As a language learner, I really enjoyed emerging myself into the culture and getting a better understanding of traditions and how the language evolved. I enjoyed being able to put my skills to use and practice with other speakers because it really helped me to improve my language and fix my broken spanish or rudimentary chinese in the classes that I took in high school. At first languages were hard and I really disliked all the rules associated with grammar and all the different types of phrases in spanish until I was able to distinguish them and make use of them in my everyday class schedules. Which was completely different to how there really isn’t that many grammar styles for tenses in Chinese which was nice. Some things I really disliked about language classes was busy work and the idea of being graded just for hitting criteria. I felt that my time was not being used wisely and that it just hindered my ability to learn the language because it felt more like just finding the correct answer than me learning the language and getting better at it for my own use in the future regardless of what situation I am in with the language I was learning. It made me take a different approach to the language and I honestly just ended up memorizing some spanish words and phrases I put together to ensure that I would get an A on the assignment rather than knowing those phrases for the future past the graded activity. In the FIRE model, I am most likely a Factual and Insightful learner as those best describe me and the others do not describe me as well as those two letters in the FIRE model. I am an AUDITORY learner. This means that I learn by hearing and listening which I agree with but my memory is fairly good so I can remember and memorize a lot of things in a short time period. My top three intelligences are active, spatial, and musical with respective scores of 5, 4.43, and 4.14 which shows that I like to engage and am a hands-on learner, I like to visualize and remember things quickly, and that music helps me learn best. Some language learning activities that suit my style are active engagement like conversations with more experienced speakers and some things that really improved my grasp of the language was surprisingly presentations in front of the class on a topic with the target language that I was supposed to learn in class (both my Chinese and Spanish class). I think I should expand my learning activities by trying new methods to better understand the context, culture, and interest in the language which will ultimately help me grow in the language as a speaker. I am gonna take the SMART approach from one of the readings and make specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals. This means I will dive into the language itself and make goals that are reasonable and mistakes along the way in order to improve my own language skills. I personally have never went to korean school because I asked my mom as an 8 year old kid to take me out of it after a year of classes and not learning anything to improve my language skills so I hope to improve my language, grammar, and grasp of the language as a whole and to appreciate more of korean culture other than the food, movies, and music.
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Hey Tommy, it’s really interesting how your relationship with language learning has developed since you were 8! I am also an auditory learner and having had experience hearing my target language throughout my childhood, while not actively trying to learn it has prepared me to delve into it now. Do you feel like even that one year of Korean school helped you get into the groove now?
Hi Lidia, thanks for your response! I do not feel that one year of Korean school actually helped me to get into the groove ironically because when I was in korean school I was only focused on getting out and having time to play for myself so I did not take learning the language to seriously and ended up only memorizing a few words and phrases to pass my level of korean. But as I grew up and started to appreciate the language and culture that my parents immsersed me in at home I began learning my korean by myself at home and ended up picking up parts of the korean languages as well!