In the course of this semester, I successfully learned how to express thoughts and ideas in Polish and mastered the vocabulary that would be necessary to navigate the country of Poland as a tourist, namely concerning food, lodging, and transportation.  I believe, however, that the most important skill that this class provided me was the knowledge and experience of how to be an autonomous learner.  I feel confidant that the techniques of self-regulation and self-discovery of the methods by which I learn the best will not only aid my post graduation studies in medical school, where limited time necessitates efficiency, but also promote my ability to be a life-long learner in the future.

            In my exploration to discover which methods of learning aided me the best I attempted different combinations of audio and visual learning techniques and assessed the effectiveness of each.  To accomplish this I studied word and phrase lists with BYKI, studied from a polish grammatical workbook, listened to polish songs and radio broadcastings, watched polish television, and listened in on Polish phone and Skype conversations.  After three months of experimentation, I found that I am much more of a visual learner than an auditory one.  Much of the Polish that I was able to use and understand had been a product of visual studies with BYKI flashcards and the Polish workbook while the amount of information absorbed from listening to Polish was minimal.  As a result, at the end of the semester I focused nearly all of my attention upon the BYKI program and the grammar workbook, greatly increasing the speed with which I was able to learn the language.

            As a result, one of the greatest challenges that I encountered as a visual learner was my less than adequate ability to process words spoken in the Polish dialect, though I am able to read them and speak them with a certain amount of fluidity.  My language partner and I attempted to address this issue by increasing our practice of inter-personal speaking and although this helped slightly, it also hindered my ability to understand other polish speakers as a result of my expectance to hear polish words and phrases in my language partner’s particular accent.  This struggle evidenced itself greatly in my oral examination at the end of the semester in which I was barely able to understand what the native Polish speaker was saying in some instances while I knew the meanings of the individual words that were spoken.

            I would recommend to a new self-directed language learner the importance of maintaining personal motivation in the desire to become fluent in a language.  If an individual has the proper motivation to learn the target language, the amount of time that is spent outside of actively learning the language becomes just as valuable to the language learning process as the amount of time spent with one’s nose in the books.  Realizing new terms that one does not know in the target language but uses on a regular basis, thinking about and discussing the differences in culture with friends, and identifying the application of learned vocabulary to the real world can each greatly increase the speed of learning as these “real life” mental associations are the first steps to fluency.  Without the proper motivation, the target language may be understood as “work” which will result in an inability to achieve any form of fluency in the language due to the inability to relax and interact freely within a mental environment which is thought to be stress inducing.

            I think that the only thing that would improve the speed of my progression as a self-directed language learner would be to fully immerse myself in the Polish culture via living in the country for a few weeks.  From what I have heard from other students that have returned from abroad, this is easily the quickest way to become fluent and as I have successfully uncovered the ways in which I learn most effectively this semester, I would be curious to discover the effects of employing these methods within the target country and viewing the resulting acceleration of my language learning process.

            The only area in which I believe that the MLC 105 course (and I am unsure if this area lies within MLC 105 or MLC 110) is if students and language partners met on a more frequent basis than for only two hours a week.  In my opinion, this is not enough time to fully take advantage of all the benefits of language learning that come from interacting with a native speaker.  It is extremely difficult to fit into two hours all of the questions about history, culture, spelling, grammar, and pronunciation that arise from a week’s worth of learning while still having time left over to practice interpersonal speaking and experiment with different methods of learning.  If any factor in the student’s learning process must be limited, it should not be this one, which, in my experience, provided a greater amount of cultural and lingual understanding compared to the semester of studying that I accomplished on my own.

Throughout the semester I found the implementation of language partner interaction into this course to be extremely helpful as a motivational tool.  Without an accountability partner that tested my progress in my target language on a weekly basis I know that I would have fallen prey to the procrastination that I am naturally prone to.  The language partner meetings also served to bolster my desire to learn by reminding me on a weekly basis of the unique and interesting characteristics of the Polish culture that had inspired me to study it in the first place.  Throughout the semester, my language partner and I experimented with different theories and tools to determine how it was that I learned language the best and each approach met with varying amounts of success.  Although our initial attempts to teach me the necessary topics and phrases that I would be tested upon in the course through memorization were successful, they did not successfully lead me to any understanding of the language as a whole and I was completely unable to understand any of what was said in polish if the vocabulary that was spoken was outside of that limited to the specific topics I had chosen to study.  As a result, we next approached the language from a grammatical angle and through the learning of the most basic grammatical structures of Polish I became able to form my desired thoughts into speech, albeit in extremely broken speech, but in vocabulary that was independent from my topics of interest.  However, although this approach yielded success in self expression, it did little to allow me to express complex thoughts or understand spoken Polish.  To address these issues, my language partner exposed me to as much spoken and written polish as possible in the form of listening to polish songs, reading polish children's books, and watching her interact with other native polish speakers via skype and phone conversations.  As a result, my vocabulary slowly improved and I began to be able to identify certain phrases in heard Polish by markers such as common intonation gestures.  Although this methodology was extremely successful in expanding the nature of my polish skills even farther beyond that which was required to speak about my topics of interest and increasing my vocabulary, it was a gruelingly slow process and did not progress as far as I would have liked it to before the conclusion of the semester.  Unfortunately the downside to this method of learning Polish is that I became too familiar with my language partner's particular "lived in America for 8 years" polish accent which she also slowed down for me so that I could better understand.  As a result, when I was presented with another native polish speaker in my oral evaluation, I found her mannerisms in speaking and her accent much harder to understand.

Although my language partner and I experienced much success, my only regret is that she did not have more time in her schedule to meet more than twice a week as I believe that this occurrence would have improved my language learning greatly since learning on my own without a native speaker to confer with was often extremely frustrating and unsuccessful since it led both to incorrect learning and the positive reinforcement of incorrect speech for days before it would be noticed and then re-taught.  I believe that occurrences such as this wasted precious time in my attempt to learn an entire language in a single semester.  

I chose my cultural presentation topic of the Polish health care system in part because of my personal interest in the medical field, but also because of the numerous stories that my language partner had shared with me of her recent experiences in Polish hospitals with her brother.  She described that after her brother's brain aneurism and subsequent surgery to remove a piece of his skull so that his brain could swell and then return to normal that her brother was not properly cared for in the hospital where he was being treated.  Nurses went days without caring for him and checking to see if he was responsive after the surgery resulting in complications that required her family to seek the attention of medical specialists and embark on even more dangerous procedures to fix the damage caused by his neglect.

In my research, I expected to find that her brother's predicament was the result of a poorly equipped and poorly trained staff that was indicative of the Polish health care system.  This assumption turned out to be horribly predicated upon the tumultuous history of Poland as a nation which it was able to successfully climb back from in a rather short amount of time since its separation from the Soviet Union.  My research thus left me puzzled as to why my language partner's brother had received such poor statistics when all government documents and statistics that I found suggested that the Polish healthcare system was extremely successful and becoming even more so with each passing year.

These statistics, I discovered, completely ignored the widespread back-door dealings that the Polish health care system revolved around in order to boost the appearance of Poland among the world community.  In actuality there exists a certain type of accepted black market that revolves around selling the services and attentions of doctors and nurses alike for exorbitant bribes.  In this system, the cultural norm is to provide the physician and staff caring for a patient with an "envelope payment" to ensure that one receives the best quality care.  This cultural practice suggests that the bribe which my language partner's family may have presented to the nurses in the hospital where her brother was being treated may have paled in comparison to what other individuals in the hospital were paying and as a result, the nurses entirely neglected him and his condition, leaving him to suffer permanent brain damage and possibly even death.

This method of conducting health care and its cultural acceptance in Poland utterly disgusts me as someone who plans to enter the medical field.  I have always conceived of the practice of medicine as one of helping people regardless of their ability to pay for their treatment as reflected by the hypocratic oath that every doctor must take.  I can somewhat understand that in a country where the government does not provide adequate aid for medical practices to exist, doctors and nurses alike are forced to resort to such measures as taking bribes but I in no way see how a rationalization like this can lead one to simply allow one to neglect a patient with a clean conscience.  However, if a solution exists to this dilemma it lies not within attempting to change what has become the cultural norm of the Poles who have accepted "envelope payments" as necessary evils but rather in the redistribution of government wealth.  In America, the percentage of government spending that is spent on health care is over 12 times that of Poland and for a nation that has successfully reestablished itself economically, educationally and otherwise in its era of peace since the Cold War, perhaps it is time that the government cease projecting the appearance of adequate medical care to the world and begin the slow process of providing for the physical needs of its populace.

-Bangladesh Healthcare Presentation-

I found this presentation fascinating in its style, simply because the speaker was able to do the entire ten minute presentation in his target language.  The topic as well struck home with me as I intend to go into the medical care field in impoverished areas such as those that were described in the presentation.  What I found particularly intriguing was that in a nation in which the government only spends 3.5% of its GDP on health care, the costs that individuals must pay for treatment remains extremely low.  This lies in direct contrast with my own research of the Polish health care system in which, since only 4.5 % of government spending is directed toward healthcare, doctors do not treat patients with adequate care unless they receive substantial bribes that can amount to an average Pole's yearly salary.  The provision of treatment for $1 to $1.50 in Bangladesh therefore seems absurd and reflects the different moral solutions that cultures arrive at when presented with the same issue.  The Polish requirement of extremely high fees for medical service is not in every case a malicious act, but rather one of necessity to purchase equipment to provide adequate healthcare to the public while the Bangladeshi's affordable fee of $1 does not allow for the provision of state of the art equipment and therefore provides largely inadequate health care.  I also found it interesting that the Bangladeshi culture relies heavily upon the village pharmacy for medical care.  This adaptation of the medical care system is shared by Poland and many other european countries and it strikes me as particularly strange that the United States is so reluctant to adopt this system as self-medication extremely reduces the costs which individuals must pay to receive treatment and would be appreciated by many in the current recessions which have plagued our country.

-Education In India-

What I found fascinating about this presentation was not necessarily the educational aspect of the Indian culture but how the education of men and women reflected the lack of progression that their culture has experienced while much of the rest of the world has adopted a sense of sexual equality.  According to the statistics presented, women's education in India is not considered a priority either by them or by their parents.  Young Indian women are burdened with household chores and other responsibilities to such an extent that their education is often neglected and when the opportunity arises for a family to further invest in the future of their daughter they do not due to the effectual permanent transfer of the daughter out of her family and into another with marriage.  In the Polish culture, such a practice would be entirely unheard of since the family unit is valued over all else in life and the intentional removal of someone from the family or a neglect of any aspect of a family member's well being would be unthinkable.  I am curious however as to why there is such a slow progression of the concept of sexual equality in India since it does not have a religion or other cultural hallmark to prevent it from adopting the western understanding.  Polish's cultural malleability in their ability to accept such changes has occurred almost instantaneously in the past regardless of the contrary understandings that it presented to the widely held catholic religious doctrines that presented a barrier to such progress.

In my interactions with my language partner I have come to observe an astounding amount of interpersonal contact between her and her family on a daily basis.  Many of her stories told refer to her family and their interactions rather than the large parties and humorous events experienced between friends that those in the American culture prefer to address in conversation.  I initially discounted this trend, believing it to be the product of homesickness or some other emotion that produced elevated feelings for and desire to consistently recall her family but upon further reflection I decided to research the distinctive qualities of the Polish household, its history, and the values that emerge within its related community as a result.

What I discovered was that the Polish culture values family higher than any other achievable goal in life.  Contrary to the American dream of leaving home, going off and making something of one's self and striking it rich in some way or another, the Poles value a happy marriage and a happy family life over everything else.  The great importance of the family unit in Polish culture is a result of the condensation over time of a strong cultural bond with the community over time.  Scholars claim that in medieval times, when surrounding countries were experiencing peasant revolts and other types of rebellions to equalize the wealth and power of individual families, the Poles remained entirely peaceful toward their feudal leadership.  Nobles in the Polish community regarded themselves and their subjects as a cohesive family unit with different roles rather than as the common european understanding of a type of master-slave relationship.  Over time, the feelings of trust and respect that existed within this early Polish culture was forced to condense with the collapse of feudalism, causing what was once a great love of the nation of Poland and its fairness to become an equally great respect and trust of others in ones community.  Since, the size of what the Pole considered the family unit has shrunk to what the rest of the world conceives of it as, however the Polish culture still retains a nations worth of love, trust, and respect within a single household according to scholars.  As a result, anything that other cultures would seek outside of the home, such as finding a job, getting a loan, or buying an apartment the Poles seek within the home, often working for extended family or friends of relatives and living in additions built on family property.

Contrary to the common causes for dissolution of family bonds in Europe and America, where sexual preference, religious preference, and disobedience amount to unforgivable betrayals, studies have shown that the only offense that results in the expulsion of one from a family in Poland is the betrayal of the community or nation to a threatening power.  This understanding appears to be a cultural representation of the lingering age-old motifs of trust and respect that echo from the mediaeval period erupting in response to the hostile takeovers that Poland has experienced in the recent historical events of World War II and the Cold War.  Perhaps this is a factor in the cultural distrust and lack of communication with individuals who are unable to replicate the grammar forms of politeness in the polish language that I have previously described.  It is reasonable to think that those Poles who had spent so long in foreign countries that they were considered by their own countrymen as "betrayers" were identifiable through their awkwardness with the nuance of Polish language and therefore were largely spurned and ignored.  The ability for those who sold out their comrades to the invasive powers during this time period would still be able to mimic a universal nonverbal politeness which may explain why this is currently discounted and distrusted in the Polish culture.

In a recent encounter with a Polish speaker in which I tested the products of my Polish studies, I found that the woman with which I was speaking was extremely offended by my speech.  It was not a disrespect of her language that provoked such feelings as she later commented that my accent and vocabulary in the language was impressive for a beginner, but rather that the way in which I structured my grammar was insulting to her as an individual.  She claimed that this was a result of my "impoliteness" in not referring to her in the third person, apologizing or thanking her at the beginning of my sentences and my lack of reference to her as Miss.  As I thought that I had approached her in an extremely friendly and polite manner as she had acquiesced to aiding me in my studies this revelation left me utterly confused.  In my further research of the topic, I discovered a study by Professor Eva Ongiermann  in which she analyzes the use of polite speech and the importance of polite grammatical constructs in Polish as well as other european languages.  She concludes that the amount of necessary polite discourse in order to not offend the addressed party is 6 % of communication in English and approximately 20% in Polish and other Slavonic languages.

As none of her statistical data was directly presented in the study, I assume that this translates into some form of English requiring one to say "Please open that door" in order to achieve the threshold of politeness while in Poland the necessary phrase would be something to the effect of "Would you mind please opening that door sir?"  In addition, it would appear that this cultural construct has produced a type of barrier between native Polish speakers and those who are more ignorant of its grammatical constructs such as myself as the Polish understanding of politeness relies almost entirely upon speech rather than body language.  The 20% of necessary polite communication is therefore broken down into approximately 19% polite speech and 1% polite action while the 6% of necessary polite communication in English is essentially reversed, with 5% polite action and 1% polite speech.  That is to say that a native polish speaker who praises his audience to no end but does so with a grimace on his face would most likely be accepted as polite in Poland and offensive in America while the native English speaker who warmly smiles at every Polish individual he encounters but expresses himself with clumsy speech will be rejected outright.

I find this cultural construct of politeness requirements in the United States and other english speaking nations to be understandable since the language of english is taught around the globe and as such has been adapted into "Indian English" and "Chinese English" whose grammatical constructs are similar but are not always identical.    The average American encounters many different forms of broken english and strange accents on a daily basis and expecting conformity to a universal representation of politeness in speech in such an environment is absurd.  Thus the American understanding that a smile, a handshake, and eye contact indicate politeness is reasonable.  However, it appears strange to me that even though Poles do not encounter the same level of diversity on a daily basis that they would still emphasize the importance of politeness in speech over that of action and that they would place politeness in such high esteem that those who do not abide by its rules, such as myself and other tourists, are oftentimes completely ignored.  No doubt an explanation exists within the cultural history of Poland and its language development, however, I can not seem to find a reasonable source concerning this in my research.

I had originally intended to do this post on a uniquely polish traditional holiday however, I became particularly intrigued by this particular event which is celebrated in multiple nations surrounding Poland as well, albeit in a slightly different manner.  Dyngus Day (the same day as easter monday) is a holiday in which men douse women with water and whip their legs with switches.  The origins of this holiday are widely disputed among scholars, some claiming that it is an attempted adaptation of pagan purity rituals into the christian calender much like the tradition of spring fertility imagery has been adapted into the christian easter tradition while others claim that it is a long standing polish courting tradition that has nothing to do with religious practices and developed at least 200 years before the introduction of Christianity into Poland.

Although the holiday is intriguing in its originality and origins, what interested me the most about it is how changes that have developed over time in its practices reflect back upon the similar changes that occurred within the Polish culture and society.  Specifically that the longstanding cultural tradition was adapted in the late 1900s to allow for a day in which women were allowed to practice the same actions against the men in their community.  This tradition became associated with Easter tuesday, the day after Dyngus day.  A few decades later in the early 2000s the tradition adapted to men dousing men with water, women dousing women, and men and women dousing each other all on Dyngus day.  I find that this is a prime example of the ways in which Polish culture has reacted quickly to the changes in societal norms that have occurred over the last seventy years, namely the feminist movement and the introduction of homosexuality as a socially acceptable construct.  That is to say that the creation of the second day of the tradition which provide women the freedom to respond to the affronts they encountered on Dyngus day and the ability for men to douse men and women to douse women were not adaptations that were lobbied for and that struggled to gain momentum, but were natural and accepted additions which attested to the cultural malleability of Poland.  If such a shift in an American cultural shift would, in my opinion, take hundreds of years if it were not implemented by law.  An example of the United States' cultural rigidity in this regard is the difficulties and law suits that have arisen in attempting to remove the necessary recitation of "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance by children in schools whose families do not subscribe to the Abrahamic religions.  I think such radical differences between the cultural malleability of America and Poland reflect the ways in which the two nations have developed, namely that Poland's history has been fraught with being conquered by neighboring titans and forced to adopt their cultural understandings while America has remained entirely unoppressed and instead has become accustomed to asserting its understandings and practices upon other nations.  As such it may be that the Poles have come to understand the meanings of traditions not in their strict adherence but rather in their overall observation while Americans feel the need to remain unyielding cultural models for the foreigners they wish to change.

I found that this chapter removed many of the assumptions that I had previously held concerning my competencies in english, particularly in conversation analysis.  According to the author, native speakers in a language have a grasp on the intricacies of interruptions, attention getting, topic nomination, topic shifting, avoidance, topic repair, and clarification.  However, I feel as though I not only fail to properly express myself in these areas on a regular basis but also was largely unaware that these were topics that could be learned at all.  I merely assumed that since most individuals are like me and have not mastered the finer points of conversation that it simply could not be done or perfection at conversation was an inborn trait.  I found that it was much more useful to simply learn to deal properly with all aspects of awkward misinterpretations, interruptions, attention getting, and the like as it arose since being a master in conversation also does little to ensure you will be able to properly employ any of these strategies since there is no way to gauge the other individual in the conversation's competencies.  Awkward conversation seems inevitable, and when I fail to get another's attention or fail to effectively shift a topic I have never considered this a result of not employing the proper cultural phrases, intonations, and gestures but rather a result of the other person's disinterestedness.  I believe that this ignorance also spilled into my understandings of other cultures as well since I assumed that the secondary meanings and pragmatics of phrases in America translated into similar understandings in other cultures and vice versa.  Of course I realized that there are certain ridiculous phrases that cannot even be translated such as "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" and still keep their meaning, but i did not fully comprehend the cultural phrases that pervade every aspect of daily living such as a conversation between me and my roomate:

"Yo!" = I have entered the house

"whatsup?" = how was your day?

"same-old same-old" = My day was normal and nothing has changed between now and the last time I described it to you

"dinner?" = would you like to make dinner soon or have you already eaten?

"we'll see" = No I have not had dinner and am not yet sure when I would like to eat or if I would like to eat the same thing that you want

Although I always knew that direct translations of exchanges such as this do little in the way of conveying the same intent in another culture, i always assumed that they would remain within the same parameters.  That is to say that a form of the question "how are you" (aka whatsup) would mean "how was your day" in other language and cultures when in fact it could be that their understanding of "how was your day" is phrased in a question like "did the birds sing today" or some similar phrase.  Moreover, I would argue that exchanges such as these make up a large percentage of what a person says on a daily basis.  The author suggests that the solution to this problem lies in teaching proper cultural phrase exchange and meaning while teaching vocabulary and grammar of the foreign language to students.  However, I think that this is an impossible task as these types of exchanges are dependent upon not only the status of the two individuals in each other's lives, their occupations, their genders, etc. such that the same exchange that I had with my roommate would be entirely different if I were speaking to my mother, my brother, a friend that I do not live with, a guest of little significance, a guest of great importance, the plumber etc.  and each exchange would have the same meaning with no words that actually reflected that meaning.  In addition, such phrases that are spoken to individuals in each capacity change either more or less frequently according to the culture and in some cases the previous phrase that was used becomes more of an insult or cultural taboo.  As a result this cannot be properly taught due to the disconnect between the time of study and immersion into the other culture which may cause unintended affronts.  For example, saying "welcome home woman" as opposed to "welcome home sweetheart" may cause strife as a result of the improper teaching of English to the speaker.

Within this chapter much of the information that I have already studied concerning culture shock and the marked differences between cultures and its effects were repeated.  What I found particularly interesting however, was the introduction of a self-perception element of cultural difference and the effect that it has on language learning ability.  According to the author and research conducted on the subject, there is a direct correlation between the perception of social distance or the number and significance of cultural differences between the language learning individual and the people in the society of the target language.  The studies showed that the optimal point for language learning lies somewhere between the normal social distance between the two cultures as a whole and complete and total immersion into the target language's culture and lies closer to total immersion.  I find this understanding fascinating as it applies to my own experiences immersing myself in other cultures, specifically that in Costa Rica where i was able to obtain fluency extremely quickly.  I had previously understood this to be a result of having fully adopted the Costa Rican culture which accelerated my learning of the language past what it could have been otherwise.  However, with this new information, I believe that I may have deluded myself into thinking that I had fully accomplished this as in my past reflections on culture shock I recalled the reverse flow of information between myself and the local tico culture.  It may have been a possibility that it was my lack of full immersion that perpetuated my fluency rather than my perceived cultural switch.  However, I doubt that this is the case since the chapter cited this effect as a result of "perceived social distance" and my "perceived social distance" from the culture at the time was none.

In addition, I found the description of the Anomie state in the chapter to be particularly compelling.  The Anomie state is essentially a state of transition in which an individual begins to think and dream in the target language for the first time which is also associated with cultural confusion of assimilating into the target culture.  I find the author's description of the Anomie state interesting because he describes how it is a one-time rock bottom occurrence in the transition between cultures.  However, in my own exploits i believe that I have encountered this experience multiple times in transitioning into speaking in spanish in multiple contexts.  I have always rationalized this strange experience as the "thinking in no language" in between giving up on thinking in one language to transition into thinking in another.  I always took this as a necessary transitionary phase to occur when traveling in and out of your native and other cultures, for example, in my travels to Costa Rica, i first experienced this Anomie point in becoming fluent in spanish and then again when coming back to America and having to transition back into english.  Each time that I have travelled to a spanish speaking country whether CR or otherwise I have experienced this same event.

I also found the author's argument concerning teaching English as a world language to be counterintuitive.  He argues that for a language such as English to be taught in a country such as China it is more advantageous for a native chinese speaker who has learned English in school to teach others the language since they have a greater understanding of what transitional elements lie in switching from their native language to English.  An American who is fluent in the chinese language would not have these advantages and would inevitably teach English to chinese children in the way it was taught to him which would not be necessarily as conducive to their particular learning style.  However, I believe that a native chinese speaker who taught other native speakers English would not only result in the chinese-English that he describes but would also rob the students from learning the cultural elements of the language as well as the language itself.  Without the cultural understandings, the students would essentially be learning vocabulary and grammar rather than a language.  Specific cultural intonations to convey emotion, elements of false speech, and other intricacies of the English language would be completely lost to them and the hybrid language that they would develop would not be effective in neither their native culture nor their target culture.

Unfortunately, I was unable to access the culture shock video of University of Richmond international students.  Instead, I decided to watch an online presentation by a student at Columbia University who explains the processes involved in culture shock for those entering America from foreign nations and relates his own personal experiences about coming to America.  This presentation can be accessed at www.internationalstudent.com.  In his presentation, he outlines that culture shock consists of three phases: the "honeymoon" phase, the "what am I doing here" phase, and the "where is happy hour" phase.  He describes that the "honeymoon" phase is identified by a sense of everything around you becoming hazy and you forgetting who you are in the overwhelming amount of input that you are observing, all of which evokes an awe struck type of emotion.  Next he argues is the "what am I doing here" phase in which after a prolonged period of feeling as if they are not themselves, the individual attempts to revert their personality back into what it was before they became immersed in American culture.  However, in doing so, many students find that they cannot successfully function within the American culture as the person that they are accustomed to being and the panic that this revelation results in is built upon by other difficulties such as their inability to convey themselves and what they wish to say to others properly and their lack of deep friendships that they have developed with anyone in the new culture in the short amount of time which they have spent in it.  As a result, the student seeks to surround himself or herself with others who can most closely relate to their difficulties, namely those from the same culture or region of the world.  This action simply prolongs the length of the "what am I doing here phase" until the individual builds strong relationships with those in the new culture and puts forth a concerted effort to identify and embrace their new place in their community.  When this occurs, the "where is happy hour" phase occurs in which the student acquires a permanent emotional equilibrium somewhere between the "honeymoon" and "what am I doing here" phases.  The statistical surveys provided in the presentation suggest that the average amount of time that process of culture shock takes is 3-4 months but it could take as little as a few weeks or as many as six or seven months for some people to progress through these phases.

Although the presentation is based not only on the personal experiences of those at Columbia University and the statistics that they have gathered and its conclusions no doubt resonate with many people who have come to America, I believe from my own experiences of traveling the world that there is no such thing as an American becoming culture shocked.  Or at least, the effect on American individuals is extremely diminished.  In my own experiences, a vast majority of foreign cultures place the idea of America on a pedestal and therefore their perceptions of Americans.  As a result, whenever I would attempt to immerse myself into a culture I would find myself repelled, not out of an affront at my social shortcomings, but out of a desire of those around me to preserve my culture as much as possible.  I have no intention of appearing arrogant in this regard, but even after spending months in Costa Rica attempting to fully assimilate and immerse myself in the culture i found that the new friends that I had made wanted to talk about Eminem and school in America and what my life back home was like instead of allowing me to essentially forget who I was and become one of them.  They never wanted to speak spanish with me, only ever their broken and developing English.  On multiple occasions I was invited to come and speak and help teach english at the local school and I was even broadcasted on their national radio, but again, to my dismay, in english and not spanish.  I find that this is an opposite type of culture shock, one that is not an overwhelming drowning in a sea of the foreign thoughts, feelings, and emotions of others experience when they come to America.  Instead it is a sharing of the thoughts, feelings, and predispositions of one person, the American divided equally and in manageable amounts to all those within the hosting culture.  The flow of information is reversed.

I have never encountered a culture that was disinterested in Americans to the point where it would provide a true culture shock experience.  Instead, most other cultures either love Americans, as I experienced in Costa Rica, or hate Americans, as I experienced in France.  In the two weeks that I stayed in Paris, culture shock in any regard was unattainable due to the vehemence with which the french people that I interacted with opposed any sharing of anything with an American.  As a result of the artificial wall that they erected between their culture and myself I was unable to experience much more than sight seeing and remained relatively oblivious to their view of the world.  Unlike the cultural exchanges previously described this was one of no information flow whatsoever between the french people that I met and myself and that is why I believe that there was no element of culture shock.

In this post I would like to remark on a rather recent event with my language partner that allowed me to observe the way in which individuals within the Polish culture treat anger and confrontation.  As usual, my observations concerning the Polish culture in this manner can not truly be assumed to be representative of the entire culture as a whole, however, as my language partner must be part of some specific subset of Poles i.e. the culture in which she was raised in and the culture therefore that her immediate and extended family were most likely raised in.

I have observed that emotions of anger and therefore possibly most disagreeable emotions are dealt with in private and not in a confrontational manner.  As professor Grove has explained this may be a result of the cultural concept of "saving face" or the refusal to offend anyone.  This cultural tradition of facing the most adverse situations with a smile is largely unintelligible to those of us who have been raised in an American culture.  It would seem to us that the most important aspect of a conflict is its resolution so that both parties involved can take part in the more immediate benefit that occurs after the resolution.  In our culture, the concept of "getting it off of your chest" is much more readily understood than that of "saving face".  As a result of this cultural divide, there appear to be no simple solutions when a conflict errupts between two people that do not share the same cultural understanding of how to deal with emotions.  Either party adapting to the other culture's methodology of resolution would appear to be a disasterous occurrence.  The American who is unused to the Polsih understanding of "saving face" would be also unused to harboring disagreeable emotions for a prolonged period of time until a natural resolution can be achieved and therefore would be prone to small emotional outbursts in the form of sarcasm or some other affront effectively prolonging the conflict.  The Pole who is unused to the American understanding of "getting it off your chest" would most likely lack the practiced model of refraining from recalling past insults and injuries into the conflict among engaging in other frowned upon practices that will also inevitably prolong the conflict.  Unfortunately in this case it would seem that there is unfortunately no middle ground by which the conflict can be resolved, no combination between "saving face" and direct confrontation that presents itslef to the logical mind as the two methods employed by their respective cultures are inherrently contradictory and cannot be mixed into some universal understanding.

Besides gaining this beginners understanding of how cultural barriers work, i have recently been expanding my methods of learning polish to the reading of polish children's novels which has been an unbearably slow process (since i am realizing in my frustration that a four year old polish child has a more extensive vocabulary than i do).  But at the same time it has proven a great opportunity to learn more about the culture in which polish children are brought up in and hopefully as my ability in and understanding of the polish language continues to increase i will be able to mirror the understanding of polish culture that their children grow up with through this new exercise.

In this post I would like to attempt to categorize the polish culture according to the five subjects presented in the "figuring foreigners out" text by applying its points to previous experiences that I have had with my language partner.  The application of these assessments do not by necessity reflect the culture as a whole since my language partner is an individual, however i believe that they are a good starting point for further research.

Direct/Indirect communication:  The polish culture appears to be one of an indirect/ high context nature, that is to say that people tend to infer, imply, and use nonverbals rather than to say things directly.  In the case of my language partner, the indirect use of language is not as apparent as is the lack of use of direct language.  That is to say that the goal of her communication exchanges is not getting or giving information and she has well-established in-groups.  Although her spoken words do carry the much of the meaning of what she is trying to say, i believe that this is due to a lack of practice in the circuitous ways in which the english language can be used rather than a cultural disposition.

Individualist/collectivist:  The polish culture appears to be of a collectivist nature, that is to say that the smallest unit of survival is the immediate family rather than the individual.  This is evident in my language partner's communication with her family unit being much higher than that of a typical american college student despite the increased difficulty and price associated with keeping in constant contact with people on the other side of the world.  In addition, if the pseudo-family that she has built on campus among her closest friends is any indication of the tight-knit nature of her family abroad, the concepts of close psychological and emotional sharing and considering the needs and feelings of others in the collectivist group are perfectly represented by her actions.

Nonverbal communication:  As in all cultures, this aspect of Polish(P) is unique and is best described through a list of specific types of non-verbals and their comparison to the two other cultures i am familiar with, american(A) and latin american(LA).

-personal space:  A>LA>>P

-Touching: A+LA = very infrequent among acquaintances, used among friends occasionally during greeting or departure and frequent exchanges are only found between those in a relationship.  P= frequent among aquaintances  during greeting or departure and also an integral part of speaking as one may touch another in conversation to get a point across or to grab their attention.  Friends are treated in such a manner that any type of physical barrier does not exist.

-eye contact: A+P= not necessary for conversation but not intentionally avoided either.  A sign of respect to maintain eye contact with the elderly or in a business setting.  LA= eye contact is a necessary courtesy that is to be extended to everyone in all situations, even to an unknown passerby on the street.

Monochronic/Polychronic: Impossible to tell due to the hectic nature of my language partner's schedule as a student athlete.

Internal/External:  I would guess from my observations that Polish is an internal culture, that is to say that effort and personal responsibility breed achievement rather than predestination.  This has evidenced itself most strongly in my language partner's refusal to give up on her favorite sport when she is injured for a prolonged period of time or give up on being a psychology major even if giving 100% of her effort doesn't yield a passing grade.  There doesn't appear to be any sense of a "if im not fated to go to graduate school then so be it" mentality in her understanding, instead it appears to be "ill keep trying until they accept me".  However, i find that this internal/external mentality is an especially difficult one to extrapolate out to the rest of the culture since i feel that this type of understanding can be largely driven by one's personal religious affiliations.

In general, as far as autonomous language learning goes i have done a mediocre job this past week as far as dedication to learning polish but I am going to attribute that to the fact that I had multiple medical school applications due which were extremely time consuming.  On the plus side, i am slowly achieving my goal of being able to understand at least what people are driving at in written polish.  Hopefully soon ill be able to do the same in spoken polish, we will see.

Sorry if this was a long read

Jason

I originally decided upon taking this course that my goal for the end of the semester would be to obtain fluency in Polish, which although it is a stretch and at this point appears to be something beyond the reach of anything less than a genius, I still strive for.  The last couple weeks of attempting to learn sufficient polish to be able to converse has impressed upon me the important difference between having an achievable goal and having the motivation necessary to achieve any goal, the latter of which is more crucial for eventually becoming a polish speaker.  To me, autonomous learning does not operate in such a manner that you should be able to achieve stepwise short term goals.  If the reward for achieving something on your own is anything other than the achievement itself, then there is no true motivation to continue striving for something greater.  If evaluation is defined by anything other than further motivation to better one's self then the objective of the learner has dropped from achieving a goal to achieving good marks in an evaluation and has become tainted and failed as an autonomous learning process.  As such, i find the benchmark goals and necessary cultural posts of this self-directed language learning process not only troublesome but counter-intuitive.  If motivation is the key to autonomous learning and teaching the ability of autonomous learning to students the goal of the course, then those students who have no interest in learning about culture should not be forced to by a syllabus.  Doing so, in my opinion, decreases the motivation of each individual student whose motivations to achieve even the loftiest goals are still motivations to goals that they not only feel they can achieve with enough hard work, but also goals that they want to achieve.  Forcing upon someone who already has the perfect amount of motivation to meet their goals (as defined by their knowledge of themselves) other extraneous objectives for the sake of being able to evaluate the success of a program or of the students in a class as a whole are entirely counter-productive as they burden the student and hold him to a standard which is not only his own but also does not necessarily fit with the student's learning style or ability to learn, both of which are better known by the student than an evaluator.  That being said, although this process of journaling is not only entirely boring but also cuts into the time when I could be accomplishing my goals and spending time on Polish (what i find to be the actual objective of the course itself), I am forced to embrace preset standards so that my other goal of getting into medical school will not be ruined by the misplaced objectivity of a liberal arts college.

My goal of becoming fluent in Polish appears to me to only be possible at this point with a dramatic increase in vocabulary and understanding of grammar and language structure as a whole.  As a result I have begun memorizing a list of 10-20 vocabulary words and phrases every day using the before you know it program.  However, learning random lists has proved itself to be a more sporadic approach than I originally anticipated and has become increasingly frustrating as it does not aid in understanding everything that is going on in the polish workbooks that I am spending an hour per day on.  As a result I have begun to focus on memorizing primarily verbs and how they conjugate at this point so that I can more accurately predict the types of nouns that fill in the rest of sentences and their driving points.  This approach appears to be helping and although my vocabulary and understanding of the language structure in general is growing at a rate that I am proud of i have found that it is not enough to become fluent at the end of the semester so I plan on stepping it up.  Also i find that although I have gained understanding in being able to work with written text, I am lacking in the ability of audible recall which the BYKI program is unhelpful with.  In my attempts to work through polish with my language partner I have found that it is much easier to understand written polish than to understand spoken words.  However, i expect that the reason for this is that I have become too accustomed to listening to a computerized voice in my BYKI lessons and as I spend more time conversing (once I have reached a stage in which i can successfully converse) with my language partner, this aspect of the language barrier will begin to erode.

I would like to think that I am capable of not only learning any language, but also capable of becoming fluent in that language in the same amount of time that it takes me to learn sufficient vocabulary and sentence structure to have a normal conversation.  Unfortunately I have never actually tested this idea since I became fluent in spanish, but I have a feeling that belief in oneself and one's ability to achieve a goal is more crucial to its fulfillment than ability itself.  My motivation as a language learner is unparalleled by any desire I have had to accomplish anything in any classes I have previously taken in my life, which were a matter of checking boxes for graduation and medical school rather than embracing a desire to learn. I began to understand this difference in my study of the spanish language.

Growing up in Texas, the study of spanish was forced upon me in the first grade.  Hamburgesas and papas fritas became another mundane distraction from the outside world and recess just like math, reading, and writing.  I continued to sit through completely boring classes with teachers whose accents were barely understandable for 12 years straight, enough time that the language should have become second nature to me.  But I had no desire whatsoever to become any more than the least common denominator that could still get an A.  Sure in the end I could read and write spanish and I could make the right accents and pronounce words properly, but it wasn't a language, it was just another checked box just like calculus had become the final checked box for math and creative writing the final checked box for language arts.

The summer after my graduation from highschool I discovered what it was to be fluent in another language.  I went down to Peru to do missions work with my best friend and his family and found myself cornered into the role of translator.  This was an easy job to say the least, but as I spent more time helping the unfortunate in the most poverty striken area that I had ever laid eyes on, I found a desire to truly communicate with the indigenous people on a deeper level than serving as a middle man and I managed to begin living my life in spanish rather than english.  It was no longer a matter of swapping stories and making friends with the native people in spanish but thinking in spanish as well.  When I would return to the compound we were staying in after a day of missions work i would have to translate what I was trying to say to my best friend into english which was a strange phenomenon.

In my later studies of spanish, I began to realize that fluency in a language is born of a desire for fluency in a language and isn't something that comes from sitting in a classroom and having a teacher beat you over the head with a textbook until you can speak the language the way you are supposed to.  It is a matter of will power and determination that comes from some ultimately internal motivation to become inextricably linked to another culture and to be able to understand and relate to people rather than just be able to speak to them.  Since coming to this understanding I have been able to remain fluent in spanish for 3 years without having studied it in a classroom, but rather from serving on various missions trips and visiting foreign countries but I have yet to test my aptitudes for becoming fluent in new languages, but I have finally found one that I have a deep desire and motivation to learn and I am looking forward to seeing if I can become fluent in it after just one semester.