Saturday, May 2, 2009

North Valley Updates

After reading the informative booklet from Web Junction "Latinos & Public Perception" and the book "Crash Course in Serving Spanish-Speakers", we got busy! We went to the phone book and began calling local social services as well as our regular Hispanic patrons; we asked lots of questions. We distributed packets of our library brochures translated into Spanish; we made a lot of prospective contacts, increasing our network considerably. Also, we discovered a great website to improve our Spanish language skills at our own pace. It is called www.livemocha.com
Is anyone familiar with it? You make friends with native speakers and help each other; we respond in Spanish; they respond back in English, then we correct each other to the best of our ability. There are certified instructors available, too. Great web site!
We are looking forward to our next fiesta - Seis de Mayo! (Since our Spanish Conversation Group regularly meets on Wednesday evenings, we decided to keep the same day of the week.) There are now 18 members of our group, with seven native Spanish speakers. A report and photo will soon follow. One more thing, we have implemented the Spanish Word of the Day and so far, so good. It helps to make learning fun!

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