How well did you achieve your goals?

• I think I did really well achieving my goals this semester. I wanted to become more comfortable speaking and understanding Swedish and I think that through practicing with Louise and listening to a lot of Swedish outside of class time I was able to accomplish that. I'm also getting more comfortable with reading. At the beginning of last semester any attempt I made to read an article or book in Swedish was thwarted by the fact that I had to look up every other word. Now that I know basic verbs and tenses, prepositions, pronouns, etc. I'm able to attribute meaning to sentences without having to look up words. I'm also getting much better in my reading and listening comprehension at getting to the gist of what is being said/written and not getting bogged down by every single word. I'm getting very comfortable talking about myself and just situations around me and my feelings on a daily basis which is important as I plan on using my Swedish to converse about normal day-to-day things with Freddie's family.

What were the stumbling blocks you encountered?

• At the beginning of the semester I think all three of us were feeling like we had reached a plateau. It was challenging because we had learned so many of the basics and had covered most of the basic topics/areas of vocabulary by the time we hit the start of this semester. So we kind of had to go back to the drawing board and figure out what exactly we wanted to achieve and how we thought we could get there. We ended up ditching the "learn a long list of vocab words in one category, take quizzes on the words, and turn the words into sentences" and instead focused more on conversations, with the assumption that we would continue to pick up vocabulary on our own.

How were you able to overcome them?

• I think this new strategy we adopted was really good because we combined reading/summarizing/translating with listening to Swedish in songs and videos and then conversing naturally in Swedish about these things. We even practiced interviewing each other and Louise's brother Freddie when he was in town. While we were still picking up new vocab words left and right, it felt like we were putting more of a focus on conversations and speaking/listening comprehension and I think this helped us with going in the right direction for our goals.

What was most/least interesting to you?

• I'm starting to really like the way Swedish sounds and just absorbing it so much more. When I first started learning I could understand so little when I heard the Anderssons speak or attempted to translate an interview/conversation in Swedish. Now when I listen to songs in Swedish or hear Swedish spoken I can pick up on so much of it and it only encourages me to absorb more! A few weeks ago Freddie was on the phone with his mom speaking Swedish while my mom and I sat and listened. He was telling a really funny story and I was giggling beside him and my mom was just looking at me like 'how are you getting this and why is this so funny?'. It was a cool moment for Freddie and me because I could see how proud he was that I was understanding so much-- and maybe wary of speaking Swedish around me in the future...? :) I guess the least interesting part is still when grammar-related issues come up and don't get resolved. For instance Malory or I will say something and Louise will correct us but then won't be able to explain why (which is totally understandable-- it would be impossible for me to explain the particulars of English grammar to someone and I would probably just say that it "sounded right" which is very unhelpful!). So then Malory and I will look up the rule and find nothing conclusive or understandable about that particular phenomenon... I think it will just take more practice for us to get to the point where things just "sound right" because we've heard them said that way for long enough.

What would you like to do next?

• It's going to be tricky for me in the coming year to continue my Swedish education simply because I won't have Louise nearby or the structure of SDLAP. I think I want to sign up for some sort of Swedish education class while I'm working and living in DC. I will definitely continue to read and listen to as much Swedish as possible while I'm there but I think speaking Swedish will be more challenging while I'm there on my own. I think maybe at some point in the future I should start talking to Freddie and Louise exclusively in Swedish-- I know it will be very hard and Freddie won't love it but I think it will be good for my language acquisition and practice! I also think that while I'm starting my new job in a new city it will be nice to have a special project/passion that I can focus on when the workday is over. I'm very open to suggestions about goals for the next year and resources I can use if you have any input. I am pretty anti-Rosetta Stone but would be willing to pay for classes. I definitely think I should come up with a goal system and be making sure every month that I'm meeting those goals.

Still need to work on?

• Pronunciation, fluency, speed of comprehension, Swedish tonality, rhythm.

One of the coolest things that I've done with my Swedish this year was actually over winter break. Mrs. Andersson asked if I wanted to be Santa for their Christmas festivities-- it was a fun surprise for everyone! Louise helped me write a speech and I had to dress up like Santa and create my own Santa persona. The speech part was fun but I was really nervous... I also had to read poems that they'd written to each other and that was tricky because it's hard to read another language in their short-hand and script-like style. For instance, Swedish has special vowels (Å, Ä, and Ö) and they look really different when written in short-hand than when typed. The two dots on the ä and ö become one straight line but I hadn't realized that before reading the poems over Christmas so it sent me through a loop! The whole ordeal was a great learning experience though. Here is the script I wrote: Jultomten%20Tal.docx

Practical use of Swedish! Learning Swedish has been really helpful and on numerous occasions I have been able to use it to communicate with Louise or Freddie or with their parents. For instance, I recently sent their parents an email and started it off with some Swedish for practice/to show them my progress. I said:

Attached is the PowerPoint from my Swedish presentation on Dating and Marriage.

Swedish%20Presentation%202.pptx

This semester I personally tried to focus on reading and writing as well. I tried to read at least an article a day in Swedish in order to get a better feel for vocabulary, grammar, etc. It is especially helpful if I'm reading an article in Swedish and it's about something I already read in English. This way I can accumulate more words because I understand in what context they're being used. In these assignments I read articles in Swedish, translated them into English, and then resummarized them in Swedish. This was a particularly helpful process because it forced me to really understand what the article was saying and then reiterate the vocabulary words I'd just learned in Swedish. All the while paying close attention to proper grammar usage.

Spring%20Break%20Homework.docx

Swedish%20Articles.docx

This semester we tried to focus more on listening and speaking, rather than just accumulating new vocabulary words. This process was really helpful because it forces me to get the gist of what a speaker is saying. At the same time I tried to practice listening to youtube clips of Swedes speaking and then slowing them down/repeating them until I could understand what words they were using. It also helped with understanding grammar and how sentences should sound.

Swedish%20Videos.docx

Swedish%20Conversaton.docx

For my culture presentation I talked about Swedish dating and marriage culture. It's really different from the U.S. to say the least! For the most part Swedes don't really date the way Americans do. They certainly don't ask strangers out on dates! Swedes also aren't big into marriage. They have very committed relationships but don't necessarily value signing a document that says to the world that you're married. It is also much more common for Swedes to live together and not be married. The term "sambo" is used for a partner that you've lived with for a long time but aren't necessarily married to. There is definitely no social stigma about being an old maid, not being married, or having a baby out of wedlock in Sweden. Also, Swedes tend to be older when they settle down and get into these long, committed relationships so younger Swedes in their 20s and even late 30s are unlikely to even be on a boyfriend/girlfriend basis.

Swedes also express love in very different ways from Americans. For instance, my boyfriend's family doesn't say I love you! They say "puss och kram" which means kiss and hug. It means the same thing for them, they just don't like to say "jag älskar dig", which is their phrase for I love you. Understanding this part of their culture has been important not just so that I can understand their language, but also so that I can bridge the cultural gaps in my relationship! Sure, it's nice that I know the phrase puss och kram so I can say it to my boyfriend and his family members. But it's even more important that I understand that his family doesn't use the phrase I love you so it isn't natural for him to use it in English per se. 

As the semester comes to a close I feel much more confident in my Swedish speaking and listening abilities, especially. Louise, Malory and I had dinner with Louise's brother Fredric and we practiced interview questions on him. I was happy to see how much I understood of his answers and my ability to get the gist of what a Swede is saying even if I can't identify every single word. I think it's important to not get hung up on that one word you didn't understand and just let your ears keep listening. We've also been practicing a lot more with listening and having conversations so for instance Louise will say something in Swedish and we will have to understand what she said and respond. It's helpful because now I feel confident that I could carry on somewhat of a conversation with a Swede.

However, I do feel like we are at another critical juncture where we know a lot but that also means that we realize how much we don't know. I find myself struggling to talk around what I want to say because there are words missing from my vocabulary. Even still, I think just practicing with Louise and attempting to communicate our thoughts/feelings is a great step. I feel pretty well prepared for our final just because we have learned so much this year and it will be fun to show it off.

Over spring break:

-Malory and I Skyped: We spoke in Swedish about what we had been doing over break and what we had planned to do. We got to practice using verbs in various tenses as well as framing questions for one another. It was fun and relaxed so I think both of us felt really comfortable speaking Swedish with one another.

-Translating articles: We both had to find/read/translate five articles in Swedish and then summarize them. The reading part is not too bad and I think it helps with my vocabulary. The part that is trickier is summarizing because it really forces you to understand what you are reading and put it in your own words (in Swedish, of course!).

-Reading/summarizing about Swedish culture/traditions: I feel like now I know everything there is to know about Swedish culture!!!

-Using verbs in various tenses: This is important for me right now because I know a lot of verbs in the present and infinitive but often can't remember/just don't know how to use the verb in the past tense. So when talking about what I had done/eaten/seen over break it was helpful that I had reviewed those common verbs in the past tense as well. I am very thankful that you don't have to conjugate verbs in Swedish like you do in Spanish. Oy vey!

-Watching Bron/other videos: I made a friend on the airplane coming back from Spain because I was watching Bron. It's still kind of hard to process what they're saying because the accents are pretty strong, but I'm definitely getting better.

This week:

-Talking to Louise entirely in Swedish about our breaks: Like when Skyping with Mal, this was helpful because I had to use my grammar/vocab skills to come up with things I had done over break. I think forcing myself to speak in Swedish is necessary in order to be successful in gaining language skills.

-Listening/translating Louise's stories/break: This was the best activity because for the most part I could follow along with what Louise was saying and then could ask if I didn't know a word. Then I added those words to my list of words to learn! Louise was very instructive through this process because she would stop to ask if we understood, and she would purposefully use words she thought we knew or would be able to figure out, and then she would gesticulate a lot in order to demonstrate what she was talking about. I really think we should be doing more of this because ultimately I want to be able to understand what the Anderssons are saying!

-Listening homework: We went on Youtube to find videos of people speaking Swedish and then translated. This was helpful because for the most part I could understand what they were saying. I picked a video of a young woman who was learning Swedish in order to move there-- so I think I could understand her better than if I had chosen a native speaker because she sounds more like I do when I try to speak! Even still, I had to stop and figure out what words she was saying and got an overall understanding of what she was trying to articulate to her audience.

Side note: Over the summer I purchased the first set of Rosetta Stone so I could practice. Before working with Louise and Malory in the fall I did about the first section of my program and then pushed it aside when I started getting homework from Louise! Just out of curiosity and because I wanted to see where I stand today, I started going through the chapters of my Rosetta Stone this afternoon. I really do think that I'm at the point now with my Swedish that I could get some benefit from doing maybe the last two chapters of my Rosetta Stone and then I would either have to stop or get the next package/level. I'm really excited by how far I have come!!

This week we met to talk about the quizzes we took and about articles we read, translated, and summarized (in Swedish). Both of these activities were really productive. In terms of the quizzes it was helpful to go back and see where I had been wrong about certain grammar rules and where I needed to learn new words/rules. She had us translate sentences into Swedish which was neat because up until that point I hadn't considered how you would translate certain question words or what the rules were in Swedish for when you have two verbs in a row (do you conjugate the second verb!?). I also was able to make note of where I needed more practice and plan on adding words/rules to my study list.

Next we went over 1-3 articles that we had read in Swedish and then translated into English and then summarized in Swedish. This was helpful because it forced me to really think about what the article was saying because I had to be switching back and forth. It taught me that I knew a lot of words already and that I still have a lot more to learn. The articles ranged for me-- I understood almost all of one and found it easy because I already knew about the story in English. And then the others were progressively harder for me to understand and then summarize in Swedish. Even in my summaries I learned things in Swedish that I didn't know. Overall this was a helpful exercise but still overwhelming to think of all that I still don't know!

This has been quite a week! Last week Louise and I both discussed that we were hitting sort of a plateau in our learning because we have gone through so many different "categories" of words to learn and there is only so much grammar that comes up naturally in our sessions that we can look up/learn for reference. So we were really starting to struggle and I could even feel a slight lag in my motivation to study/practice just because we had hit a wall.

But!!! This week. Much better haha. We took a quiz on everything we have been doing this semester (occupations, prepositions, country names/nationalities, etc.) and it was the most helpful thing we have done all semester. Louise had us translate very practical question sentences into Swedish and it made me realize that there was still a lot of practical grammar issues that I had not mastered. It's one thing to know vocabulary but a whole nother thing to understand how to use verbs in the proper order and tenses in order to make one complete/perfect question/sentence. So I'm looking forward to getting that quiz back and making note of what I need to improve on.

Something else that we worked on for our next section was translating some Swedish articles into English. I know that straight translation is typically not the best way to learn a new language because you need to engage with it, reproduce it, use it in contexts, hear it, etc. But at the same time I think that because we have been taking a very varied/interdisciplinary strategy to learn Swedish up to this point that it was helpful to do some straight up translation. I was happy to see that I could understand most of an article that I read about Facebook buying WhatsApp. I made note that it was helpful in this case that I already knew this news story and therefore it took the guess work out of deciphering the article. Instead I was able to just fill in the blanks where I needed to and learned some new vocabulary and syntax rules along the way!

P.S., it's really hard to memorize prepositions and I need to look into a better way of doing it. I tried making word associations between English and Swedish to no avail. Perhaps I need to focus more on using these prepositions in their proper contexts in order to remember them in Swedish? :)

This week we are really starting to transition into speaking as much Swedish as possible in our group sessions. I feel pretty well prepared for this because I've been listening to a lot of Swedish books and watching Bron, the Swedish/Danish TV show. I think it won't be a problem to create sentences in Swedish because we've been doing so much practice. I do, however, think it might be a challenge to understand what Louise and Malory are saying in Swedish. But this is going to be great practice I think. Sink or swim!

I have also been learning a lot of grammar particulars outside our sessions and making sure I understand the sentence constructions that I'm reading. Making my own sentences using the grammar rules is helpful. Also, I was listening to a Swedish song the other day and recognized every word in the chorus. I was very proud! Also, I'm getting to the point where I can have a basic conversation about my day and ask my boyfriend about his day (in Swedish) so that's been pretty neat.

That said, the more I learn the more I feel as if I will never stop learning! I was texting my boyfriend the other day in English (and he is entirely fluent) and used a word that he had never heard before that I thought was pretty commonplace. So this just made me recognize that learning a language is a constant and never-ending process so I can never really say that one day in the future I will have learned all of Swedish because that's just not possible!

This week we focused on combining our vocabulary skills with grammar lessons. We are talking this week about occupations, countries, prepositions, and pronouns so we made sentences and questions combining all of those elements. This was really helpful a lot of the sentences I would actually say in real life. An interesting point about working with a Swedish person in real time is that together we can work through insights about the language that hadn't occurred to her (because she doesn't need to think about the language explicitly day to day) or us (because we don't know the language!). Anyway, as an example, I wanted to say "I am a student" and had an intuition that in Swedish (like Spanish) you could just say "I am student". Louise hadn't really thought about it but realized I was right! You can just say "Jag är student".

Also, I am taking a cognitive psychology course this semester and we have been talking a lot about memory in the past few weeks and last week we talked about study techniques that really aid long-term retrieval. I learned that the best way to study vocabulary is to chunk the information into categories (like occupations, colors, etc.). Then you take flash cards and study three words at a time in a particular category and then move on to the next (rather than trying to learn 30 words about occupations at once because you are likely to forget the words in the middle). Obviously it is even better for retention if you can do something like use the word in a sentence too or make a connection to something else in order to store it in your long term memory. But this was really helpful for me because I was trying to learn 30 words in one sitting about the same thing and found that I couldn't encode all the information!

This week we established our goals for the semester and talked about how we want to proceed throughout the semester in order to achieve our goals and become more proficient in Swedish. Here are a few things we decided:

- Louise is going to speak more Swedish to us in our sessions, whether we understand her or not. Sink or swim!

- We are going to read more and listen to more Swedish outside the classroom so to speak. We have already found multiple TV shows that we think will help us pick up more Swedish skills and are going to be viewing them weekly.

- I also am making it a personal goal to read at least three articles in Swedish every week in order to become more familiar with verbs, sentence structures, etc.

- We also decided that rather than focusing too heavily on vocabulary and memorization this semester, we are going to learn some vocabulary but then pair it with grammar lessons/verbs and begin to construct usable sentences for every day life. We want this to be really practical rather than just spewing memorized words.

- I also hope to work on my prononciation and I think that listening/watching more Swedish will help with that.

For the remainder of the week we are going to start working on our first section of vocab/grammar and then begin to formulate sentences. I still obviously want to learn all of the words but actually using them is going to be more of a priority. The words we are learning are also becoming more complicated so I hope to use the time in our sessions to practice prononciation.

Swedish learning plan

Section 1:

Learn:

• Alphabet
• Hard and soft vowels
• Pronunciation
• Numbers
• Colors
• A few animals

Outcome: I thought this was our easiest section. I still find the vowel rhyme to be helpful because it shows me how to pronounce certain words. Something challenging about this section though was that I learned that in Swedish the way you write a word doesn't always correlate with the way you colloquially say it. For instance, the word for monday is måndag but you say it moooondahhh. I got a 65/60 on this quiz because knew extra credit words.

Section 2:

Learn:

• Basic greetings
• Pronouns
• En vs ett
• Family words
• Description of ourselves
• Basic question to start a conversation

Outcome: I found this section to be really practical because they are the words and phrases I am going to need to know when I spend time with the Andersson family. I think a bulk of the information I will be sharing for the final will come from this section because I know a lot of words and sentences to talk about myself and my family. I got a 40.5/40 on this quiz because I missed some points for grammar related issues like pronouns and word order.

Section 3:

Learn:

• Weather
• Transportation
• Directions
• Time

Outcome: This part of the semester got challenging because we started learning very long lists of vocabulary. I probably know a few hundred words combined in terms of weather, transportation, directions and time. The most challenging is time because Swedish people use military time which we don't and they have a very precise and complicated way of telling the time to one another that isn't very similar to here in the U.S. at all. I got a 41.5/40 and the issues I had were with prepositions, per always!

Section 4:

Learn:

• Food
• Silverware and utensils
• Cultural differences with dining
• Clothing
• Parts of the body

Outcome: This section was fun because we were able to learn these words and concepts while making our Swedish dinner. This was also the first time we really talked about Swedish culture! Towards the end of this section I found that it was harder to learn all of the words because the semester had gotten pretty crazy. Before the final I want to go over clothing and parts of the body so I will know those words too! I got a 75/80 on this quiz, again related to the prepositions I used incorrectly in the essay portion of the quiz.

Final: The best part about this final and also the most challenging was that Louise didn't want it to be just a review of vocabulary so we spent the bulk of the final writing our own sentences about the categories of words. I got a 161.5/200.

Notes from this semester!photo-3.JPG

We had four quizzes and a midterm/final to show what we had learned, keep us on track, and help us construct sentences from the vocabulary we learned!photo-4.JPG

I did a lot of reading this semester to try to learn new words and understand Swedish grammar/syntax. The examples here are TInTIn in Swedish and Män som hatar kvinnor which is the first dragon tattoo book in Swedish!photo-1.JPGphoto-2.JPGphoto.JPG

We made Swedish meatballs! We talked about the ingredients in Swedish and made sentences about who we were eating with and what we were eating as a part of our food section.IMG_20131102_183352263.jpgIMG_20131102_180713631.jpgIMG_20131102_180704616.jpgIMG_20131102_181737446_HDR.jpgphoto-5.JPG

Swedish%20Culture%202.pptx