Do some preliminary research on what interests you about the target culture and describe how this topic relates to language. Do you need any special vocabulary or linguistic knowledge to engage this topic? If so, have you included objectives in your learning plan to engage this topic?
I think that part of the draw of the French language for me was the emphasis on the arts and the poetic nature of the language systems. From a young age, I remember hearing French and being enamored with the ways the words seemed to flow into one another. I love art in all of its forms: cuisine, museums, galleries, and perhaps most of all I love the fashion scene. So much of my academic career has been centered around the study of fashion as a form of rhetoric. I think that my vocabulary will be based around finding a sort of cultural competence, a pragmatic sociolinguistic competence. Ultimately, I would like to be able to engage in these cultural and media related conversations that make you feel as though you are an active member of the French-Parisian community. I think that there are multiple different parts of my learning plan that are angled towards gaining this competence, and that includes listening to podcasts, watching TV, youtube interviews on the street (streetstyle from Vogue france). There is also a colloquial factor to gaining this sort of competence that I think comes with tuning into popular culture.
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