With the arrival of deadlines, exams, and projects, we were starting to feel exhausted, so this week we decided to meet in a local bar and play language learning games. Thus, we coated up and went to Mallashovi, where Christina brought various desk German learning games, which we also translated to Spanish for Christina’s part of the learning. I always remember playing games to learn vocabulary when I studied English and how great they were, so the meeting was set to be useful.
The first game consisted of throwing dices and, depending on where your totem had to go, having to say words and actions in German for me and Eider and in Spanish for Christina. Most of the vocabulary consisted of numbers and objects and actions of everyday life, either unknown or already shown to us, such as:
Hahn (male) – Chicken – Gallo
Huhn (female) – Chicken – Gallina
Flasche – Botella – Bottle
Brot – Bread – Pan
It was really interesting seeing how, as the three of us had to do similar exercises, words stuck to our minds much easier than usual. A great example of this was numbers, which we had to repeat many times.
The second game consisted of completing sentences in German and Spanish. This addressed an important part of learning a language, since it introduced us to necessary words for creating meaning, such as Denn – Because – Porque, or Viel – A lot – Mucho. The whole translating German – English – Spanish progress Chrstina did was really impressive and showed how she is getting a hold of the language.
In both games, mnemonics came again as a great way to learn new words. The star mnemonic of the day was Conchita Wurst, created by relating Wurst – Sausage – Salsicha to the singer for obvious reasons. I also thought of the number eleven, elf, as eleven elves doing some funny action. As always, Eider and me trying to pronounce german lead to funny moments, since what we were trying to say could easily change drastically without us noticing.
I really believe that these kind of meetings, though not being strict, are the ones of which you make the most as a learner. I hope therefore that we can repeat something similar again, for example with Spanish learning games, and that we keep the relaxed but working spirit, since it is the best one in which you can learn.
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