Mundo Verde - Check their Spanish

[Anonymous]

shouldn't accurate fluency be the goal for all?

[Anonymous]

Completely agree with 22:35

[Anonymous]

Yes, it should be the goal for all

[Anonymous]

This doesn't surprise me - there are a lot of crappy Spanish speakers out there. FYI, spelling in Spanish is so much more straight forward than English; there really is no excuse other than poor education for a Spanish misspelling. I would expect all teachers at a supposedly bilingual immersion school to be able to spell correctly (including accents) in Spanish. It is not rocket science.

[Anonymous]

Have MV parents given this feedback to the school? I ask this as a parent who would love to send my child, but has some concerns.

[Anonymous]

For what its worth, I found the same problem at Bancroft. Not sure about other immersion programs.

[Anonymous]

anyone from oyster?

[Anonymous]

If you are actually in, why don't you ask to see a classroom in action instead of assuming about the teaching based on non-vetted communications to parents?

[Anonymous]

Why would admissions info to parents be non-vetted?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That has not been my experience in the teaching of my child. Sometimes things aren't translated perfectly because every single thing is translated and the school often relies on volunteers to do the translating. The priority for parent communications is making sure everyone understands. There has been a greater emphasis on more perfect translations in the past year though with a couple parents volunteering a lot. These parent driven communications though are almost never written by the teachers or reflective of their knowledge. More often this complaint is that the Spanish teachers don't know enough English but the Spanish dominant are all learning English. All of these issues are being addressed but it is still a work in progress.

This is my experience with language translation at schools as well. Many translations are done by volunteers and the wording may be awkward because they may not be great writers. I am Mexican and on a translation team at my child's school. The three other parents who do translation are from South American countries. I often think I would word something differently, and on occasion I look at it, and I think it is wrong. I'm sure they think the same with my translations at times. Nuance, tone, formality are all things that don't always translate well across different regions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi, OP here.

I am from Spain, but I work in a Latin American environment for Latin American countries (in fact, I have been working in or for LAC countries for more than 10 years now). Most of my co-workers are from Latin America (Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Uruguay, … you name it) I live with a person from Peru. We definitely have different accents and some (many?) vocabulary is different (I.e. car is “coche” in Spanish from Spain but “carro” in Spanish of Peru, maíz vs choclo, aguacate vs palta, etc….), nevertheless the grammar and the spelling are the same.

The errors I was mentioning were not minor. I am referring to have a singular subject accompanying a plural verb, a totally non sense post, or a very wrong translation (i.e. the meaning in Spanish was very different from the meaning in English, and as a native speaker you could totally see why the mistake was done).

As a non-English native speaker in the US, working for a multinational company, I value very much the possibility of having a full immersion education. I regret not having had one, as it would definitely had made the difference (i.e. more career progression, much broader and better work options, etc…)

What a shocker, OP is from Spain!

I am just saying, if you are looking for a school that prepares your children to speak like a native speaker, or close to that, MV is not the option. I would have loved that this was not the case, as from what I heard, there are many other nice things that might make MV a good alternative. Nevertheless, for me, it was a deal breaker. Knowing something so fundamental was wrong (i.e. being an immersion bilingual school and not having your most basic grammar correct) made me doubt about the rest. Moreover, I want my children to learn Spanish properly (if possible, academic Spanish) and I was afraid that been exposed to incorrect grammar and vocabulary could, instead of reinforcing what they learn at home, be even detrimental.

Regarding LAMB, my experience, limited to their Open House material and presentation, is that their Spanish was flawless.

[Anonymous]

I think what OP and others were referring to goes beyond dialect. What about grammar errors etc?

[Anonymous]

What does being from Spain have to do with it? Educated Hispanics (yes, there are lots of us, not just from Spain) value correct/grammatical/academic Spanish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What does being from Spain have to do with it? Educated Hispanics (yes, there are lots of us, not just from Spain) value correct/grammatical/academic Spanish.

I don't believe the OP was trying to say anything at all about Spaniards vs. Hispanics, did you really feel that way?

[Anonymous]

No, I was responding to 22:55, saying "OP is from Spain, what a shocker!"