CONFESSIONS OF A GRAMMAR GEEK

It has been a while since my last post; let's just put it down to technical difficulties.
But be assured that while time flies - it's certainly not passing me by. I have been busy with my three fold objectives of studying, the language, culture and pedagogy! I have just completed my in depth 3 monthly review for the LIA which has prompted some serious reflection of what and how I have been learning. Hence topic of this post.
While it would be nice if simply by immersion, I could learn completely by osmosis, unfortunately that's a myth! So I have set myself to studying!
I arrived in Chile with a string of vocabulary, a handful of set phrases and a very rusty understanding of present tense verb conjugation, some of them useful and correct- others, not so much! Every day - Monday through Friday, I go the Academia de Artes y Lenguas for a 2 hour lesson. This may sound like a lot but feels like a drop in the ocean when I consider the mass of language that I am still blissfully ignorant of! I have two teachers, apparently I am too exhausting for one to handle?!
Laura, from Switzerland, speaks an impeccable Spanish with an enviable accent. On the odd occasion when communication in Spanish fails us - we revert to French, her first language and my second. Learning a third language through a second language is a brilliant brain buster! My classes with Laura are fascinating not only because of the language but because of the content. We read and discus texts about the history of Chile, articles from current newspapers and magazines, and works by incredibly talented Chilean writers, like the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Nicolan Parra, and music by Violetta Parra and Inti Illimani which in particular, provide an excellent commentary on the times of the Pinochet regime (1973 - 1990).
So while Laura and I concentrate on content and comprehension, my other classes with Emily, concentrate on accuracy and articulation - more specifically grammar! Yes, I am becoming a grammar geek and I love it! From my very humble beginnings of a few verb conjugations in the present, I can now use; the present continuous, past continuous, past preterit, past perfect, plus perfect, impefect (which doesn't even exist in English!), future and conditional, phew!! Although I can use them, I confuse them frequently and would not claim to have mastered them yet! Often a sentence will take several minutes to construct (by which time the conversation has usually moved on!). It feels a little like trying to a length math equation. My comprehension is improving all the time but I still have moments where all the sounds seem to blend together into 'Charlie Brown speak', like "whaaa whaaa whaaa...."
While Spanish is a second language for both my teachers, I think it somehow works to my advantage. They have a perspective of the language that a native speaker doesn't necessarily have. They know how to chop it up into pieces and put it back together perfectly, and make comparisons and find similarities with the languages that I already know. The also both have a distinct understanding of the idiosyncrasies of the Chilean Spanish, which is apparently distinct from 'Spanish Spanish'. While it all sounds the same to me at this stage, one of the benefits of Chilean speakers is that they often chop of the ends of words, particularly the 's' sound. As a 'kiwi' speaker, this suits me just fine since we are not much better with our English, and as far as I'm concerned it excuses me for mumbling over a syllable or two!!
Simply attending classes is not enough - I have to consciously use the new language that I learn, otherwise the words just stay in the book and they are not much use to me there! So, I have post-its and vocab lists and grammar explanations tacked to my wall. The fruit bowl on the dining room table is full of cards with sentence starters and idioms to prompt conversation. I sit with a notebook and copy down new phrases from the movie subtitles. I write summaries of texts and memorize poetry for homework. I reward myself after class with coffee and cake in the cafe downtown, because it can't be work no play ;)
My Spanish has certainly come along way, pero me falta mucho todavia (I am still missing alot!) and I continue make frustrating and hilarious mistakes on a daily basis. However, I'm sure my geek like tendencies will eventually pay off. I'm banking on the theory that what goes in must come out.