Artifact 2 - a conversation about past activities and hobbies..hobbies.mp3

Artifact 3 - a conversation about future plans.future.amr

Artifact 4 - a list of idioms I learned that have common English counter-parts idioms.amr

(Files work in VLC)

I focused on learning through these activities throughout the semester:

• Flashcards

• Verb Conjugation charts

• Grammar charts

• Conversations with Pakistani friends

  The topics I covered in my learning activities were:

• simple future tense conjugations

• informal future tense (going to …)

• past participle

• Vocabulary: school, work, hobbies

Generally, I prefer learning in a structured setting; it helps for the material to be organized in a structure and method that makes sense to me. This is why I focused on flashcards and grammar/verb conjugation charts for the beginning of each new topic I focused on. Having a set of flashcards with words and their definitions, and charts with the material laid out systematically help me visual what I was learning and made it easier for me to recall things I learned. This was particularly important for when I began a new topic because, for example, I often found myself visualizing a mental picture of the verb-conjugation chart if I was having difficulty recalling how to conjugate a verb. Having activities like these very really helpful for building up my “repository” of vocabulary, grammar and conjugations. While learning languages, I find that if I am able to systematize my learning in these ways, I remember things for much longer.

Even so, having conversations with Pakistani friends was a good way to reinforce and retain the things I learned. However, more important than retaining all the information, having conversations with friends helped in two other significant ways. First, through having conversations with friends and hearing how they would form sentences or how they would choose to convey a message helped my learning process a lot; just because a direct translation from English to Urdu often will make sense, it sounds odd to a native speaker. In my conversations with friends I began to notice details about how a native speaker would convey some idea that was not how an English speaker would convey the same idea. Though learning grammar, vocabulary and idioms all help one’s fluency in a language, I have found that knowing how one pieces together words to convey an idea also makes a huge difference in speaking and understanding the language. So, although there is a lot for me to learn regarding this, there were details I picked up throughout the semester that helped with speaking and listening to Urdu that went beyond just making sure I knew what each verb conjugation and each word in isolation meant.

The second part of having conversations with friends that was very beneficial was getting comfortable actually stringing together the fragments of Urdu I was learning through my charts and flashcards. Being able to hear how friends spoke, pronounced words where they put emphasis as well as myself being able to practice pronouncing words and implementing all the vocabulary, grammar and conjugations helped a lot towards improving my comfortableness speaking the language.

Having done SDLC 105 and 110 already, I felt that overall I picked more effective learning strategies and activities than the previous semester. However, during the semester I did notice that the discrepancy in effectiveness for my learning between some types of learning versus others was much larger than I thought; learning through active means (likes going through flash cards and talking) and systematic/methodical organization of grammar/conjugation charts proved extremely helpful compared to listening activities and especially writing activities (like writing our vocabulary words). One of my goals was to improve my listening comprehension, particularly my ability to understand dialogue in Bollywood movies. So, although it is a goal I still wish to achieve, from what I learned during the semester, I think trying to improve my listening comprehension should not be approached primarily through simply watching Bollywood movies or listening to dialogues (though I did not have time during the semester to actually watch many Bollywood movies). I found that I was able to comprehend much more of what others said through saying things myself than by hearing others speaking; since I learn the language better by doing things myself, I found that the more I used new vocabulary, grammar, etc., understanding what others said came much more easily. For example, when I was learning new verb tenses, just having memorized the conjugations did not help my ability to understand the tenses being used when others spoke, however, as soon as I started to become comfortable speaking in those tenses myself, I found that I was suddenly able to understand others much better than when I had just memorized verb conjugations but was not comfortable using them myself. (Though listening does not seem to be one of my stronger ways of learning, hearing others speak was still essential to improving my speaking because I was able to learn pronunciations and sentence structures from hearing them).

The learning activity I created was a “Concentration game”; I had vocabulary words in English and Urdu written on cards. You flip two cards over at a time, trying to match the English or Urdu word with the appropriate translation in the other language. The vocabulary I focused on were about hobbies and activities I used to have (or still have now): mountain biking (mountains, bike, race), soccer/football (“favorite team”, “win”, “lose”, etc.), singing, videogames, art.

In my first artifact I went over through a basic conversation, asking how my friend was doing, what time he wanted to eat lunch and what else he had been doing these days (and I responded to his similar questions). Throughout I incorporated some new vocabulary/phrases I have been learning, such as "I would like to...", "difficulty (struggle)", "where were you?" 

There were moments in recording where I was quite happy with my accent (particularly those phrases and words I have known for longer and used more often), but other times I could hear my "American" accent coming through quite clearly. This usually occurred for new words, particularly those borrowed from Arabic/Persian (e.g. "mushkil" is borrowed from Arabic). However, I think what I did most poorly was having to slow down to properly enunciate words that are normally slurred together by native speakers. Particularly for the imperfect past tense, where the imperfect is said by combining 3 words (2 of which are conjugated). It is not that the native speakers mispronounce the words, but they are used to saying them and can string them together effortlessly. I, on the other hand, found it very difficult to properly enunciate without slowing down and breaking up the sentence so that it sounded quite unnatural.

As far as linguistic accuracy, I did a good job, using the correct pronouns, verb conjugations, sentence structure (my friend help me piece together one of the more complex sentences). Likewise, I believe I did a good job with cultural appropriateness. Addressing people with the correct pronoun is important in Pakistani culture (even if that person is not present), and because I was having a conversation with a friend I used the informal second-person pronoun and verb conjugations. Furthermore, the general gist of the conversation was not very formal, for example using slang like "tik tak" (meaning "pretty good") rather than the grammatically correct "tik hu" ("I am good").

Conversation reviewing material from last semester and new material.

Voice%20004.m4a

During the first two weeks I focused on reviewing vocabulary and grammar (e.g. sentence structure and verb conjugations). Having spoken and heard very little Urdu during the summer (much less than during the school year), I forgot a lot of the basic aspects of Urdu that I had learned last semester. I began by writing out important vocabulary that I could remember, as well as a list of English words that I knew I had learned (based on work I did last semester) but had forgotten, like family and school related vocabulary. Similarly, I wrote out a couple verb conjugation charts in the present tense for a few different types of present tense conjugations. After doing this I studied the things I needed to re-learn so that the vocabulary/verb conjugations etc. could come to mind quickly, not just after thinking for a long time. Finally, I practiced speaking Urdu with my language partner and other friends. I did this to accomplish two goals: first, to continue familiarizing myself with the things I had been reviewing and, second, to practice/review other aspects of grammar, like sentence structure.

When the semester started I was around my Urdu speaking friends, and noticed that I understood less than I was able to at the end of last semester, but my interpretive skills had not decreased as much as my speaking skills. It was only when I met with my language partner for the first time that I realized how rusty I had become at speaking the language. Not only was I much less confident with the things I could say, I also realized that even though I would have been able to recognize many words/understand sentences spoken by others, I was blanking on many words/verb conjugations/sentence structuring that I had been fairly comfortable with last semester. What has surprised me the most though, was not how much I had forgotten, but how much harder it has been re-establishing my level of competence to that of the end of last semester. I have taken long breaks from speaking other languages, like Spanish, however it usually only takes me a little bit of time to get back to a similar level of competence. It has not been the case with Urdu, but I am not too worried about this – there have been long periods of time when I have spoken lots of Spanish to the point that my competence was quite high, and I believe it is easier to “get back into” a language which one has known for a long time and can speak well, as compared to a language which one has known for a shorter period of time and at a lower level of competence.

There are two cultural learning goals I have for this semester, building on from surface level surveys of these topics in presentations last semester. I hope to learn about the early development of Urdu, and the role that poetry and poets played in the conceptualization and founding of Pakistan. I will begin learning about these two topics through discussions with a Pakistani friend who has learned a lot about these topics in order to give myself a general sense of areas of particular interest that I can explore in greater detail. To begin a deeper exploration of the areas in particular I want to learn more about I will use online resources, books from the library and any documentaries I might be able to find on those topics.

Nations and cultures often place much importance on their language and its development, so I believe understanding the history of Urdu will be especially beneficial because of its mixed roots originating from a language spoken primarily by Hindus but its development into its own language through Muslim conquest. Pakistan was founded on ideals held by many poets who wrote about topics relevant to the establishment of the nation and poets held an especially important status in the culture of the people who would become to be known as Pakistani. Learning about the role of poetry and the general establishment of the country will help me understand important aspects of Pakistan’s cultural heritage.

Last semester I only focused on learning interpersonal communication skills in Urdu (speaking and listening - no writing), and these are the areas I am focusing on for this semester again. I believe I am currently in the "novice high" or "beginner 3" area in both speaking and listening. I can understand and say more than just memorized phrases, and piece together sentences/the meaning of things being said as long as it involves select themes, such as family, hobbies, introductions etc. 

I will be focusing on these two areas of language learning again this semester. I want to learn Urdu for conversational purposes mostly - having many Pakistani friends on campus as well as a tendency for me to meet and be friends with South Asians generally (if I can speak Urdu, I will be able to communicate with Hindi speakers as well as become more familiar with other related languages). Aside from generally improving my vocabulary, listening ability and confidence/fluency in speaking I also specifically want to focus on learning common idioms and figures of speech/expressions in Urdu.

SDLAP_learningplan.docx

(I think I misunderstood the "self-assessment" section as meaning whether I think it was a realistic goal/how to assess myself instead of being used at the end of the semester for actually assessing myself. I have left it as is, and have done my self assessment in my last reflection paper.) LearningPlanPravaas.docx

Sources are at the end of the presentation.

Ahmadiyya%20in%20Pakistan.pptx

Summary (what is not on the slides)

Slide 1- 

When he was 14 years old he scored the highest ever recorded marks for the matriculation exam at the Punjab University (matriculation exam is exam taken as a sort of placement test for movement into tertiary education.) He received his first Bachelors in Mathematics at age 18 and master’s degree at age 20. Three years later he completed his second Bachelor’s at Cambridge with double first-class distinction in Math and Physics. He completed his doctorate by age 25, with his thesis earning him the Adams Prize. 

Slide 2-

The broad estimates of numbers are due to the difficulty discerning just how many Ahmadi there are because of the sect's discriminated status in Islamic countries.

Distinct beliefs include the interpretation of "Jihad" and some Ahmadi's belief that Mirza Ahmad (the founder of the sect) was a prophet.

Slide 3-

Bhutto passed the bill in 1974, even though he resisted for a while, those non-Ahmadi Muslim who were disenchanted became more and more violent until he had to cede to their wishes.

There are currently laws against Ahmadiyya claiming to be Muslims, for them to call their places of worhship “mosques”, to use the common greeting of “Asalamu alaikum”, publicly quote the Quran or disseminate their beliefs. 

Slide 8-

Being a part of a religious group seems to play a larger part for being the categories through which one might primarily identify themselves (as compared to nationality, social class etc.)

Though general feeling towards Ahmadi remain negative in Pakistan, there is evidence of a movement towards acceptance (or at least non-discrimination/oppression).

 There is an interesting number of words that appear in Urdu that have religious meaning that is of specific importance to Islam, while at the same time there are some words with religious meaning in English that are not found in Urdu, like "cult". 

I went to Noorani, a Pakistani/Indian restaurant and talked to the waiter in Urdu.noorani.jpg

Ask and answer about identityThird%20Artifact%20.amr

Throughout this semester I have learned important things about how I learn in general, as well as methods and balances important to the language learning process. Regarding general learning, I have found that writing down and orally repeating what I write (both while and after) helps me remember information faster. The oral aspect, I have found, has less to do with audial learning, but rather, I believe it has to do with the act of saying the word(s) and becoming familiar and comfortable with saying those words. More specifically to language learning, writing out conjugation tables or tables with the many variants of possessive and reflective pronouns has helped me understand the structure of the language. Because structure and conceptual coherency is important for my ability to understand, writing out these tables help me become familiar with the process used to determine the use of which words, when and how to manipulate them for sentences. Though listening does very little for me in regard to memorization, I have found that listening to native speakers (in person or in video) has been very helpful in my confidence while speaking; by listening to others I can begin to “feel” the flow of the language and thus produce my own sentences with less insecurity. Further, listening to my Pakistani friends throughout the semester has been a great way to assess my progress and as encouragement when I see the progress.

In regard to learning about culture, I have found that although I appreciate and enjoy learning about new cultures, the way this is most effective for me in through means like our cultural project. The cultural project did not simply ask us to find out emblematic features of the culture, but instead look at products and practices to understand cultural perspectives and their significances. I am a person who does not simply want to be told this and that are aspects of the culture; I want to see why these cultural phenomena occur so that I can more deeply enjoy and appreciate whatever new insights I gain into a culture. Besides the cultural projects, I found the articles by Crystal assigned for the second week very interesting and insightful (when one applies it to one’s own experiences with language). These articles, though perhaps a little dry, brought to mind important ways that one should look at the process of deriving and applying meaning when studying a new language. Finally, I found the articles on bilingualism very interesting. I personally would place myself somewhere in between a monolingual and a bilingual, and found it interesting to compare the information in the readings to myself and see if, how and where I might spot distinctions between myself and both monolinguals and bilinguals.

I felt that I was moderately successful in achieving the goals I set for myself this semester. As a very general goal, I wanted to establish a strong foundation for myself in Urdu. I wanted to do this in order to feel comfortable as I continue to learn Urdu informally (for the time being it seems doubtful that I can take more Urdu classes in college) because I will be able to apply the rules of the language to things that I hear (and infer the meaning of things that are different to the basic rules I have learned). Though I find that I still make mistakes quite often when speaking, I find that I can quite quickly realize the mistakes and correct myself - to me this indicates and good understanding of basic sentence structure, grammar etc., even though I definitely need to practice these basics more.

In regard to the specific goals I set for myself: 
I can give basic information about myself and family - yes. 

Use vocabulary for eating at a restaurant - yes.

Talk about my hobbies and studies/ask about others' - yes, but not in great detail.

Talk about where I grew up - pretty much none (I sort of left this when I started pursuing other goals that I did not initially set for myself)

Understand Bollywood movies better (i.e. rely on subtitles less) - I cannot say, I have not had time to re-assess myself yet. However, I have found that I can understand my friends' conversations better.

Goals I did not initially set, but ended up doing:

Tell time

learn to recognize (and occasionally use) future tense

distinguish between the variety of pronouns for each way of addressing people and myself (i.e. me, mine, to me, from me. etc.)

Ask and answer questions about identity Second%20Artifact.amr

I can:

greetings/farewells/introductions

Talk about my family/friends and myself, (age, nationality, etc.)

Use vocabulary when going to a restaurant

Talk about my major and my hobbies/interests

Ask for/tell time

Talk about basic daily routines (sleep at ..., eat food, go to work.... etc.)

When I wrote my learning plan I was lay between novice 0 and 1 for all the categories (or n/a because I cannot read nor write Urdu). The only reason I was able to lie a bit higher than someone who knows nothing about a language is because there are some similar vocabulary words in Nepali and Urdu (my Nepali competence overall only lies at a low intermediate level so I do not even have a very large Nepali vocabulary.)

My first goal was to introduce myself and my family, including the ability to talk about age, relationship to me (i.e. dad, older brother, etc.) and where I or someone else is from. Next, I want to be able to order food in a restaurant. I want to be able to talk about my major and talk about my interests, and finally I want to improve my ability to understand Bollywood movies. Overall, I want to learn vocabulary used commonly, verb conjugations and sentence structure to create a solid foundation for my Urdu. Having many Pakistani friends and enjoying Bollywood movies, I want to be able to add on to this foundation through informal and formal learning after this course as well.

I have been quite satisfied with the amount I have learned throughout the semester. I have definitely learned lots of important vocabulary, confident with the present tense verb conjugations (though while speaking I slip up fairly often still, due to the small differences in verb endings like the "eh" and nasal "eh"), and improvement in listening competence.
What I found most difficult with the learning process has definitely been finding a balance between learning new things at a pace where I can retain them while still making progress by adding on to those things I learned. At first I dived too fast into learning important vocabulary words but struggled with knowing how to use them in sentences. Once I began learning sentence structure and verb conjugations the vocabulary became useful, but I had to spend quite a bit of time going back over the vocabulary because I had lost much of it because I was unable to use it until I learned those other things first.

Felicia and I worked together on a learning activity. We decided to teach a few useful verbs such as walk/go to and sit down. We first went through how to pronounce the words with the class before beginning to "quiz them" on the words. Then we played Simon Says, where the class had to perform the action that the verb referred to while also saying the verb. Though Simon Says uses the imperative forms, the base of the verb remains unchanged for those words, and knowing the base is most useful when learning how to conjugate verbs in other tenses. I believe using games like Simon Says while also saying the word out loud helps quite a bit (I remember doing this in Spanish class nearly 10 years ago) because the person is challenged to quickly, confidently access their memory and act on that (that is, if they want to win the candy I was handing out!)

a) My first artifact covered basic greetings, asking how someone is, saying my name and asking for someone else's, giving my age and asking about their age, saying it was nice to meet you and a farewell. I am happy with how my progress with pronunciation is going, though I can still hear distinctly the Nepali and American influence.

b)I do not remember exactly what I was learning during week 4, but around that time I was focusing on learning some essential verbs and their conjugations. I intended to learn verbs that were used in common conversations, common either because they are often used in sentences (to have, to be) or because they are about common topics of conversation for me (to study, to eat, to sleep). I wrote out the conjugations in verb conjugations tables and then practiced speaking with my language partner and while talking with my Pakistani friends in normal conversations. 

I find structural patterns and methods quite useful in my learning, so writing out the present tense verb conjugations helped me to remember the conjugation endings and to learn the different ways to attach those endings to the base of the verbs. Though I focused on the present tense, I did spend a little time on future and past tense. However, the rules for which past or future tenses to use in Urdu are more complicated. I did not focus on learning to actually use these tenses, but I wanted to be able to at least understand which tenses were being used when listening. Doing this has helped me quite a bit for listening comprehension. 

I am not sure how many words I have learned, but I would guess somewhere around 40. However, my goals for this semester have not centered around memorizing lots of words because I already know some words that transfer over from Nepali. I have learned many words through conversation with my language partner and through the two cultural presentations. For the cultural presentations I learned words by talking with my Pakistani friends, several English-(romanized)Urdu translation/dictionary websites and in articles I used for my presentations. I have also picked up a few words from Bollywood movies, however I did not have much time to watch any movies this semester. I believe the goals I have are realistic because they include a lot of general words that are used often and in many types of situations (such as common verbs and prepositions).

Throughout my language learning process I have used mostly relied on in internet (besides my language partner) for information regarding Urdu and Pakistani culture. The websites (hamariweb, ijunoon, urduword) I posted on diigo have been very useful for my learning words and their meanings. Because they also have romanized Urdu translations, I have been able to learn words on my own despite not learning the Urdu script. On top of this, hamariweb gives several definitions of Urdu words, not just translations into English. This allows me to understand how certain Urdu words can be used in different contexts, and thus know which meaning is intended when watching Bollywood movies or listening to songs. I do not use my phone for anything more than texting, music and calling so mobile apps like mango languages are not particularly useful for me, but that is only because I rarely use my phone.

Whether or not bilinguals are actually smarter or not, the cognitive differences between bilinguals and monolinguals are interesting. Without large sample sizes etc. it would be hard for me to use my personal experiences as evidence supporting these theories, but I do find that they match my experiences. Though I would not classify myself as bilingual in  regard to fluency, I have grown up hearing two languages constantly (I stopped speaking Nepali at the age of 3 when my family moved to the US for my father's last year of his master's) and I speak several languages (particularly, for both Spanish and Nepali, if I know the vocabulary necessary then I can fluidly and easily say what I am thinking). According to the articles, bilinguals have a better capacity for blocking out distractions and solving mental puzzles. I have been told, and have noticed myself, that when I begin focusing on schoolwork I become very hard to distract (even though I do get distracted easily when not intentionally focusing on something). Throughout grade school my math teachers were always telling me to show all the work I did to reach the answer to a question, but I constantly reverted back to doing large portions of the mathematics in my head because I found it easier and less time consuming than writing out all the numbers and calculations. Even in college I find that I enjoy and understand mental puzzles quite well - we do many thought experiments, formulating predicate logic etc. in philosophy, which is the concentration of my major.

Further, the articles stated that bilinguals often have reduced vocabulary in each of their languages, despite a larger total vocabulary. I find that my own English vocabulary is more limited than most native speakers despite speaking English at home and at school (and there are many words from Nepali that I use when thinking in English because I either do not know the word in English or I find that the Nepali word conveys what I want to say better). This smaller vocabulary has been evident to me from everything between my SAT scores (my reading score substantially higher than my writing score because I could infer the meanings of words in sentences, but words like those were not actually a part of my "vocabulary") to the amount of time and difficulty I face when struggling to find the word that properly conveys the meaning I intend while writing papers or even speaking in English.