I do not think I had realistic expectations of what I could accomplish through self-directed Hebrew at the beginning, and it took some time and some readjustment of goals to create a lesson plan that was achievable. My prior experiences in language classes led me to believe that I would be able to master more words, tenses, and overall grammar than I ended up being able to. I think that not having a teacher leading the pace and setting the agenda made it a lot more challenging. After working with Dr. Scinarello to adjust my lesson plan though, I can honestly say that I think I met a lot of my goals. I have learned the vocabulary for several different content areas including family and weather. While these words I have not memorized, I can recognize them in books and if someone were to say them. I know how to say greetings and question words orally.  I have also become a much more efficient reader and can recognize words rather quickly after being exposed to them.

I think the biggest challenge I encountered was motivating myself. It was hard to set aside time each day to practice Hebrew especially amidst the other time commitments of senior year.  It was also challenging to coordinate schedules with Emily and find regular times when we could all meet.

What I liked most about the self-directed program was being able to set my own pace and trying to adapt the content so that it was meaningful for me. I think this was unique from other language classes where teachers dictate what vocabulary you are going to learn and often it seems useless. In this class, we were able to choose what types of vocabulary we wanted to learn and what would be beneficial for our own studies of Hebrew.  

Final Reflection

I am not surprised by the findings in "Why Bilinguals Are Smarter" by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. I think learning languages improves executive functioning so it would seem reasonable that the more languages one learned, the more easily and efficiently one could switch tasks, solve mental problems, or avoid distractions. It is interesting to note how the perspective on bilingualism has changed over time- from it being perceived as a hindrance to an enormous benefit. I consider myself lucky because I grew up in a house where English and Spanish were spoken so I became pretty bilingual from a young age. I was always jealous of my cousins though who were raised speaking French, English, and Spanish, which I think provided them with an even greater advantage. One reason I think bilingualism is advantageous is because you become accustomed to thinking in more than one language it facilitates an ability to more adeptly see things from more than one perspective or approach problems with a range of different alternatives.

Video of Reading and Translation

Kirk Johnson’s article “Tribe Revives Language on Verge of Extinction” was really fascinating because I had never heard of Siletz before and it was neat to find out about the ways they are trying to increase people’s exposure and awareness of it. It was surprising to hear of a language where there are only five speakers- that’s such a few amount of people! I have a lot of respect for Bud Lane and all of the others who are trying to develop the Siletz Dee-ni Talking Dictionary and keep Siletz alive. I think technology does a huge service to languages like Siletz because with the click of a button people can know about the language all across the world. Siletz is reminiscent of Hebrew because Hebrew also technically died and was revived.

 During weeks 9 and 10, we learned the vocabulary for fork, spoon, knife, plate, cup, etc. I originally thought these words would be interesting for an artifact in which I would draw and label a place setting.  I do not think I am going to end up doing that because the words do not have a lot of meaning for me so I’m not going to concentrate on them and would rather concentrate on family words. I think these words are useful and relevant though if for example someone were at a restaurant and needed to ask for an extra plate or a new fork. 

Learning the history of a language can be helpful because if you learn that a language developed from a certain region or spawned off of another language then you may be able to recognize some of the words. Hebrew has a particularly interesting history because it technically died and was revived. It is similar to Latin in this regard, but Latin has not been revived as a spoken language only a written one, while Hebrew is now used for written and oral purposes. The use of Hebrew as a spoken language decreased because of the persecution of Jews who stopped speaking the language and assimiliated to their new countrys’ languages.  I think learning about the revival of Hebrew motivates me to want to learn the language so that it continues to live on. When Hebrew was dying out Yiddish was a common language spoken, but now Yiddish is dying out. I love some of the Yiddish language though so I hope it makes a revival like Hebrew.

Reflection Paper 2

Michelle's Hebrew Family Tree

After meeting with Dr. Scinicariello, I have worked to review my lesson plan and tailored it to be more specific and hopefully attainable given where I am and want to be by the end of the semester. It was extremely helpful to have Gabbie with me at that meeting because since we are basically at the same point we could talk about things that we both wanted to accomplish so that our lesson plans could be similar and we would both benefit from our time spent with Emily.  I have switched my focus from speaking to reading and writing given that is where I feel I am progressing the fastest. During our meeting we discussed topics of interest that we would go over with Emily and they are:

1. Greetings

2. Family

3. Food/meals/how to order in a restaurant

5. Weather

Task: know how to greet people and introduce myself

Activity: I will learn from Emily how to properly greet people and introduce myself and will practice using the YouTalk App

Task: know how to describe my family

Activity: I will draw a picture of my family tree and use the vocabulary to label each person on the tree.

Task: know how to describe parts of a meal/what goes on the dinner table

Activity: I will learn the appropriate vocabulary from Emily and draw a dinner plate and describe the various objects. I will also use flashcards to practice the new vocabulary

Task: learn how to describe the weather

Activity: I will watch YouTube clips of weather reports from Israel. I will also ask Emily to teach me some common words/phrases about weather. I will draw and describe some weather from a scene 

Artifact%202.jpg

I thought the cultural competence article was interesting- particularly when it addresses the function of language. When I think about the purpose of language I often just see it as a way of communication- as the interactional function, but it serves many roles and functions. I think in learning a language we often utilize it's representational function. For example, we have been learning about how to say different family related phrases such as "I have a sister" which utilizes language as a way to represent facts and express knowledge. Ideally as I become more proficient in Hebrew I would hope to utilize more of the functions of the Hebrew language such as making jokes, using slang, cultural mores etc. that characterize the interactional function of language.

The section on corpus linguistics was also interesting because of how it analyzes the words that are most important to learn based on their frequency of use in the language. The article makes the distinction that frequency is not equivalent to usefulness. I think this is a noteworthy difference because for example the word "the" appears very frequently in English, but only knowing how to say "the" without any noun is not very useful. The word "bathroom" may not be as frequent as "the," but it will be much more useful and you can convey more meaning with "bathroom" than you can "the."

I have not found much enjoyment out of speaking Hebrew yet, because it is not what we have been practicing a lot, rather we have been doing more reading and writing. I think I find reading the easiest because I can recognize letters and words really easily, but hearing the sounds of a word to write them down is more frustrating to me because there are several sounds that resemble each other. For example there is more than one “t” sound, so it makes it challenging to know which one to use.

We recently learned the vocabulary for question words. I have seen some of the words like “who” and “what” in our text already so it was a bit easier.

I continue to use flashcards and byki to help me master my words. I would like to say I have really mastered more words than I have, but I continue to work at a slow, steady pace and am readjusting my expectations

I think the University of Richmond is challenging as a native English speaker and so it is three times as challenging when you have to speak, write, and listen in a foreign language. One of the challenges they mentioned was having to write essays here at the university. Most Americans are accustomed to writing analytical or argumentative papers while in other countries it is more typical to summarize the authors point. I think it would be really difficult to attempt to write an analytical paper if you've never written one before.

The video also talked about how international students often clump together because they are able to sympathize with one another. They understand how each other are feeling and the little cultural American customs that are strange or annoying they can complain about together.

The Culture Shock video made me feel a little bit bad because I feel like I haven't always taken opportunities to get to know the international students or to help them out. After watching the video I feel I can't even imagine all of the changes and challenges they are facing as they are miles away from their families. I was able to relate somewhat because of the experiences I had studying abroad in Spain and the culture shock I had there. While Spain and the US are not that different and it was only four months, there were a couple of cultural things like when people ate meals, how people showed affection for one another, and how people addressed time that stood out while I was there.

As I have been studying Hebrew and going over the alphabet and familiar phrases I've been remembering a lot of words that I learned as a child. Overall I think I've learned approximately 40 words- between the words I recognize and new words I've learned. I've impressed myself with how many words I actually remember. I hope to learn approximately 80 words by the end of the semester since we are now towards the midpoint of the spring. I will have to alter my goals slightly based on the types of words that come up in the reading.

The book we are reading is about a queen and her chair, so while the text is the appropriate level, I'm not sure how applicable the vocabulary is. I don't know how often I'm going to need to use the word "queen" in regular conversation.

Artifact 1

A recording of me introducing myself

This week we got a chance to hear presentations about different aspects of students' target language cultures. The presentation about Indian weddings was fascinating given how lavish, valued, and expensive weddings are in Indian culture. I thought Kristen did a really good job of making comparisons between how much typical Americans vs. Indians make, but yet the amount of money Americans vs. Indians will spend on a wedding is huge. I also found it interesting to hear about the rituals associated with weddings such as the red dresses and the stepping patterns that a couple will take with different prayers said after each step. Kristen also did a really great job tying the topic of weddings to female justice issues via the concept of dowry deaths. I had no idea that men got paid to marry women and that they would be willing to kill if the amount of money wasn't sufficient.

Alan's presentation on Korean table manners was also really unique. It was very obvious that Korean is a culture that denotes a lot of respect towards elders as all table manners seem to rely on watching when the oldest person sits, what pace the oldest eats at, etc. I am a very fast eater so I thought the idea of having to keep pace with the oldest person at the table's eating pace would be challenging for me because I'd be tempted to eat a lot faster. The etiquette of receiving a drink and pulling up one sleeve was also something I'd never heard about and certainly something different from American culture.

I think my pronunciation in my first artifact was fairly good. It was a little bit awkward recording myself, but I think I said the greetings correctly. I would be able to use these greetings in conversation and understand what someone was saying if they were told to me.

This week we learned the vocabulary for family, which I plan to use to construct a family tree for my second artifact. We also learned a little bit about prepositions so we can talk about family in reference to someone such as “my sister” or “his brother.” Since learning family vocabulary was one of my learning goals, I feel very pleased that Emily was able to teach us that this week.

Israelis convey a lot of information via body language particularly hand movements. If a person has both of their hands in pinched formation this means that they are being very specific while if they bite their bottom lip and jut their chin out it often means that they don't feel bad for you. Israelis are very expressive with their gestures and will invade others' personal space as they talk with their hands. Personal space is generally considered smaller in Israel as people are more likely to touch your arm or shoulder during conversation. Israelis are also typically more direct in conversation and do not use as many subtleties as Americans.

I have found reading in Hebrew pretty difficult, especially when reading for understanding. When I "learned" Hebrew for my Bat Mitzvah, I learned only a specific portion of Hebrew that I practiced with the vowels. When I eventually had to read it from the Torah- though it didn't have vowels- it was still pretty easy because I didn't need to know what the words meant I just needed to memorize the portion and recognize it. When reading for understanding though it is much more challenging to remember not only the word with the vowels, but also what the word looks like and means without them. I also think it is hard to read since there are so more versions of the same word because there is both the feminine and masculine tense. One nice thing about Hebrew though is that most words are written the way they sound so even if I don't always know what the word I'm reading means, I will most likely be able to pronounce the word I read especially once I've really mastered my letters. I think that the more practice I get with speaking, writing, and listening to Hebrew the better I will become at reading it.