Posted by ReidSchluter on April 21, 2009 at 3:30pm
This week I only studies one section of the book, albeit an important one. Instead, I spent a lot of time looking at the internet resources that Jan gave me in order to gauge how my understanding of Dutch has developed.The section of the book that I looked at was perhaps the most important I have read to date. It explained that Dutch was a TMP language meaning that modifiers in any sentence are always ordered by time, manner, place. This is incredibly useful knowledge because English is the opposite as a PMT language, and to this point I had always been confused by the word ordering in Dutch. I don't know why the book waited so long to elaborate on such a fundamental rule, but it is certainly helpful knowledge that will help me a lot.Since I've learned many of the fundamentals of Dutch including the basic verb tenses, all the major word groups including vocabulary, pronouns, interrogatives, possessives, etc..., I asked Jan for some Dutch-language websites that would help me reinforce & contextualize these skills. I already look at the main--sort of tabloidish--newspaper a lot, but he gave me some other helpful resources.Geenstijl.nl is a useful popular news website that is sort of similar to drudgereport.com in the United States. It explains popular news in relatively everyday linguistic terms.Spitsnieuws.nl is another, slightly more formal, news source that uses more functional dialogue than de Telegraaf.He also gave me two other websites jeugdjournaal.nl & hetklokhuis.nl (which I already had), which are for early-teenaged kids. These sources possess a lot of reading and listening material that outline things in a simpler & more easy to understand fashion.All of these sources together are very helpful. They will allow me to keep interacting with the Dutch language on a daily business once this semester is done, and I'm no longer around Jan. Reading the blogs & comments on the sites is very helpful too, as I can read colloquial/conversational Dutch.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on April 14, 2009 at 11:30am
This week I learned a lot of interrogative phrases as well as the future tense.Interrogative phrases are very self-explanatory, and require only that I memorize them. The questions who, what, when, where, & why, are instead wie, wat, wanneer, waar, & waarom. They also introduced me to useful words like 'hoe-how', 'hoeveel-how many', 'welk(e)-which', 'elk(e)-each', as well as some other slightly more complicated phrases.The future tense is fairly straightforward as well, and was far easier to learn given that I already know the more complicated past tense. The future requires a conjugated form of either 'gaan-to go' or 'zullen (no infinitive translation, but generally means 'will' exclusively in the future tense). Either word is always the second in the sentence after the pronoun, and there is an infinitive of the future verb at the end of the sentence (& therefore not too dissimilar from the past tense). 'Gaan' is used if it is something in the immediate future that you will definitely do, whereas 'zullen' is used for more vague situations such as 'Ik zal een niuew auto kopen-I will buy a new car'.As it is getting to the end of the semester, Jan has also given me a fair amount of websites to look at that will help me contextualize all that I have learned. I can now read Dutch, and understand the majority of what is being said. I still have something of a working knowledge of the language, but now possess a rounded knowledge of most of its fundamental aspects, and can therefore understand the majority of it.
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This week I worked on two short units on my book that explicated use of apostrophe's and family vocabulary. More importantly, I also learned a list of important adjectives that Jan gave me, as well as when to apply an '-e' ending depending on whether the adjective is used predictively or attributively (before or after the noun).Apostrophe's are only used to indicate possession following a name, in all other cases it is typical to use the preposition 'van'. The apostrophe goes before the 's' if the person's name ends in a vowel (i.e. Anna's), whereas it comes after the last letter if the name ends in a consonant (i.e. Marius'). Cases in which possession is not indicated with a proper noun name or a possessive pronoun use 'van' as the means to indicate possession.Family names I learned are very straightforward. I learned 'vrouw-wife', 'moeder-mother', 'zus-sister', etc.... 'In-law' is dictated by a 'schoon-' prefix to any of these words, while 'groot-great/big' & 'klein-small/little' amend 'son' & 'daughter' into 'grandson' & 'granddaughter'.Jan gave me a list of 30 frequently used adjectives to boost my vocabulary. This helped me as the book covered the spelling changes that affect adjectives. As a result, I have for the first time incorporated a basic understanding of adjectives into my knowledge of Dutch as the book had not discussed them yet. Adjectives are subject to the same spelling changes as the conjugation of verbs in order to maintain the long or short nature of the vowel. As a result, an '-e' ending is added to adjectives occurring before the noun, but only in a definite circumstance (i.e. 'mijn-my' or 'dit-this' rather than 'een-a' or 'elke-each'). Examples include: 'een groot huis' / 'dat grote huis'; 'de kind is slim' / 'de slimme kind'. Spelling changes are necessary to maintain the long & short vowels in 'groot' & 'slim' respectively. These rules work in conjunction with the rules for conjugating verbs however, so I already have a fairly good grasp on it.Next week I work on interrogatives (i.e. who, what, when, where, why questions) and the future tense.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on March 31, 2009 at 1:00pm
This week I finished the unit on pronouns & possessives. I had already worked with personal pronouns & possessives last week, and this week I went through demonstratives & independent possessives.Demonstratives are fairly difficult because using them properly requires that you also know the gender of the corresponding noun. If the noun is common gender or plural, the word for 'that/those' is 'die', whereas if it is neuter gender or something you are pointing towards (advice courtesy of Jan) it is 'dat'. Only 15% of nouns in Dutch are neuter gender and there is no definitive pattern, so applying demonstratives requires that you memorize noun gender on a case-by case basis. The same rule applies for 'this/these', which is 'deze' for common gender & plural, whereas it is 'dit' for neuter gender or something in the room. Therefore, 'this house' would be 'dit huis', whereas 'those books' is 'die boeken'.Meanwhile, independent possessives require you to add a 'van' (of, from) in front of a normal possessive (i.e. mij, jou. etc..) to indicate possession. Therefore if pointing at something, you would say 'dit is van mij'. Saying 'Hoe groot is dat van jou?' means 'How big is yours?'. Independent possessives are the appropriate means to say simple statements like 'this is mine' or 'that is yours', and are therefore very useful to know.Over the course of the next week, I'm going to try to learn some useful adjectives that Jan will give to me tomorrow. The next unit in the book addresses ending an '-e' ending to adjectives whether they occur before or after the noun--& the resultant spelling changes that follow the same patterns as when you conjugate verbs. It will be useful to focus on adjectives heavily, as they have yet to be directly addressed in the book. There are also small sections on the use of apostrophe's in Dutch as well as family vocabulary (i.e. mother, father, etc...), which will obviously be very useful to know.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on March 24, 2009 at 4:00pm
This week I focused heavily on the first half of the pronoun/possessive unit. This portion entailed the basic forms of personal pronouns & possessives. Like last week, these are very useful tools in terms of my overall comprehension of Dutch. Obviously pronouns form an integral part of many sentences, while knowledge of possessives is also vital to my overall understanding of Dutch.In English, pronouns are me, you, him, her, etc.... In Dutch, the only complication is that there is an unemphatic form for most of the pronouns. This is a common theme in Dutch. For example, you would write 'mij' to represent 'me', but in reality you would say 'me' in conversation. The same is true of 'you' which is written 'jij', but pronounced 'je'.In addition to these basic pronouns, I also learned possessives during this week. These words are very similar to the pronouns, but instead reflect possession of an object. The breakdown is as follows: mijn, jouw, zijn, ons/onze, jullie, & hun. Therefore, one would say 'my mother' as 'mijn moeder' or 'his dog' as 'zijn hond' etc.... Obviously, these two groups of words are incredibly useful & occur very frequently through the Dutch language--or indeed any other.Next week, I will work with the second half of this unit, which includes demonstratives (this, that, these, those) & independent possessives (van mij). Presumably, these sets of words will round out my knowledge of this in tegral portion of the language.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on March 17, 2009 at 2:30pm
During this week, I continued to master the perfect tense. As I said in my last post, there are a lot of verbs that become irregular in the past tense. In addition, many verbs also require the zijn 'to be' verb rather than the hebben 'to have' verb. This is very counter-intuitive as, for example, you must say 'Is (form of zijn) Pauline al thuisgekomen' to express the statement 'Has Pauline come home'. Also, I have continued to work with the modal auxiliary verbs such as 'to want to', 'to be able to', etc.... These verbs must appear with a separate infinitive verb in order to make sense, so it has required a concerted effort to fully understand their use.Also this week, I learned useful phrases for making/accepting apologies as well as what to say if you didn't understand someone. Both of these skills are obviously very helpful for everyday conversations. Things like 'Pardon' or 'Het spijt me dat...' are how you politely apologize, while you say 'Het geeft niet' or Het maakt niet uit' to accept an apology by saying 'It doesn't matter'. Meanwhile, 'Wat zeg je?' or "Wat betekent dat?' express 'What did you say?' & 'What does that mean?' respectively. Obviously, these conversational skills are vital to everyday life in a Dutch-speaking area.The next unit deals with pronouns, possessives, & demonstratives. These are all similar tools, and I will be working through them in the next week or two.
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This past week I continued working with verbs & the perfect tense. Having already mastered the basics in the previous week (as well as independently studying some important verbs), I focused a large amount on the various exceptions outlined in the pages after the main perfect tense unit in my textbook. For example, there are many verbs that become irregular in the perfect tense because they don't follow the typical ge- prefix, -d/t ending that regular verbs do (for example: compare regular lopen/geloopd to irregular zijn/geweest). Zijn (to be) is always irregular, but there are other verbs that are typically regular like zoeken (to seek), which become irregular in the perfect tense (gezocht). In addition, there are also verbs that will take zijn to form the perfect tense rather then the traditional hebben (to have). An example is 'wij zijn gegaan' rather than 'wij hebben gehoord'. Again, all of these rules need to be memorized on an individual basis, so I have been devoting a lot of time to mastering these skills. I've also learned the 4 modal auxillary verbs, which are: willen (to want to), mogen (to be allowed to), moeten (to have to), & kunnen (to be able to). These 4 verbs occur pretty frequently, and take the same form as the perfect tense, only with the infinitive coming at the end of the sentence rather than the past participle. I've also focused on a further 20 verbs approximately to improve my vocabulary. I've now learned most of the frequently occuring ones, including irregulars & partial irregulars.Dutch Language History:Dutch is a member of the West German grouping of languages. This language grouping is the largest of the three Germanic subtypes, and includes English, German, & Frisian in addition to Dutch (and as a result Afrikaans). Dutch also has strong ties to Northern Germanic languages spoken throughout Scandinavia too. Dutch & Afrikaans care mutually intelligible, as they are extremely similar in many regards. Dutch is officially spoken in the Netherlands, northern Belgium (Flanders/Vlanderen), Surinam, Aruba, Dutch Caribbean islands, Indonesia, and small portions of France & Germany. Afrikaans is spoken in South Africa (mostly the west) & Namibia.Dutch is one of the oldest European languages. Around 500 AD, its evolution towards its current derivation began with the split of Old Frankish--a language spoken in & around the modern-day Netherlands. The language spoken in the region for the next 500+ years was known as Old Dutch. It was during this time that Dutch achieved its reputation of being a sort of cross between English & German. Dutch didn't take many of the sound changes that German developed during this time, and hence is similarity to English which was independently derived from the same parent language. From approximately 1150-1500, the language has been termed Middle Dutch. This is when it evolved from an archaic language very similar to all of the early Germanic languages, into a much closer relative of the language spoken today. 1500 saw a huge push to standardize the language. This was facilitated greatly by the unification of the Netherlands at the end of the 16th century. Coupled with the fall of Antwerp, this was the motivational factor for Dutch artistic, economic, & trade dominance for the coming centuries. This international significance required/facilitated the development of a standardized language, and also allowed for it to be exported along with Dutch colonial dominance.Dutch has a pronunciation that is very similar to the other Germanic languages of course. Its pronunciation is unique in that every letter needs to be pronounced in nearly every instance. It also retains the ability to string together long sequences of vowels and/or consonants to make seemingly very complex words. At the same time however, Dutch is based on steadfast rules more often than not, and there are 'shortcuts' to interpreting the language, given that you are aware of the fundamental rules. Interestingly, the south has a very similar regional dialect to the south of the United States. Vlanderen & regions of the southern Netherlands such as Noord Brabant speak in a slower dialect with a distinct twang. This effects the culture in a manner that Jan has told me is very similar to the north/south difference in the US. Knowing the age & derivations of the language among its 2 counterparts of English & German should be helpful in allowing me to better understand the language as I learn it.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on February 25, 2009 at 3:26pm
This past week I was working heavily with verbs & the perfect tense. I found when reading 'De Telegraaf' and similar sources, that the biggest inhibiting factor to my overall understanding was verb comprehension. As it was the point in my book that they were teaching perfect tense & past participles (which Jan says constitutes the majority of completed action statements in Dutch), I decided to use an auxiliary source for important Dutch verbs in order to boost my overall understanding. I learned about 40 verbs all together that will come up frequently. I also learned their stems, and how to conjugate them. My book hadn't really gone over verbs in much detail, so the benefits on my overall comprehension of Dutch has been very noticeable already.In terms of the questions from the reading:1. Something that is true for all natural languages i.e. all languages have nouns & verbs2. Verbs3. Since there is a lot of variation to the amount & usage of verbs across different languages4. Development of nasal vowels5. Infants fist sounds will be the most common sounds in their native language6. analytic - little inflection; synthetic - much inflection; agglutinative - elements arranged loosely together7. VO places verb before object, whereas OV places object before verb8. Because they link clauses9. They are placed in a contrasting arrangement10. The consistent ordering of words in a particular fashion11.12. Each language requires that the markers be place in a particular way in accordance with clause order13. VSO, OSV, & SVO14. They are effected by nominal modifiers15. In both, relative clauses are formed with implied relative pronouns16. The genitive typically appeared before the noun much more frequently17. They fall after the noun, unless they're being modified by an adverbial expression18. It's mainly noticeable in the structure of folk talesREVIEW PROBLEM #1This seems to be relatively in line with their respective language groupings. Being analytic, English has little inflection, and that is certainly visible in the formation of it's past participle in this example. Meanwhile, Greek is synthetic which means that it has much inflection. Again, this is evident in the forms that it takes in conjugation, which are generally much more complex than in the examples from English & Japanese. Finally, Japanese is agglutinative, which means elements loosely arranged together. This is viewable in the simple examples provided in the question, and my Japanese-speaking friends offered a few more examples to emphasize this point.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on February 21, 2009 at 1:57pm
This post is delayed by 3 days, but I will just write as though I did it mid-week. In terms of the two artifacts that I would like to be evaluated upon, I think that a one-page or so autobiography would be a good additional item to the Dutch EU proficiency exam (which I need to know how to retrieve). I was also considering maybe recording a conversation between Jan & myself, but I think it may be too soon for me to do unscripted. I think that writing about myself, and simply displaying the vocabulary, grammar, etc... that I have learned would provide a more fair assessment of my progress at this point. I would turn that in first, and then take the Dutch proficiency test the next day. I am not entirely sure what it is (and again I need to know how to acquire it), but I would imagine/hope that I do reasonably well for someone at the beginner level.I accomplished all of my specific goals for this week that I outlined in my previous learning plan. During my lengthy car-ride to & back from Florida I was able to get through: specifics of the royalty, yes/no questions, rhetorical questions, months/dates/holidays, & both congratulatory & telephone conversation phrases. I was also able to read a couple of magazines (one sort of a political commentary i.e. Newsweek & the other about soccer), and discern many of the main points from the articles--particularly the soccer ones. This upcoming week, I have been/will continue to work on the perfect tense (I have...), which my book devotes a lot of pages to, and Jan agrees is very important. In addition, we both agreed that it would be a good idea to work through the verb list in the back of my book and identify & remember the important ones on my own. I will learn their meanings & their stems, which will be very useful to learn in tandem with the perfect tense--which connotes much of completed action dialogue according to Jan. Hopefully learning a lot of the fundamental verbs will allow me to have better general understanding, as well as helping me write a mini-autobiography.Aside from that, my pronunciation is developing well. My voice thankfully recovered from bronchitis, and I can again make the important g/ch sound. I typically now only have a couple errors in the sample dialogues that I do with Jan. My speech is still somewhat slow, but presumably speed will continue to develop with time. I would imagine that at the end of the semester I will be able to record an unscripted dialogue with Jan as a final artifact.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on February 10, 2009 at 3:14pm
I'm going to paste my 3 paragraph learning plan from this past week, and comment on how effectively I accomplished the goals within each paragraph:My learning plan for the week will focus on fundamental conversations. In other words, I wish to master simple, everyday conversations within Dutch—and as a byproduct hone my pronunciation skills—and use those as a basis point for expanding my knowledge. I’m of the opinion that this is the best way to approach the language, since I think that pronunciation may well be the biggest hurdle I face in learning it. Once I have conquered this issue, I will be able to have dialogues in my head (i.e. start thinking in Dutch) far easier, and at that point the language will become second nature.REACTION: I did great work on my accent this week, but will touch on that more in reaction to the next paragraph. With regard to fundamental conversations, I don't yet possess the ability to think, react, & pronounce properly if I were to have a random conversation in Dutch. I am okay with basic phrases like 'hoe gaat het... - how are things...' or 'kan ik u helpen', 'wat kosten', etc... and can say those at the drop of the hat. anything substantially more complicated would still be a stretch as I don't yet possess a complete enough vocabulary. That will come in time though. This week I learned a lot of words/phrases useful in grocery store (or really any service establishment), so more vocabulary will come through reading more of the book.My tasks for this will be simple. My primary objective will be repetition of the many different sounds in Dutch. As an example, I mean differentiating between ‘OO’, ‘O’, ‘OE’, etc… and all the alterations that can occur from the letters positioned around them. There are large amounts of varying vowel sounds, and after meeting with my language partner for the first time, I am beginning to get a pretty strong grasp on them. I’ve learned simple introductory conversation to another person as well as a variety of everyday situations in a restaurant or store. I need to focus on making this more seamless though, so that I do not have to think about what I am saying. By continuing to work on my pronunciation by myself as well as with my language partner, I think I could develop a very strong knowledge of these basics this week, which will serve as a launching point for a far steeper learning curve.REACTION: I did very well with this based on both Jan's & my own estimation this week. Now by my third meeting with Jan, I'm becoming quite good in differentiating vowel pronunciations, and as a result my speech has become noticeably quicker (while still slow), and I find myself not thinking about it as much. It is becoming like second nature, and that has been my overall goal for the early weeks of the course. After our second meeting, Jan told me my vowels had developed, and I should switch my focus to R's, V's, & CH's. I don't think I've mastered any yet, but he said there was a marked improvement on all three after our third session yesterday. Jan is very honest with me, and we both are of the opinion that my accent is developing about as well as either of us could have hoped. I am hoping that within two weeks it will be good enough that it could get me around the country, and I can start working through vocabulary, conjugations, & the other structures of the language that will rapidly advance my skills.My evaluation of what I’ve learned will rely heavily on my language partner. We met briefly on Sunday to develop a schedule and see what we would be working on in the near future. Yesterday we had our first official language instruction though. He pointed out my main flaws as ‘R’s’ that occur in the beginning of sentences, and a lack of awareness of differentiation in vowel sounds. As a result, I have to work on my ability to pronounce R’s, as well as merely remembering which vowel sequences produce which sounds. My improvement over the hour I spent with him yesterday leads me to believe that I could more or less master these skills in the next week or two. He says my book is very good, and has encouraged me to work with certain words he has given me as well as some phonetic examples given in the book. My ability to have a simple conversation with Jan will serve as a very effective barometer of how much I have learned in this regard. He will evaluate me in this regard, but hopefully I can go from scripted conversations with a few glaring pronunciation errors, to unscripted conversations with little or no pronunciation errors.REACTION: I touched on much of this in the last paragraph. I wrote a fairly lengthy dialogue that we practiced with yesterday. Writing it was not too difficult, but doing something similar unscripted still wouldn't be possible (unless maybe it was very honed in the lessons/phrases I've learned thus far). My pronunciation has improved to the extent that a native speaker would completely understand what i was saying [I think]. In yesterday's meeting, Jan did not point out any glaring errors, but merely subtle ones that did not disrupt the conversation as a whole. I'm pleased with this development, am starting to feel as though I'm no longer speaking a 'foreign' language, & honestly think I'm about to takeoff in terms of my learning.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on January 27, 2009 at 4:25pm
The key thing I have been working on this week has been my pronunciation. The 'g'/'ch' hebrew-like sound has been difficult for me to pick up, as has the 'r'--which can either be rolling or throaty, but must always be pronounced. I've seen marked improvement in the last week though, and am meeting with my language partner for the first time tomorrow. He will obviously be a huge resource in aiding my pronunciation, and is fortunately from the Holland region which possesses the dialect I would like to acquire.I have been working through 'Colloquial Dutch' over the past week. I'm close to finishing the second unit following an introduction on pronunciation. There are not very many audio examples given with the book though, which I have found to be a major shortcoming. However, the two resources I added to Diigo are both extremely comprehensive (and free), and fortunately include a fair portion of listening exercises. I think that between 'Colloquial Dutch', my language partner, & these online resources, I could foreseeably gain an intermediate knowledge of Dutch by the end of the semester. It would take a consistent effort, but would certainly be achievable.Overall this week, I've become comfortable with the language. In effect what that means is that I have gained the ability to write, speak, read, & listen to the language without hesitation. Of course I still go fairly slow in each of these disciplines, but there is a visible learning curve, which I'm very optimistic about. Specifically this week I have learned about: personal pronouns, present verb conjugations, having a basic 'how are you' conversation, about 30 verbs including the 5 irregular ones, noun gender, & various basic vocabulary (which I have a broader background in from both my time there & using Tell Me More. Repetition will be key so these things become second-nature, but I know & understand them.
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Posted by ReidSchluter on January 20, 2009 at 11:20am
My language learning experiences up until this point have been fairly diverse. I began in middle school by taking two years of elementary Latin. I found this very hard, and credit it for allowing me to learn other languages easily (I had the most trouble with the noun cases in Latin) as well as more enthusiastically.From that point, I took four years of Spanish throughout high school, and then took intensive intermediate Spanish my first semester at UR. Therefore, although it has not developed much recently, my working knowledge of Spanish is still quite good. Listening has always been my shortcoming as I typically cannot pick of all of the intricacies of most statements. However, I have the ability to speak it well (served as translator on construction site & spoke nearly seamlessly while spending time in Madrid) while also being able to read and write rather well. I would have to be immersed in the language--as I was in Madrid--to fully rediscover these skills since it has been a few years, but I still retain a very good knowledge of Spanish.My only other formal language learning experience was with French. I took one year of French early in high school at the same time I was in Spanish 2. I had a very easy time learning the language--at this point the fourth I had studied at an elementary level--but occasionally became mixed-up with Spanish, as I had not fully learned that language yet. Nevertheless, I did extremely well on all of my assignments and examinations. Due to the teacher undeservedly lowering my grades for 'classroom participation' and a variety of scheduling conflicts, I was forced to stop taking French Junior year. I've since forgotten a lot of it, but again have the ability to recall my skills given the proper setting.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In terms of my particular learning skills, I think I fit most easily within the 'Factual' framework. History has always been my best subject, and as a result is my college major despite the fact that I will not be pursuing any sort of historical job following graduation. I believe that I've been so successful as a history student due almost exclusively to my factual learning style. I have a very good--and specific--memory, and have always had the ability to remember a large amount of objective information--particularly facts. I also possess an amount of insightful learning qualities. I consistently do very well on papers that require me to use more factual examples in order to prove a much greater theoretical point. I consider this closely related to factual learning, and it requires some time for me to organize my thoughts.Language learning activities that fit within this factual framework would be best suited to me. I have the ability to sit down and remember almost any factual information whatsoever. In a language scenario, that means I could quickly remember all of the conjugations of a few irregular verbs. The activities I would ideally like to do would require me to apply this knowledge in order that it can be more than just memorized facts. Once I acquire an amount of facts about Dutch (be it vocabulary or something greater), I will need activities that incorporate into my knowledge as more than just facts. In other words, I will need to know a theoretical framework behind my newfound knowledge that allows me to apply it properly, since I will be able to solely remember everything on my own.I think that is the best way I could expand my learning activities into more of a rational or evaluative framework. It will be important for me to stick with factual and insightful because that is the way I retain information, and will surely produce the greatest level of success for me in this class. By utilizing the two models less suited to me, I think I could learn even more however. If I can learn more about the theoretical framework behind any segment of the Dutch language, than it will only serve to allow me to utilize and recall the tremendous amount of information I store even easier.
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