So far I have found Spanish 365 to be a good course for the most part. I do not really have any experience reading novels in Spanish so that aspect has been both frustrating and rewarding at the same time. I definitely have enjoyed this course more than Spanish 364, not only because of the content of what we have read, but because we are reading entire works as opposed to excerpts and shorter pieces.
I know that time has been a constraint, but I wish we had been able to spend more time on the individual works and examine them in greater detail, exploring the larger contexts from both historical and societal aspects. For this reason, I am looking forward to spending the second half of the course reading only one book, although I am anticipating a challenge.
I am not certain why, but I found Cumanda to be the easiest work to read, and Mama Blanca to be the most difficult. Unfortunately Cumanda was the first work we read, so things got a little harder as opposed to easier for me, but I am also finding that practice and experience is helping a lot as well. I think because I found Mama Blanca to be the most difficult it is also why it was my least favorite work. I am not that much of a poetry person, so I don’t feel strongly one way or another about Neruda. I have found both “Piedra callada” and “Las Hortensias” to be entertaining and interesting despite the fact that the former was quite disturbing and the latter was somewhat bizarre. I look forward to spend a great deal of time on Garcia Marquez.
February 28, 2007 at 9:34 am |
Yes, I can see why in some ways Cumandá could appear to be the easiest text we’ve read… It had, for instance, a strong narrative line in the doomed love of the two main characters, and also a clear sense of the difference between civilized and savage. However, I hope that you can also see that on further examination even this book came to be more complex, and the dichotomies that it constructs a little more uncertain. Equally, there might be reasons why other authors might choose to avoid some of the simpler judgments that attract Mera.
February 28, 2007 at 7:05 pm |
Funny that as for easiest and hardest I would have said the exact opposite, though I believe that is a reflection of getting comfortable with reading and learning how fast and how slow I need to read. There is a balance between getting 100 pages of a foreign language simply read, and getting them understood. I also think that Cumanda was so plot driven, that if I read a chapter too fast, I was left wondering what on earth just happened, and where are we now?
March 1, 2007 at 6:49 am |
I agree with you, Im enjoying Spanish 365 more than Spanish 364 because we actually get into the literature completely instead of just reading exerpts from historical documents. I also agree that It would been benefical to spend more time on the works to get better historical understanding of the country from which it originates.