Artifact%206.pdf

Verb conjugation (Past, present, and future) with example sentences.

Beginning of the semester: When I stated my goals in the beginning of the semester, I was a complete beginner in Hebrew. I only knew a few sentences that I learned from my Israeli friends. My goals for the semester were to learn the alphabet, and to comfortably talk about my learning tasks. My ultimate goal is to read and speak Hebrew.

I started learning the alphabet on my own before I met with my language partner. I used several websites to learn the alphabet and their pronunciation. When I met with my language partner, we went over the alphabet together and she sent me a list of words which I had to match based on the first letter. This helped me learn writing quickly.

I tried using the software available at the global studio and BYKI, but I only found random lists of words and phrases in those resources. I am a systematic learner and I like to learn things in order. That is why I did not use these resources this semester. When I tried to learn the numbers, I search on Google until I found a good website to use. As with other tasks, after I learned the numbers I showed them to my language partner for assessment.

In addition to my tasks, my language partner gave me homework that included translating sentences to Hebrew. She only provided me with the correct verb conjugation, while I had to translate the other words by myself. This became part of my learning. I performed my own research and translation to fulfill my learning tasks, while my language partner gave me sentences to translate based on our sessions. She gave me question words and verb tenses that I had to incorporate into the sentences. These verbs where challenging since there are several conjugations and there are many exceptions to the rules.

Middle of the Semester: I borrowed a children book from the global studio to improve my reading. This became a big part of my learning in the second half of the semester. I translated a page or two of the book, and I would then read it to my language partner to work on pronunciation. I also worked on some of my favorite learning tasks during this part of the semester, such as talking about the family and telling time. As part of my homework, I prepared over 10 sentences for these two tasks, and I used some of them in my artifact. At the same time, I was reading from the book and progressing slowly. I wish I spent more time this semester memorizing all the words I translated from the book. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time this semester applying for jobs and organizing my post graduate plans. If I had put the time into memorizing those words, I am certain I would have been able to converse at a beginner level.

End of the Semester: I have the full assessment of my learning plan in a separate post called “SDLC 110. Learning Tasks Self Assessment”.

Towards the end of the semester, I started to have longer meetings with my language partner, and several times I met with her and David. We read the books together, and David and I helped each other with translation. This was a good technique to change things and make learning more interesting. During this time, I continued with my learning tasks such as the weather, answering the phone, and talking about sports and hobbies. Fulfilling the tasks towards the end of the semester was not interesting at all. I was only interested in reading and translating words.

One of my favorite resources this semester is a dictionary application for the iPhone that was recommended by my language partner. The dictionary is called (morfeqes). Unlike Google Translate, this dictionary gives several meanings for each word, in addition to the different pronunciations.

How well did you achieve your goals? What were the stumbling blocks you encountered? How were you able to overcome them? What was most/least interesting to you? What would you like to do next?

Learning the alphabet was relatively easy. I did not have a problem with the pronunciation of the letters at all. I just needed to write them down several time to memorize what they look like. There are certain sounds that can be made by more than one letter, and there are also letters that can be pronounced in more than one way. Unfortunately, most of the time there is no way to tell which pronunciation to use. It only comes with experience.

As far as greetings and farewells, I learned a few words that are most popular among the younger generations in Israel. I made my first artifact using my knowledge from this task, which was the artifact with the two babies meeting and greeting each other. This is my favorite artifact.

Introducing myself and my family was one of my favorite tasks. I was very excited about making the video to document it. The challenging part with this task and the artifact was forming the sentences on my own. I had to use the online dictionary to search for some verbs, while my language partner helped me learn the family words.

Learning the numbers was slightly challenging only because the masculine/feminine is reversed in comparison to other words. While you usually add the ending “-a” to refer to feminine adjectives, with numbers it is the opposite. I recited the numbers to myself at least once a day, in both the masculine and feminine way. Learning how to tell the time was easy since I only learned how to say “quarter past”, “quarter till”, and “half past”.

Learning grammar was a secondary task that replaced my original task about soccer. This task was especially challenging because of the different conjugation per pronoun. I still did not completely master the different tenses, especially the future tense. I feel a lot more comfortable about it now since I started reading the book I borrowed from the global studio and that helped me a lot. My language partner helped me translate while I tried to recognize the verb tenses based on the conjugation.

I did not enjoy learning my other tasks much. I only learned them because I wanted to finish my ten learning tasks. I believe that the reason behind this is once I started reading from the book, I realized that I enjoy reading and translating more than learning tasks. This became an issue since I lost interest in learning these tasks. My least favorite of those tasks was learning how to use the phone, especially because I do not think I will ever need to make a phone call in Hebrew. This was a big roadblock in my way of learning. I had to rethink my way of learning because I was no longer curious about learning those tasks. I started to ask my language partner to give me words related to the task, and as part of my homework I would make sentences based on those words. This way I was able to learn those tasks by engaging my interest in grammar and verb conjugation.

I will take one or two gap years before I go back to graduate school. In those years I will continue learning Hebrew by reading and translating more. I may also use a computer program to help me with the pronunciation. I will devote more time towards memorizing words because I believe that my vocabulary should have been much better at the end of the semester.

This is my final learning plan, as I made some changes over the semester.

Task 1: Learn the alphabet and learn greetings/farewells.

Task 2: Introducing myself and my family.

Task 3: Learn the numbers to tell and ask for time.

Task 4: Learn Hebrew grammar, specifically verb tenses and possession, to start reading from a book.

Task 5: Buying food and ordering at a restaurant.

Task 6: Learn about the weather and how to describe it.

Task 7: Talk about sports and hobbies.

Task 8: Talk about health and learn health-related vocabulary.

Task 9: Learn how to use the phone in Hebrew.

Task 10: Read and translate from a children book (ongoing task over several weeks).

I never studied a language the way I did this semester. When I learned English and French, I only focused on learning the grammar, pronunciation, and punctuation of the target language. I understand that language defines the culture of a certain country or region. However, I never studied the culture of a target language. To be completely honest, I was skeptical about how studying the culture of Israel, as well as other student’s target cultures, can help my learn Hebrew. By the end of the semester, I understand why it is important to incorporate the culture into language learning.

I always understood the connection between language and culture is very important. Each country has certain words and phrases that are unique to it and differentiates it even from other countries where the same language is spoken. That is only one out of many reasons why it is important to study the culture of the target language.

In addition to learning several tasks in my learning plan, I learned a lot about the Israeli culture through my research and presentations; that is why I encourage continuing the student presentations in SDLC 105. As a sixty year old country, Israel continues its rapid population growth based on immigration. The immigrants continue to arrive to Israel from all over the world, bringing with them values and traditions that together make up the Israeli culture. In addition, the immigrants also brought with them food culture and different accents and mother tongues. Many Israeli citizens speak Hebrew as a second language, including many second generation Israelis.

Immigration also reflects on the language. As spoken Hebrew ceased to exist several centuries ago, the revival of the language in the nineteenth century included the adoption of several words and phrases from other languages, especially Arabic, English, and Russian. I learned through my research that much of the Hebrew grammar is adopted from Arabic, while the letters are adopted from the ancient Aramaic Assyrian.

As far as the language, I started the semester learning how to read and write, in addition to learning important grammar such as verb tenses and possession. I then started with my language tasks on my learning plan. I did not have those tasks planned out well in the beginning. I decided to change the order of my tasks and I removed certain ones that I did not find very useful for my learning purposes. For example, one of my tasks was to learn about soccer. I did not find that task very useful and documenting it would have been difficult too.

I enjoyed making video artifacts using iMovies to document my learning. I found it a good way to show my ability to speak the language as well as learning vocabulary. In addition, I had picture artifacts that I planned to make into movies too, but I was not able to since I did not have enough time. I wish I spent more time on learning Hebrew this semester, especially by going over what I learned before. In languages, it is always important to go over what was learned frequently. However, I only focused on the new learning tasks, which made me forget older things that I learned.

During the second half of the semester, I focused on reading from a children book with my language partner. This enhanced my pronunciation and I am able to recognize verbs based on the conjugation. If I continue learning Hebrew beyond college, I will make sure to study previous tasks and go over words to memorize them. I will also focus more on reading instead of speaking, since I learn faster when I can see the words and sentences written down.

Overall, I think I made great progress in Hebrew, and I look forward to applying what I learned this semester towards language learning in the future.

Cultural Project: Immigration in Israel

I became interested in this topic because immigration is the basis of Israel. The culture of Israel is based on the cultures of the immigrants. Regardless of what topic you may research about Israel, you will find articles discussing the influence of the Arab immigrants, Russian Immigrants, European immigrants, etc. I decided to look at the ability of immigrants to integrate in the Israeli culture.

First, I looked at the services the government offers to those immigrants and how they are utilized. I compared the poverty levels of new immigrants and Israeli citizens and the possible effect of Hebrew proficiency on poverty. My next goal was to look at the Arab Israeli minority and their status in the State of Israel. 

I found that there is a possible correlation between language and economic status in immigrants. I also found that Arabs are offered the same rights as their peer Jewish Israeli citizens. However, Arab citizens of Israel remain of a lower economic status due to different factors including discrimination and lower levels of education.

Response to the article:

The article "Why Bilinguals are Smarter" talks about the cognitive effects of speaking two languages for children and the elders. In the 20th century, it was thought that being bilingual hindered a child's academic and intellectual development. However, recent studies have shown that being bilingual leads to continuous stimulation of the brain. When a bilingual person speaks one language, he/she is also thinking about the other language, which leads to the brain stimulation that causes its intellectual growth. Studies with preschoolers and infants in Italy suggest that bilinguals have stronger cognitive abilities than monolinguals. Moreover, studies with the elderly in San Diego suggest that bilinguals are more resistant to dementia and Alzheimer.

This article gives a new perspective to speaking more than one language. Now we know that it is more than just "cool" to speak two languages; it is important to start teaching children a second language at an early age to enhance their cognitive abilities. I have never felt this happy that I can speak three languages fluently.

Response to the article:

The article “Tribe Revives Language on Verge of Extinction” talks about how a language has been literally brought back from extinction. The Siletz tribe was declared extinct in the 1950s. A few members of the tribe, as few as five, recovered the tribe and the language by the 1970s. About 4,900 individuals are currently enrolled in the tribe. In addition, a school curriculum has been created that teaches the Siletz language in grade school and it may extend to be taught in high schools as a foreign language. Non-members of the tribe, such as the linguistics graduate student Ms. Johnson, are taking special interest in the language. She helped members of the tribe in their seven-year project to create a Siletz dictionary, or the Coastal Athabascan dictionary.

This article was of special interest to me since I am studying Hebrew, another nearly extinct language. The stories of both languages show their important part of the people’s identity. Languages go extinct due to the expansion of other languages and the dispersal of the native speakers into other areas of the world. The only way to bring the language back from extinction is by gathering the speakers into a nation, a region, or a tribe, in order for it to flourish and spread.

            Culture shock is a response that people may have when faced with different habits and behaviors than what they are used to. It manifests itself in language, food, academics, and everyday costumes. The movie we watched in class describes the cultural experiences of several international students and faculty at the University of Richmond. As an international student, I found the film to be very interesting because I have been through mostly everything mentioned in it.

            I have been in new cultures when I attended high school in Bosnia and Herzegovina and now at Richmond. The first stage of cultural shock for me both times was the same as the German student mentioned; sitting alone in the room wondering “Why am I here?” That is a normal question for any foreigner living in a new area. The next stage is comparing everything in the new culture to the native culture. Usually, this ends up with finding all the flaws in the new culture. For example, one girl in the film talked about how American guys are “weird” and “not emotionally open”. This may not necessarily be a bad thing in the United States. The American culture expects men to be stronger and more assertive. This can be the reason why American guys seem different to an international student. However, this is more of a college culture than an American culture issue. Social life in college can be different and the interaction between the two genders does not represent the American culture in general.

            One important aspect in every culture is the colloquial language. It is different even among Anglo speaking countries. While most people do not have a problem with the American accent, it is the idioms that may create difficulty for someone visiting the United States for the first time. This may extend to communication in general and greeting others is a part of communication. One student in the film stressed the issue of the impersonal greeting he found at the University of Richmond. People will walk by you and simple say “what’s up” or “’sup”. They do not expect a long response from you and they are not ready to give you a long answer if you ask back “how are you?” What I personally found even worse is when you walk by people you already met and you know they saw you, but they look down and walk past you as if they did not see you. This does create a big gap in a communication, especially for someone from a culture that values personal communication.

            Not too surprising, academics also create a cultural shock for someone visiting a country for educational reasons. Each country has a different system and it is not easy to adapt to a new system after 12 years of the other. The student from Bangladesh talked about class participation and how that was difficult for him in the beginning because he was not accustomed to it. I personally faced a similar problem when I was studying for the IB diploma in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I arrived to school three weeks late because of visa issues and I was asked to make a presentation and write a two page paper during my first week. I have never done either in Iraq. The grade in Iraq is only based on test results. I had a really hard time during that week because I did not understand what a presentation should be about, and what I should write in my paper.

            Culture shock is a normal thing for travelers. After the “honeymoon” phase, it is hard to immediately adapt into new cultural habits. One of the best ways to overcome culture shock is by integrating into the culture. Usually, this happens by joining activities, clubs, and organizations. Of course, the one best way to overcome culture shock is by having friends from that culture. They will help you understand why things function the way they do. They will help you realize that they are happy with the way things are and they do not think their culture is bad at all.

Cultural Competence

This refers to the ability to interact well with people of other cultures. In today's multicultural world, it is important to learn how to interact with different people. This includes knowing the vocabulary and non-verbal communication. There are different types of competence such as grammatical competence, discourse competence, sociolinguistic competence, and strategic competence. Understanding these four types of cultural competence helps with communication.

I enjoyed reading about non-verbal communication because we talked a lot about it in class. Body language and other non-verbal communication methods are very culturally dependent. They are different from culture to culture and one should follow them when interacting with people of another culture.

Reflect upon your progress to date, consider the effectiveness of your learning plan and activities, and discuss what changes, if any, you will make to finish the semester.

I am very happy with my progress so far. I have been submitting my work on time and I am on track with my learning tasks. I have been moving tasks around because I feel that I need to learn certain tasks before moving on to others. For example, I pushed my task to have a simple conversation in Hebrew to the end of the semester after I gather more knowledge and vocabulary. I am also trying to make more than only 4 artifacts so that I can show my proficiency. I have been working on my reading with my language partner and I think that is very helpful because I am learning many words from the readings.

The main learning activities that I use currently are repetition (out loud) and flashcards. So far, these two activities have been effective in helping me learn words and sentences. I tried using flashcards with one of my friends to see if she will learn words. I used 10 flashcards with Hebrew words written in English letters. 5 of them had only the words while the other 5 had words and associated pictures. After 1 hour of repeated learning, my friend remembered all 5 words with pictures and only 2 words without pictures. I asked her and she said that she is a visual learner. As a visual learner myself, I might start using pictures in my flashcards too.

It is very important to learn the history of the language you are studying. Language is a very important component of culture, and knowing its history helps in understanding many things. For example, Hebrew shares a lot of its grammar with Arabic and its alphabet is very similar to the Assyrian alphabet. When I first heard my friends speak Hebrew, I could recognize words or whether they are speaking about a guy or a girl. This did not make sense to me because similar languages can share words, but sharing grammar is not usual. Now that I know the history of Hebrew, I know how this is possible.

Hebrew was not spoken since the second century CE. It became the language of the Hebrew scripture only and it was read a few times a year. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a movement was initiated to restore Hebrew as a spoken language. The initiation was based on the religious importance of speaking Hebrew. The majority of modern Hebrew is based on Biblical or scripture Hebrew, but a lot of the grammar and words are taken from Arabic, English, Russian, and Latin. The alphabet used in modern Hebrew is the simple square alphabet that originates from the Assyrian Aramaic alphabet.

I posted two artifacts so far to the Ning. One was a picture of the alphabet with words I wrote in Hebrew that start with the corresponding letter. The second artifact I posted was a video I made. Using iMovies, I dubbed my voice over a video I downloaded from Youtube. I had to cut the video and move scenes in order to match the voice with the images. The video was about greetings, introduction, and farwell.

For my future learning tasks, I will be making videos to document my progress. I don't think that pictures will necessarily show my progress because speaking is an important part of learning a language. That is the reason why I will use videos to show my competency in speaking Hebrew. I am currently working on making a montage about my family that I will dub my voice over using iMovies to present them and talk about their careers and ages. Other artifacts I will make will be about the weather or soccer. I always show my artifacts to my language partner after they are done to assess the grammar, accent, and overall accuracy.

My favorite artifact will be the one about having a short daily dialogue with a native speaker. I will record a Skype conversation that I will have with one of my Israeli friends from high school. It will be exciting to talk to them in Hebrew.

My reading skills have been progressing slowly in Hebrew. I do most of my reading from Facebook, reading posts that my Israeli friends posted. While I do not have a problem with recognizing letters, I have a problem with pronunciation. Vowel sounds are usually added as dots below the letters. However, these vowel sounds are not used by experienced Hebrew speakers because they know the words already. Therefore, I have a problem knowing whether the letter mem "m" is pronounced as "ma", "me", "mi", "mo", or "moo" in a word. In addition, some letters have more than one way to pronounce. For example, both letters khet and khaf can be pronounced as "k" or "kh"; bet can be pronounced as "b" or "v"; shin can be pronounced as "s" or "sh". The only way to learn how to recognize these vowels and different letter sounds is through experience and reading.

I have been working with my language partner on reading verbs in the different tenses and knowing what vowels are associated with them without writing the dots down. In addition, I will borrow a book from the Global Studio to read in my own time and then read to my language partner. These methods should help me reach my goal to be able to read and understand simple Hebrew writing. Maybe I will try to find children books with images to help me understand the big picture in what I am reading.

Overall I learned many words. I cannot remember the exact number, but I know it is a lot because I have been formulating sentences without looking up the words in a dictionary. It might be helpful that many words are shared in Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew. 

I was very happy with my artifacts for last week. The first one is a conversation video I made in the Global Studio using iMovies. The second one was several words I wrote as part of my homework from my language partner. The video was creativ and I worked hard to find the correct sentences to use. I showed the video to my language partner and she also thought that it was good and the pronunciation was good too.

I started working on my next goals. However, I still have more to do. I started working on how to recognize past, present, and future. I think this will help with my conversation goal. I started gathering words for my other goals about describing family members and telling time. However, i still need another week to feel confident about it. Although I did not completely meet my goals, I am sure I will meet them by the end of week 5.

Learning plan.pdf

Hebrew is mainly spoken in Israel, where one culture is hard to define. The culture of Israel is a mixture of all the cultures brought by the immigrants throughout the years. However, some general assumptions can be made.

Israel is more monochronic and collectivist. Several studies found that the Jewish Israelis are far more monochronic and less collectivist than their Arab Israeli peers.

Hands can speak in Israel!

1-Hand out in a pinched formation: means wait a second.

2-Two hands in pinched mode-talking about something very specific.

3-Twisting hand to the side of the head: Means you are stupid or crazy.

4-Shaking the head and saying "why, why, why": means what I just did was incredible, no?

My goals for the next two weeks are learning how to introduce my family members, asking for time, and be able to lead a simple conversation with my language partner. I will use the dictionary to learn family members and their professions. For this goal, I will record a video with pictures of my family and I will talk about each one.

I currently learned the numbers in Hebrew, so I need to learn how to tell the time (they use the numbers and "quarter-past, half past, etc.). I will also watch videos of simple conversations in Hebrew and use computer programs to find information on this topic. I will record a video with my language partner where I will introduce myself, ask about the time, and carry out a small conversation.

To evaluate my progress, I will rely on my language partner to help me evaluate my success.

The reading from "Figuring Foreigners out" gives good explanations and examples of Individualist vs. collectivist, monochronic vs polychronic, internal vs external, direct vs. indirect communication, and nonverbal communication. As an individual who lived in three countries and met people from many more, I can only say that the reading is completely right. Most people you meet from the same culture will act very similarly, whether it is about speaking loudly or believing that they can achieve anything they set for. However, there is always one individual that breaks those stereotypes of the culture.

Languages are tools we use to communicate with each other. It is not surprising that each language is strongly related to the culture where it is spoken. However, it is difficult to say whether culture affects language or vice versa. Nevertheless, cultural dimensions are very important when learning a language. Idioms represent one of the most suitable examples were culture and language cross. Idioms are usually based on a historical event, a legend, or a song or movie that is famous in a specific culture. It is rare to find idioms that are shared globally.

Many people find language an culture directly related. That's the reason when immigrants try to reserve their culture in a foreign country, language is one of the most important aspects they reserve. It is no surprise that one would need to immerse into the culture of the target language in order to become fully aware of the language and to be comprehensive when speaking to a native speaker. 

Therefore, it is necessary to learn more than vocabulary and grammar when learning a language. It is important to learn what is acceptable in the culture of the target language, what different gestures are good and which ones are considered disrespectful. After all, language is more than just spoken words; it is every gesture we make in order to communicate.

After checking my level of competence, I am, as expected, a beginner0 in Hebrew in interpresonal communication, interpretive listening, interpretive reading presentational speaking, and presentational writing. I met with my language partner and we worked a bit on the alphabet and my learning plan.  My goal for the semester is to learn the alphabet (read and write), greetings, and give a short presentation about food, music, and soccer. My ultimate goal is to speak the language fluently.

I will first work on the alphabet and greetings, and then move on to talking about my family and what they do. I will then attempt to have a simple conversation with my language partner or a friend who speaks Hebrew. I also have to learn about food, buying and describing food. To be able to talk about soccer, I will spend some time learning the positions and names of plays. I would also like to learn to speak about the weather, sports, health, and hobbies. My last two tasks are learning how to use the phone, formally and informally, and learn the travel signs.