Reflect upon what you learned from the culture project presentations--both your own and those of your fellow learners.
You need to be a member of The SDLAP Ning to add comments!
This reply was deleted.
Reflect upon what you learned from the culture project presentations--both your own and those of your fellow learners.
You need to be a member of The SDLAP Ning to add comments!
Replies
I really enjoyed watching all of the culture presentations. Each week in MLC 105, I've learned a little bit about the culture of each student's target language, and the culture presentations really emphasized that. By learning to understand another culture, we can better understand our own and the one we are trying to immerse ourselves in. I liked getting a taste of each culture -- from weddings in Pakistan to celebrations in India to war in Bosnia. I also liked seeing how everyone had progressed from the beginning of the year. Some of the people in the class didn't know a single word in their target language, and by the end of the year had learned a significant amount of words in that particular area, plus many more.
While researching my project, I had a lot of epiphanies about Iranian culture and how it connected to what I've seen growing up. My mom always likes to joke about how Iranian mothers are obsessed with their children becoming "doktors," and I've seen why in my research. It was definitely really interesting learning about how the Iranian healthcare system works, how it compares to the American system, and how it does connect back to Iranian culture, even though it seems that healthcare and culture are rather separate topics.
My culture project was on the Indian festival of lights, Diwali. I started out with a brief introduction of the holiday and then went into the history of why it is celebrated. I followed that up with the common traditions of the festival. While doing research for this project, I learned a lot about where certain Indian values originated and why they are the way they are. Overall, I was pleased with my project. I was able to utilize all that I have learned this semester and it allowed to explore the broader Indian culture.
I found my colleagues’ presentations very enlightening. It was interesting to see how their target cultures were similar to and different than the Indian culture.
I believe that the cultural projects were very helpful in connecting us with our target language. I had very little knowledge of what Korean people were like or how they carried on their life. By doing research and picking a cultural topic of my choice, I was able to learn more. I chose to do my project on Korean traditional wedding. Learning about each stages of the ceremony was quite interesting because it was very different from modern and western weddings. Such things like arranged marriage and the process of picking the date were things that I was not aware of before I did the research. Also, the incorporation of our target language into our presentation was really good since I was able to add a few more words to collection of words/phrases already learned so far. As for the other presenters,their projects were all interesting in different ways. Learning about different celebrations, weddings/dowry, Bosnia, and health care issues definitely gave me more perspective on other cultures. Overall, I enjoyed listening to everyone's presentations and I gained a lot of knowledge from this experience. This is one of the memories that will stick to me for a long time.
One of the interesting things in SDLC 105 was the powerpoint prestations. My presentation was about the weddings in Pakistan and the concept of dowry, which was really interesting. I learned that a lot of young women commit suicide each year just because they come from a poor family and can not take the burdon of dowry. It is really sad to learn that in this era of technology and development, there are still people who believe in old tradition and practices.
Another amazing aspect of this class was watching others presenting about their target language and their cultures. it was interesting to learn that Indian, gujrati and urdu all come from the same history and background. It is always interesting to see how different cultures from different parts of the world sometimes match with each other such as the culture in Pakistan and the Culture in India.
It was also very interesting to know about the culture and some practices in Bosnia from Justin's presentation.
another presentation that I really enjoyed listening to was Layla's presentation about the "Health in Iran" this topic was totally new for me since I have not had any information about it in the past.
Overall, learning and knowing about other cultures are always fun and interesting for me, through this I can relate a lot of things to my own culture and it always amazes me to see how so many things are practiced the same way in each country.