal Response Paper
Dr. Len Canilao
September 17, 2016
Ciamae the Explorer
Learning another language, different from your native language, is complicated and timeconsuming although I believe that you learn more about something when you enjoy the lesson. My
experience on learning another language, particularly Spanish, is an entertaining process. The
main reason is that I encorporate activites that bring joy to me while learning. Learning Spanish is a
dream of mine when I was in pre-school and ever since then, I have been introduced to different
enjoyable approaches of learning Spanish. These approaches include: watching TV, traveling with
my family, hanging out with friends, playing mobile games, and surfing the internet.
An activity that I enjoy very much aided me in enjoying the process of learning Spanish and
that is watching television. As I kid, I enjoyed watching the cartoon series Dora because of the
interaction between the characters and the viewers. Dora occasionally utter Spanish words and later
on, tells the viewers the meaning and allows the viewers repeat after her. Being an oh-so-cheerful
kid, I would respond and repeat the Spanish words. I have learned different Spanish basic words
and phrases such as Hola soy which means Hello, my name is and muy bien! which
means very good. Dora always teaches various Spanish words and phrases during different
situations. For instance, I learned the phrase, Feliz cumpleaos which means happy birthday,
when Dora went to her friends birthday party. This cartoon series has made me learn simple
Spanish words that may be used in different situations.
Travelling to other countries may be a struggle especially when trying to communicate in another
language. Luckily, Spanish is very close to Filipino and communicating wasnt that hard. When I
was thirteen years old, in the year 2011, my parents and I went to Spain specifically in the cities of
Barcelona and Madrid. With the simple knowledge of Spanish from what I have learned from
watching Dora I understood airport greeting signs, bathroom signs, and some train destinations.
Even though I knew little Spanish, it still helped my parents and I in our travel. For example, when
my mother and I went to the grocery to buy takeout dinner and the pasta we bought did not have a
plastic fork with it. We tried to ask and ended up using the Filipino word tinidor. Surprisingly, the
staff understood us and gave us a plastic fork. Another was in Madrid when we were inside the mall
and looking for the sign to the washroom. We saw the sign that said bao and we were glad that

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we were in the correct room. My travel to Spain was fun and memorable because I was not that
confused of the words written on signs and words spoken to us.
The third activity that I enjoy wherein I have learned Spanish words is hanging out with my
friends. One friend of mine, who is named Natalia, is half-Spanish. While talking to her, she adds
Spanish words in our conversations. One example was when we talked about going to her house
and how her abuela will cook for us. I asked the meaning of abuela and she immediately replied,
Lola or grandmother. She would also greet me with buenos dias which is good morning in
English and say gracias, which means thank you, when I do something for her. Last summer, I
mentioned to her that Spanish is a fun language to learn since Filipino is very similar to Spanish. I
also mentioned that if I would choose a language for my foreign language class for college, I would
choose Spanish. Upon mentioning that, she introduced me to a mobile application game that could
help me learn Spanish.
Technology provides me with different entertaining activities and different
opportunities to learn Spanish at the same time. One is the mobile games, which is the fourth
activity that has helped me learn Spanish. Last June, Natalia introduced me to the app 24/7
Spanish to help me widen my knowledge on Spanish. I enjoy playing this because I get to
challenge and improve myself with the different levels of difficulty in this game. There are also
different categories namely town & country, home & family, opposites, basic phrases, and
questions. Playing this game, I have been able to learn more new words and phrases. At first, I
would get 67% since I was not familiar with Spanish words pertaining to family members and
places. I continued playing until I finally got 100% for each category in the first level which is
multiple choice. I moved on to the next level of difficulty which is puzzle where in you are given
jumbled letters and you have to input the Spanish equivalent of the word given. I had a hard time
since I had no choices but I remembered some items in the previous level that had helped me reach
100% again. The last level of difficulty was indeed puzzling and I had to review the words for each
category. After weeks of playing the game, I have reached 100% for all levels in different categories
which made me proud. I told Natalia about it and she was also very proud of me.
Another activity that made me learn Spanish through technology is surfing the internet,
which is the fifth and last activity. Browsing through clothes online, or similar to window
shopping, is something that I really enjoy since I get to see different types of clothing in one
seating without having to spend much time unlike going around the store itself. Recently, I have
discovered Sfera, a Spanish fashion brand that has opened their branch here in the Philippines. Due
to school work, I have limited time to go around shops and browse their products. I started

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browsing through clothing brands with their website and Sfera, being a Spanish brand, had a
Spanish website. In spite of Google offering an English translation, I didnt translate it instead I
challenged my knowledge with the Spanish words on the website. When the website opened, the
first thing I noticed was Sfera Tienda Online. Tienda is a word that I have encountered when I
played 24/7 Spanish. Other words that I have encountered in the game are mujer which means
woman and hombre which means man.I had to guess some words like novedades but I ended
up translating the page to English and I found out that it means whats new? Some words were
close to Filipino words such as vestida in Spanish which is similar to the Filipino word bestida
which both mean dress. Browsing Sferas website helped me in learning Spanish words related to
fashion and clothes.
I never knew that these five different activities that delight me would help me learn and
improve my Spanish. Learning a language may be complicated and time-consuming but it is up to
you to change your learning habit. Enjoying the process of learning will surely have an effect on
how much you have learned. That is why I have learned a lot of Spanish words and phrases. I
cannot wait for my foreign language classes next year wherein I may apply these different,
enjoyable approaches as I take Spanish.