We are thrilled to announce a valuable resource new to WebJunction, made available by California’s Infopeople. They have shared the written materials and audio files used in Infopeople’s Survival Spanish for Library Staff course. Print out the text and download the audio files for a 55 minute course that will equip you with key terms and phrases to help you better communicate with your Spanish-speaking patrons. Find this and other Spanish for Library Staff resources on WebJunction and please share your additional suggestions and comments in the discussion area.
BlogJunction
WebJunction’s niche in the blogosphere
Steve Reich, the managing librarian at the Terrazas branch of Austin Public Library, and I conducted four sections of a home grown two-hour class that we placed on PowerPoint. The class was limited to approximately 50 words and phrases, dates, time, and the numbers from one to thirty-three. We tried very hard to limit the phrases to only a handful of complete sentences.
All the terms fit on one sheet of paper in English and the flip side was formatted exactly the same in Spanish. It is something like one giant flip card.
Steve is perfectly fluent in Spanish, where I learned in school. The one thing we have discovered is that our clientele in Austin, Texas, do not always speak in perfectly grammatical Spanish. Heck, how many times do we speak perfectly in the Queen’s English?
There has been one debate we’ve conceded: libreria vs. biblioteca. Libreria literally means book store. The correct word is obviously “biblioteca,” which is used on the Library’s official correspondence. However, many of our customers refer to a library as a “libreria.” If a Spanish Survial class is to be about reaching a level of communication, we took the time to give a brief introduction on the background of our customers. It was very hard for me to realize that if customers refer to us as a “libreria” then we are in fact a “libreria.” It’s what is called a false cognate. But after so many times, does “libreria” gain a new definition as another Spanish word for library?
Non-Spanish speakers get uncomfotable and a little nervous trying to memorize full sentences. We’ve taught 16-hour classes with a textbook and a well-defined curriculum. When the students go back to the circulation desk, we have observed only modest gains. It was simply too much to absorb in such a short period of time.
The Survival Spanish class in Austin was intended to give a core set of words and phrases–something digestable for the student and can be held accountable later. It will be some months of observation and personal anecdotes before we know if the Survival Spanish class in Austin produced positive results.