Brighton mum and guest reviewer, Liz Ford, gives us the lowdown on using FlashSticks (R) language learning tools.
I had the pleasure of trying out the Spanish pack of Flash Sticks prior to a winter sun holiday in Lanzarote.
The Spanish Beginners pack came, consisting of 100 different post-it notes, all with nouns, verbs and adjectives of everyday things. If I wasn’t sure how to pronounce one of the words (although pronunciation was clearly written) I could scan the post-it with my iPhone and, using the flash-sticks app, a native Spanish speaker would pop-up and pronounce the word for me.
Having only a month to prepare for a week’s holiday in Lanzarote, I put up a few post-its each day around my dressing-table. This meant I saw them, said them and tried to remember some of them, every day.
The time for our trip came and we had a lovely time self-catering in a villa in Lanzarote for a week in February half-term. We had to shop for ourselves in supermarkets, order in bars and restaurants, and find our way to and from the beach using a hire car.
Having absorbed the words from the flash sticks, my Spanish understanding was much greater than it would have been and I was able to find foods that I wanted in supermarkets and on restaurant menus, and understand some of what people said to me. Given that I’ve never studied Spanish before, this was quite an achievement!
Thanks to Flash Sticks for making our holiday more straightforward and enjoyable!
