Mae Ariel Harter's Posts (27)
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My goals for these last two weeks were to continue dictation and proverb practice on top of preparing for the final exam. I deviated from these goals slightly. Moving on from using proverbs to do dictation, we decided to use famous 6,8 poems for dictation practice. 6,8 poems are poems with 6 words in the first line and 8 words in the second line. A lot of these poems have messages you would normally find in proverbs, but with more of a lyrical/rhythmical feel to it. This was really fun to do. I got to learn more about Vietnamese poetry and the vocabulary was really unique as well. For example, one of the vocabulary words was a stick used to measure how deep a river is. I think this word would have been hard to come across in any other context. Additionally, because we are doing poetry some of the words in the same line sound very close to each other, but are spelled differently. This challenged me to listen more carefully to the subtle differences in sound before spelling the word. With all the dictation practice I've been doing, I've definitely seen an obvious improvement in my writing skills.
For the exam, we agreed to use the last day of class for the final exam and the previous class to prepare for it. We went over some of the learnt material that I was confused about and continued with dictation. Like the midterm, all 4 skills were tested.
Other than that, we also wrapped up the semester by discussing my progress and how I plan to continue my Vietnamese learning. I think this was an important conversation to have. It got me thinking about my goals in the beginning and how I can continue developing my skills despite not being in the program anymore. I realized that I would need to continue my own research for Vietnamese and find ways to keep practicing.
In my last bi-weekly post my goal was to focus on dictation practice and proverbs. I have been working on both those things with my language partner. After a brief discussion, we decided to combine both of those items into one activity. My language partner would prepare 10 proverbs for me to learn each class and those proverbs are used for my dictation practice the same day. This activity has been really useful in improving my writing/listening skills. It's also helped with preparing for my final presentations. Some of the proverbs given have Chinese origins and are used in a lot historical dramas and cải lương.
Instead of the situational talking practice, we decided to try having me talk about a given topic. For example, one topic my language partner gave was the political situation in Asia. This was an interesting activity in that it's just me talking and the vocabulary used is a lot wider and more academic than daily conversation. Through this activity I was able to learn new words such as communism, minister, imperial examinations, etc. Other topics picked was travel and history.
In the next two weeks, I think we will continue with the dictation and proverb practice. Additionally, I want to have a discussion with my language partner about what the final exam will look like and perhaps start some activities to prepare for it.
Every syllable in Vietnamese is written separately. It is also mostly a monosyllabic language. There are words that are multisyllable as well where separate words are combined to make one word. For example, mắt (face) trời (sky) meaning sun. Sometimes though, a word can contain a syllable that isn't able to stand on its own. For example, the na in nết na (be well behaved) cannot occur alone. Nết on its own could mean trait. I would probably want to study these syllables with no meaning on its own to figure out its root origin and to see if these syllables actually have an obscure root meaning. I think I would probably start my research by looking up data on Sino-Vietnamese and the old writing script chữ nôm. My theory would be that the words that aren’t monosyllabic and have a syllable that isn't a word on its own are actually borrowed words. If this theory holds true than I would want to see whether the original Vietnamese words (words that weren't borrowed) are more similar to other Austroasiatic Mon-Khmer languages since there's been some debate on whether Vietnamese actually belongs in that group. Additionally, I would want to research from that whether there is one Vietnamese dialect that is closer to original Vietnamese. For example, if there's a dialect that uses less borrowed words and how that came to be. Family language would then obviously appear in my work. Other than that, disciplinary perspectives and phonetic inventory would also occur. Disciplinary perspectives in the sense that I would have to look at multiple disciplines to trace how original Vietnamese developed and phonetic inventory in how dialectal variation closely relates to original Vietnamese.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00437956.1963.11659787
I recently came across an interview of Miss International Hương Giang. After doing some research on her, I realized that she's actually Miss International for the transgender beauty pageant. She got her sex changed in Thailand before becoming a decently famous singer in Vietnam. It was fascinating for me to learn about a transgender singer who was able to make it onto the mainstream market, especially since she is known to actively promote LGBTQ rights. In her interview, she talked about her difficulties in coming out to her parents as the only son in the family since carrying on the family bloodline is traditionally very important. She also discussed how foreign the idea of homosexuality is to Vietnamese people; many people still think it's something that can be "cured" and that it is a negative product of contact with the Western world. It was fascinating to hear her take on where Vietnam, as a country, is at on the issue of LGBTQ rights.
I recently read a summary of some of the most famous Vietnamese fables. The one I found most amusing was Vietnam's creation myth. The myth states that Vietnamese people are descendants of a dragon (father) and a celestial being/goddess (mother). Since they are not of the same "species" they couldn't live together. Therefore, after giving birth, the mother took 50 of her children to live in the sky and the father took 50 children to live in the sea. This is used to explain why there are so many tribes in Vietnam (approximately 54) and how the tribes are able to live equally and peacefully until today. It was fun for me to read and compare to other creation myths I've read about. For example, Korea's is that they are descendants of a god and a bear and Japan's is that they are descendants of the sun goddess.
https://www.lalung.vn/giai-tri/cac-truyen-thuyet-hay-nhat-cua-viet-nam-1925
Before Spring break, my language partner and I agreed to continue dictation practice, but we did not discuss what else we will be doing so, my language partner and I spent a little bit of time discussing our trajectory for the rest of the semester during the first week back. We agreed to do situational practice. For example, talking to the doctor about an illness. Additionally, we decided to break the household good vocabulary into rooms. Lastly, we decided to continue with learning proverbs.
Before starting the situational practice, I expected it to be really difficult and useful. I figured that it would be good practice for changing my personal form of address, and learning vocabulary. I still find it awkward sometimes addressing myself to strangers. However, when we actually started, it was too easy and each situation only took about 2-3 minutes. I realized that this wasn't the right exercise for me. After trying 2-3 practice situations, we decided that it was best to spend the time doing something else.
Other than that, we also spent some time discussing marriage values in Vietnam and comparing it to the US. This was an interesting topic for me because during Spring break I had watched a Vietnamese talk show about marriage and found that some of the things that were said didn't match my conception of Vietnam. For example, one of the ladies said (in Vietnamese) she "decided to play a game…the single mom game." I thought this was a weird thing to say, since being a single mom is hard, especially in Asia. Divorce is still largely frowned upon and blamed on the women. Being single is also considered a bad thing for women as demonstrated by the term "leftover women." Discussing the topic with my language partner was really informative and gave me a better understanding of the thinking in Vietnam.
We haven’t started the dictation practice or learning proverbs yet. I am hoping to focus on those two things for the next two weeks. Additionally, I want to spend some time talking about my final presentation topic with my language partner.
Growing up in the US, I always thought the Vietnamese flag was yellow with three horizontal red stripes. It wasn't until much later that I realized that that was actually the flag of Việt Nam Cộng Hoà, or the flag of the Republic of Vietnam. This flag is still widely used amongst Vietnamese people who fled the country after the Viet Minh won the war. The flag became symbolic of democracy and freedom.
The official flag though, is red with a star in the middle. The red represents the blood of the people, the yellow is the skin color of the people, and each point of the star represents a different class. The five classes are intellectuals, farmers, workers, business people, and military personnel. While what flag is used does not seem important to me, this is a huge contentious point for the older generation who lived through the war. To some people, this flag represents the loss of their country. I vaguely recall being chastise once by a friend's grandpa for wearing a t-shirt bearing the Viet Minh flag on it when I was a kid (it was a souvenir gift from a friend who went to Vietnam on vacation). This is something to think about when conversing with Vietnamese people either living in Vietnam or abroad. After all, the war was only approximately 40 years ago.
https://www.saigonbao.com/co-vang.htm
https://baotiengdan.com/2018/04/09/lich-su-la-co-vang/
http://www.dcvonline.net/2017/07/24/la-co-viet-nam-cong-hoa-van-tung-bay/
http://aocodosaovanghcm.com/y-nghia-va-lich-su-la-co-do-sao-vang.html
https://thoi-nay.com/tnm/y-nghia-la-co-vang-co-quoc-gia-viet-nam/
While listening to the song Vô Thường by Karik and Orange, I remembered a conversation I once had with my sophomore year roommate. This roommate once walked past me as I was watching an Asian tv series with subtitles on. Being curious, she stopped and watched with me for a bit. Her comment afterwards was that she couldn't get into the show because "nobody talks like that in real life." At the time I was really confused as to what she meant because of course people talk like that; if they didn't, why would anyone watch the show? But while I was listening to this song and thinking about the words they used, I could sort of understand what she meant. A lot of Vietnamese literature, music, and even just regular daily conversations can be really poetic for lack of a better description. In this song, the lyricist chose to use more archaic sounding words. For example, "Từ bằng hữu, đến nhân tình," which can be translated to "from friends to lovers," except in super old historical terms. To a native listener, this choice added depth to the lyric's message—sounding incredibly beautiful and not at all odd. However, in English it would be like if you were listening to a pop song and the lyrics were Prince Henry's monologue from Shakespeare. I'm exaggerating a little, but you get the point. Even daily dialogue in Vietnamese can be like this. This is partly because of how many reduplicative words there are in common language use. Reduplicative words are usually used to (de)emphasize the adjective or to support the root words' meaning. An example of this is "lặng lẽ," (meaning quiet to the point of forsaken loneliness) which was also used in the song.
I personally really like this song because of how elegantly the lyricists combined historical and modern words to convey a bone-deep loneliness. However, this also makes it harder for the song's message to be conveyed in other languages.
I watched ANTV- Truyền hình Công an Nhân dân 24 Hours News for March 28, 2019, a popular Vietnamese news channel. Most of the news reported was about Hà Nội, Vietnam's capital. One of the news reporting was about a drug dealer that pleaded guilty on charges of handling and distribution of cocaine. What I found interesting about this piece of news was the word choice of the anchor when describing the drug addicts. In Vietnamese, we use different words when counting different objects. For example, when counting animals you always put the word "con" in front of whatever animal you are talking about. In this scenario, the word "con" is equivalent to "the." For counting objects, the word changes depending on what you are counting. We can use cái for tables, chairs, TV, refrigerator, and so on, but not for books, candy, boxes, and so on. For people, no word is needed; you only need to use the word for people. When the anchor was talking about the drug addicts, she used the word "con," that is normally used for animals. This suggests that drug users are like animals, in a lowly position, and not worthy of being considered human. I think this could be telling on the attitude of Vietnam on drug users as a whole.
Another thing I noticed was that a lot of the news had to do with major traffic accidents. This slightly surprised me as this is supposed to be 24 hours news so theoretically, all of these traffic accidents happened in one day. While I knew that traffic accidents are common, I was still surprised by the frequency that they seem to be occurring.
Lastly, I also found it fascinating that the police investigations seem to be recorded. I'm not sure if that is the news channel doing a BBC documentary style thing where they have actors reenacting a scene or if they actually got footage of the interrogations done by the police. Either way, both seem kind of strange to me.
For writing practice, my language partner and I have only tried dictation. This is done by writing free hand. When I make notes though, I prefer to type. This is because it helps me remember where the accent marks are better as the keys used are different from normal so I think harder about how the word is spelt. Other short meaningful writing exercises I could do in my target language is writing based on a prompt (ex. Write on the topic of food), creative writing (ex. Write a short story about a puppy), and writing in different dialects.
As to patterns, I haven't consciously thought about it because I'm not learning the language from scratch. However, through the teaching presentation I realized that in Vietnamese, adjectives always go after the noun unlike in English. For example, it would be "table large," rather than "large table." Other than that, I've also noticed that time indicators like 3 O'clock or "yesterday," go at the front of the sentence. It could go at the end, but it sounds less correct to do so. For simple and complex sentences, they work in a similar way to English. I haven't noticed any difference there.
My knowledge of Vietnamese grammar is actually really small. My language partner and I haven't focused on this because I know what sounds correct (but not the reason why) so there's no problem when communicating both orally and in written form. I do think though, that my lack of knowledge in this area, limits the type of writing I can do. For example, I can write in an informal manner, but probably not in an academic setting. If I ever need to write at a higher level in Vietnamese, it's a good idea to study Vietnamese grammar.
Tết (Lunar New Year) is a major holiday in Vietnam. It's an extremely important holiday where almost everyone returns to their hometown to reunite with their extended family. My friend from Vietnam said that during this time, Sài Gòn is a dead city. The population crazily plummets and even the air quality improves because everyone left the city to return to their hometown. Being in the US and in college, I cannot return home for tết and so missed out on a lot of good food that is only available during the holiday. When I visited Boston during Spring Break, my sister and I tried making Bánh tét a Southern Vietnamese dish that one must eat during New Years. We miserably failed and ended up just going to a bakery to buy one. The process of making it though, I think taught me a lot. It was extremely time consuming and difficult to make. The reason why it's a dish associated with New Years is because the women in the family would gather around to make it together as a bonding activity during the holiday. Making it made me better appreciate the effort that goes into the food that I've always had readily available during New Years.
I recently watched a hài kịch that aired during Tết 2019 (Lunar New Year). Hài Kịch are Vietnamese comedy skits usually performed in front of a live audience intermittently during a long musical concert and is immensely popular among the older generation. One of the comedians in this skit is named Hoài Linh. He is a famous veteran in the field. I remember watching his skit's with my family when I was still in elementary school. Watching these skits is a favorite family activity in Vietnam especially during large family gatherings where there is a wide age range. It reminds me a lot of SNL, but more family-friendly.
The song Là Anh Đó by Trương Nguyễn Hoài Nam was performed live for the first time on a Vietnamese show called Bài Hát Hay Nhất. The show is organized in a similar fashion to The Voice. The song was sung in the perspective of the spirit of a girl's dead boyfriend. It tells the story of her crying while hugging her boyfriend's body after a traffic accident as his spirit watches the scene. Trương Nguyễn Hoài Nam had witness an accident where this happened (minus the boyfriend's spirit) and has also been in a car accident where he needed to be in physical rehabilitation to resume normal life. I thought the story behind the song is interesting. As a developing country, Vietnam's traffic regulations (traffic lights, crosswalks, etc.) is not the best. The combination of heavy traffic and lack of regulations leads to a high rate of accidents in major cities such as Sài Gòn. This is especially true during major holidays like New Years where everyone is rushing to return home. I asked some of my Vietnamese friends and they say that crossing the street in Vietnam is not difficult, but you have to be prepared because drivers will continue driving around you. I think this song became so popular not only because it was so moving, but also because it is relatable to many city dwellers.
My plan for the two weeks before Spring Break was to practice dictation in preparation for the midterm. To do this, we paused the weekly new vocabulary and free-talk sessions. We agreed to postpone learning the household goods vocabulary until after Spring break. The dictation practice was as difficult as I anticipated. Half way through the practice article, I had to tell her that it was too much. It took 45 minutes just to do half the article. After some conversation about the difficulty level we agreed to use the practice article for the midterm as well. Only half of the half we practiced will be on the midterm, but I will not know which half. The second week was spent just for midterm testing. I improved immensely from the practice session to the midterm, but I think the length for dictation was still too difficult.
My Language partner and I agreed to continue dictation practice for the next two weeks, but with much shorter paragraphs. We agreed on 5 sentences every lesson. I think this will be much more manageable. If my dictation skills improve, this number will be amended. Additionally, for the next two week we will continue with reading practice using news articles. We will also try to find some northern dialect video clips to practice my listening skills.
Overall, there wasn't a lot of new things the two weeks before Spring break because just one week was spent on testing. However, I think it was good to spend one week on dictation practice. It was an exercise I was most reluctant to start because I knew writing is my weakest language skill. Having it on the midterm forced me to practice it seriously.
Reasons for languages to go extinct include the domination of certain languages, lack of interests/use for learning the language, and lack of documentation/recording of the language making them very fragile. Our reading gives an example of the domination of language; several groups with varying languages were forced to stay near each other. To communicate, the languages with less speakers learned the language with the most speakers and gradually these languages with less speakers became extinct. According to Harrison, there are 84 dominant languages spoken in the world today even though there are 7,000 languages in the world. To preserve languages and linguistic diversity, linguists are compiling documentation on these languages. Documentation includes written record and recordings of the language spoken by native speakers. Additionally they are trying to increase interests in these languages, both to increase speakers and to decrease prejudice against these languages. These efforts are important because I think its extremely difficult if not impossible for a 'dead' language to be brought back to life. Take Latin for example. Even with abundant documentation of Latin and people studying the language, Latin is rarely spoken verbally let alone with unknown languages with limited documentation.
In the interview, Harrison compared the loss of languages to a loss of major world artifacts and monuments. I agree with this. Language is a major part of culture, embedding ideas, beliefs, and the knowledge of and about its speakers. Its loss would be detrimental to the study of other subjects such as history.
My language learning process has been going pretty well. I have worked on all four goals that were mentioned in my learning plan: improve listening skills in the northern dialect, be able to fully comprehend tonal marks, increase comfort level in speaking, and expand my vocabulary. As stated in my learning plan, I starting off with learning the tonal marks and have increased my vocabulary through learning a new set of vocabulary each class. I also am doing the free-talk which has helped with improving my speech flow and vocal competency. I haven't worked on improving listening skills in the northern dialect as much as the other goals however. Additionally, in my lesson plan I mentioned that my language partner and I would meet 2-3 times a week, but it's been mostly just 2 times as we are both very busy. Furthermore, we aren't sticking so closely to the timeline I provided in my lesson plan for every class period. For example, sometimes our lesson practice would take longer than expected so our free-talk would be cut short. Other than that I think I've learnt a lot and have made immense progress.
In terms of incorporating SDLC 105 material into my language learning efforts, I've used materials on what type of learner I am to make my learning plan. I also personally found the research of language families informative. For example, that certain sounds in Vietnamese is only used in borrowed words from French. Besides that I haven't really incorporated much of the materials into my language learning as most of it is more theoretical.
I think that language and culture is closely interrelated. Language is used to convey and maintain various elements of culture including ideas and thinking and culture helps shape and mold language. For example, how one refers to themselves differs depending on their age in comparison to who they're speaking with, demonstrate the age hierarchy prevalent in Vietnamese culture.
To improve my communicative competence, I need to expand my communication pool; I need to simulate various situations where I would use the language. Since I only speak to my language partner, I am very used to a more relaxed speaking style. To improve I would need to practice speaking to someone who is a stranger, in a professional setting, to the elderly, to young children, etc. Based on the reading, my learning plan emphasizes discourse and sociolinguistic competence (from most to least in the order listed). It doesn't include though, grammatical or strategic competence. For grammatical, it is because I am at the advanced level in speaking so I didn't feel it necessary to go through the grammar structure of Vietnamese. For strategic competence, it isn't explicitly included, but can be practiced through the free-talk sessions in my lesson plan.
The process through which languages change by developing new characteristics while keeping the ancestral characteristics is called generic classification (Morehouse). Languages change as they interact with other cultures, resulting in the adaptation of the original language through the adoption of new and loss of old words, sounds, and structures. This process is repeated over and over and the original language continues to evolve as cultures intersect. Linguists track, predict, and extrapolate these changes through mapping these languages or shared words in a tree diagram. The example shown in class was the word mother.
Vietnamese belongs to the Austroasiatic language family, specifically part of the Mon-Khmer branch (AWL 2016). The most obvious periods of contact that affected the language is with China and France.
Vietnamese, like many of its neighbors, until the early 10th century BC, was a tributary state of China; Vietnam would offer tribute to the Chinese Emperor in exchange for protection. The relationship between the two, resulted in Vietnam borrowing classical Chinese script called in Vietnamese as chữ nôm for its governmental and scholarly documents (Wikipedia). Chữ nôm is a combination of standard Chinese characters and characters designed specifically for Vietnamese words (AWL 2006). Along with a shared script, are shared vocabulary and proverbs, described as Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary. For example, law (法/pjap/phép) and gừng càng già càng cay (the older the ginger, the spicier it is). Approximately over half of Vietnamese vocabulary is borrowed from Chinese and there are compounds that combine Vietnamese words and Chinese borrowings (AWL 2016). An example of compounding is 'table chair' or bàn ghé. Additionally, the Vietnamese system of classifiers is similar to that of China.
When the French occupation of Vietnam occurred, the Chinese script was replaced with a Latin-based alphabet still used today. As a result, French words were also adopted into the Vietnamese language. For example, bia for 'beer' (bierre in French) and ca phé for 'coffee' (café in French). Furthermore, the sound /p/ in Vietnamese only occurs in words borrowed from French.
The relation between Vietnamese, Chinese, and French is important to consider especially in literature and in a more scholarly setting. While there are now words that have replaced some Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, in settings like news reporting, Sino-Vietnamese words are still used for reasons such as they sound more beautiful, correct, educated, etc. Additionally, this knowledge is helpful in understanding the idea of why and how Vietnam developed as a country. Along with borrowing classical Chinese script, Vietnamese also followed Confucius teachings. This influenced many aspects of the culture, including how the individual relates to the state, how parents are viewed, why the Vietnam flag is red and yellow, etc.
If you want to read more about the Vietnamese language, http://aboutworldlanguages.com/vietnamese is a good website.
I had hoped to continue vocabulary expansion and to improve my reading skills during the last two weeks and have continued with some of the activities mentioned in my last bi-weekly language post. The vocabulary topics we've covered since my last post are school subjects, weather, and fruits. We've tried to include the new vocabulary in the free-talk sessions to further comprehension. This was pretty successful and also allowed for some interesting cultural information about these topics to come up. For example, some of the fruits I learned are unique to Southeast Asia like Durian (sầu riêng). We discussed it's unique smell and taste, why fruit is so cheap, the problems in food safety measures, and things to be careful about when eating in Vietnam. Additionally, in my last bi-weekly language post I said that I will continue using newspaper articles as reading practice. The last article we read was about a business man who started a fruit production and export business in Vietnam. This article was helpful as it pointed out to my language partner which letters and accent marks I am still confused about. Furthermore, the article employed a lot of proverbs which was fun to learn.
Other than that we also watched several different clips for listening practice. This activity was a bit of a trial and error kind of thing because we had to figure out what the right level was. The first news video we tried was in a northern dialect and the talking speed was so fast that I could only catch every other word. The topic was also on the UN and world politics, making it too difficult for me to comprehend what was being conveyed at the spoken speed. We tried again with a news video that spoke slower and had a central dialect which worked much better. There was still new vocabulary in this video, but I wasn't overwhelmed by the speed. Now that we've figured out my listening level, future listening practice activities should be much smoother. Another listening activity we did was watching a video that had two girls, one with a northern dialect and another with a southern dialect, pointing out differences in pronunciation and word use in the two regions. This was really interesting to watch because I realized that there are some words that I use that are actually from the north even though I have a southern dialect. I think I want to continue with this dialectal practice and will probably combine it with listening practice.
In the last class, my language partner and I talked a bit about having a midterm before Spring break. The midterm will test vocabulary, dictation, reading, and listening. As I was most concerned about the dictation part, we agreed to spend the next week doing dictation practice. Also, the agreed on new vocabulary for the next lesson is household utensils.
Overall, I feel like my comfort level has improved immensely. I used to find it really difficult to speak to strangers in Vietnamese, but now I feel more at ease doing so. I met some friends of my language partner's and was able to converse with them in Vietnamese. I also went out to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant and was able to have a smooth conversation with the waiter about the Lunar New Year. I look forward to improving other areas in my language skills and for the next two weeks will be focusing on writing.
I am personally interested in cải lương. This is "a form of modern folk opera…[that] blends southern Vietnamese folk songs, classical music, hát tuồng (a classical theater form based on Chinese opera), and modern spoken drama" (Wikipedia-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%E1%BA%A3i_l%C6%B0%C6%A1ng). It originated during early 20th century in Southern Vietnam and became popular as a theater form of the middle class in the 1930s (French colonial period). It is considered a national theatrical form and was popular with the general population until the 1980s. However, now it is usually only listened to by the older population.
Cải lương can both be performed live and filmed in the same way a movie is. Traditional story lines are usually from folklore or famous novels both from China and Vietnam. Genres also range from comedy to tragedy and the setting can range from historical to modern. Some examples of famous cải lương story lines are Chuyện Tình Lan Và Điệp (Lan and Diep's Love Story), Lương Sơn Bá Chúc Anh Đài (title is just the combination of the two main characters' names), and Lồng Đèn Đỏ (The Red Lantern).
Cải lương is a great medium for language learning as it encompasses various listening forms: singing, regular speech, and something in between the two. If the setting is modern, the spoken parts will imitate vernacular Vietnamese, allowing for the learning of more authentic speech.
If the setting is historical then a lot of Hán Việt (Sino-Vietnamese) vocabulary will be needed. Additionally, knowledge of proverbs will be necessary as cải lương usually carry some sort of moral message in them leading to the inclusion of at least one proverb usually. Currently, these two topics are not included in my learning plan, but they have occurred in the free-talk sessions as well as during dictation reading of news articles. I will discuss the inclusion of these as topics to study with my language partner after the midterm.
