I added these photos as an artifact because they are a good summary of what I have learned this semester. After writing my Can-Do Statements, I created a page for each one and outlined the major vocabulary and concepts I learned for each task. The only task I still haven't done yet is family-related dialogue, but I may also continue to create these review sheets for other things I learned such as music vocabulary and adjectives. Creating these has been a good way to remember and organize some of the things I learned a while ago and need to refresh in my memory.
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My Can-Do Statements:
I can greet others, introduce myself, and ask others about themselves.
I can use "survival" Hindi when I don't understand or need help.
I can say the days of the week and say what I did/will do on those days.
I can ask for/give basic directions.
I can ask for/tell the time.
I can ask/tell about family.
How this relates to my Hindi Syllabus:
I am happy with the Can-Do Statements I have and how they contain most of the points on my original syllabus. At the beginning of the semester, I think I had overreaching goals for how much I would learn, but once I reconsidered those goals throughout the semester, I realized that I have learned a lot and have been able to maintain a lot for the short amount of time I had. I was able to complete 7 of the 8 tasks I had planned for myself, and my 8th task was replaced by music vocabulary in preparation for my Cultural Project.
However, I did not delve into a few of these tasks as much as I had originally planned. For instance, although transportation was an important topic on my syllabus, I realize now that perhaps I didn't focus on this task as much as I should have. I can ask for and give basic directions, find the right mode of transportation, and ask for help, but my peer tutor and I didn't incorporate transportation into conversations about itinerary or plans as I mentioned in Week 5 on the syllabus.
Another issue I encountered in completing my syllabus was maintaining the skills I gained in earlier weeks while learning new tasks toward the end of the semester. I am working on that now and have dedicated the past few weeks to review, but had I included review tasks for each week into my syllabus, I may have been more successful at remembering earlier vocabulary. For instance, I could have written "review survival phrases" into my tasks for Week 6 so I would have felt more compelled to review the material before I could check off all my tasks for Week 6.
At the beginning of the semester, we took a few tests to determine our preferred learning styles, and I found that I am a kinesthetic learner and excel at musical, verbal, and linguistic activities. For this reason, I wrote in my first reflection that I would center my language learning around writing and rewriting new vocabulary while studying on my own, then I would incorporate those new words into role-playing activities with my peer tutor. Because I am a kinesthetic learner, I memorize best by writing things down, yet this is not enough in learning to use a language. Therefore, I thought role-playing with my peer tutor would be a kinesthetic and verbal way to truly use the language. This plan worked well, but I still tended to forget what I had learned by saying with my peer tutor more easily than what I had learned by reading and writing down on my own. I tried to solve this a few times during our peer tutor meetings by taking notes on new phrases and words, but these were still much harder to commit to memory than vocabulary and phrases I found online and wrote down in my notes.
Another learning tactic I attempted at the beginning of the semester was using Hindi songs to memorize new words and phrases, as I found that I learn well through music. My peer tutor and I did this a few times at the beginning of the semester, and it worked surprisingly well, but we forgot to continue this activity when we started focusing on other tasks. And although this was an effective way of committing words to memory for me, the words I learned from Bollywood songs often had no relation to the tasks I was attempting to learn. Nevertheless, I will continue to listen to Bollywood music next semester, and I hope to ask my peer tutor for translations. This is a fun and effective method of learning for me, even if the meanings of songs may not be very relevant to common language tasks.
In my original learning plan, I wrote that I wanted to focus on interpersonal communication because it encompassed both listening and speaking, two important things to know when trying to live in a foreign country. I believe I succeeded at focusing on this task overall, but I also think I spent too much time learning to write and read Hindi as well while I was studying, perhaps because it is my nature to write things down to remember them. Although it was my intent to focus on listening to and speaking Hindi with my peer tutor, I often got caught up in memorizing how to write new vocabulary in Hindi script while I was looking up words for a new task. I’d also be too meticulous in my notes and write things in both Hindi and Romanized script despite my plan to focus only on learning to speak and listen to those words. Nevertheless, having conversations with my peer tutor and using Mango helped me get past that obstacle and focus on interpersonal communication.
One of the most interesting and effective methods of learning was teaching a Hindi lesson to the class. I was astounded at how well I could respond to my peer tutor’s questions about time after preparing to teach the class this task. After spending extra time preparing and ensuring that I knew the material well enough to teach it, it felt like I could respond to questions about time almost without thinking about it. For this reason, I hope to continue to teach my friends simple phrases in Hindi so that I will remember them more easily.
To continue learning next semester and beyond, I will make sure that Hindi is incorporated into my daily schedule, whether it be listening to Bollywood music on my way to class and listening for words I know, or watching a Hindi movie or TV show, or having lunch with my peer tutor to practice greeting each other and talking about school. This semester has proved to me more than ever that just surrounding yourself with a language has a large impact on your ability to learn and understand that language. I hope that by the time I return to India, I will be able to impress my friends with all the Hindi I have maintained and all the new things I have learned while back in Richmond.
Cultural Project Notes - with vocabulary words
For my Cultural Project, I focused on two narrow examples of Indian music and attempted to show how these two songs exemplified certain aspects of Indian culture. I used the "product, practice, perspective" model that we discussed in class to organize my research into the products created - a classical Indian raga and a Bollywood song; the practices - meditation, religious rituals, and showing culture through popular movies; and finally, the perspective - the importance of music in Indian culture seems to stay the same, but is shifting from a religious to an entertainment-driven product. Of course this is a generalization, as both traditional and modern forms of music are listened to across India today. But the evolution of the Bollywood movie industry has created an entirely new form of music being created in India.
I chose the Ravi Shankar video as an example of a classical Indian raga because Shankar is the most popular sitarist known to the Western world and because the raga clearly showed aspects of traditional music that I wanted to discuss during my presentation. For instance, he clearly played an alap at the beginning of his raga and a jala at the end, as I explained during the presentation. I chose Balam Pichkari from the Bollywood film Yeh Jawaani Hai Dewaani because it is was favorite tune while I was in India and because I knew it would be interesting for other students to watch during the presentation.
Links to the two videos used:
At this point in the semester, I have 144 flashcards (most of which I know) that have a mix of words and phrases on them. However, I think I know even more words because of the conversations and dialogue that I have learned with Sanya. I learned most of these words by searching for vocabulary to use in dialogue with Sanya, or by asking Sanya during our meetings. I also used these flashcards as a way to keep track of phrases I learned in Mango or that I remember from my semester in India. Last, I used online lists of days of the week, numbers, family names, etc.
My biggest concern with my acquisition of vocabulary now is that I am having trouble blending my vocabulary into sentences and dialogue. Although the point of the "task" method of language learning is to ensure that all vocabulary is learned for a purpose, I am still left with random words that I am unsure how to use in a sentence due to grammatical rules I am unfamiliar with or just for lack of context for that word. For instance, I learned a few adjectives but have never attempted to incorporate them into sentences or dialogue. It is helpful to reflect on the vocabulary I have learned for this reason.
Perhaps I had unrealistic expectations for my acquisition of vocabulary at the beginning of the semester, but now that I've been able to reflect on my work this semester and realize my abilities, I am happy with how much I have learned. More so than learning vocabulary, I'd now like to practice speaking with more ease and fluidity, and having an arsenal of words to use is a large part of that.
Reading and writing in Hindi is still very difficult for me, but I am glad I am able to sound out words and characters because it is often the best way to learn new vocabulary. In India, written Hindi is often portrayed in transliteration, meaning that it is the sound of the Hindi words written out in Roman characters. This made reading easier to some extent, but difficulties arose because there is no set spelling in transliterated Hindi, so words would always be spelled differently. For instance, the word for girl, "lardaki," has sounds that are difficult to express with roman characters, so it is often transliterated as "ladiki" or "lariki" a well. However, Hindi script has characters that portray this specific r/d sound that is confusing to transliterate, so for instances like this it becomes important to know the Hindi alphabet. When learning new vocabulary, I am especially grateful that I learned Hindi script because otherwise, I wouldn't know how to pronounce words properly or distinguish certain similar sounds.
Nevertheless, my reading and writing skills are very amateur and require that I sound out words character by character. There are a few words that I see and automatically know their meanings, but I need to establish that level of recognition with a greater number of words, especially words I might frequently see on signs or public areas. A good way to find these might be to translate common words on signs in the U.S. (stop, go, train station, bus stop, etc.), or to look for signs in Hindi TV and film.
To increase my writing ability, I think I should take closer note of how words are written when I learn new vocabulary. I find that I'll memorize a word or phrase by its sound and then, when I try to write it, I cannot remember which characters are used, whether it uses long or short vowels, etc. If I attempt to memorize not only how a word sounds, but also the way it looks, I will have no problem writing in Hindi.
The most important term used in both "Why Bilinguals Are Smarter" and "Are bilinguals really smarter?" was executive function. The first article very flattering of bilinguals while the second was a bit skeptical of that flattery, yet each agreed that bilingualism increases a person's executive function. The difference between the two articles lies in whether this increased executive function correlates to greater intelligence. Executive function is described in the first article as "a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks." Scientist Ellen Bialystok describes executive function as "a system that helps the brain access particular regions of memories when prompted." Although it seems that everyone agrees bilingualism increases executive function, Bialystok argues that this does not make bilinguals smarter than monolinguals necessarily.
Switching between languages frequently and developing a method of predicting words that are likely to come next in a sentence forms more connections in the brain, allowing a bilingual person to perform these functions faster and more efficiently. But these connections can also increase the speed and efficiency of other related tasks, like the ability to multitask or focus. This is the argument that bilinguals are "smarter," but of course, it is misleading to say that monolinguals can never have these abilities without knowing a second language.
Nevertheless, spending time learning a new language by memorizing vocabulary, listening to foreign music, and conversing with native speakers is a great way to build up those connections in your brain. This is an added benefit to learning a language because, not only will you be able to speak in multiple languages, you will also be have increased brain function for other tasks.
At this point in my learning process, I have completed my syllabus created at the beginning of the semester. However, looking back on my first few weeks of material, I have forgotten a lot of it. Although I may still remember most of the vocabulary due to my flash cards, I have forgotten a lot of the sentence structures, important questions to know, appropriate responses, etc.
Although I elaborated on this more in my Reflection Paper 2, I have decided that the remaining weeks of the semester should be focused on reviewing the material I have already learned and learning vocabulary related to my Cultural Project. I hope to use the remaining peer tutor meeting to go over the conversations we've had throughout the semester, after I go over my notes beforehand. I also plan to look up more music-related vocabulary to use in my Cultural Project.
First, you need to know numbers 1-12:
1. ek 2. do 3. teen 4. char 5. panch 6. che 7. sat 8. aat 9. nau 10. dus 11. gyarah 12. barah
Then, you need to know a few vocabulary words:
o'clock: bujah (singular) or bujeh (plural)
is/are: hai/haiN
To tell time on the hour, all you need to do is use this sentence formation:
(number) + bujah/bujeh + hai/haiN
** If you are saying, "It is one o'clock," the sentence is singluar, so you use "bujah" and "hai".
** If you are saying it is any other time, the sentence is plural, so you use "bujeh" and "haiN".
Ex) It is one o'clock. Ek bujah hai.
It is three o'clock. Teen bujeh haiN.
To tell the time on the half hour:
1:30 and 2:30 have their own words. 1:30 is "ded" and 2:30 is "dhaii".
Ex) It is 1:30. Ded bujeh haiN.
It is 2:30. Dhai bujeh haiN.
All other half hours are constructed by adding the word "saadheh" before the number.
Saadheh + (hour) + haiN
Ex) It is 4:30. Saadheh char bujeh haiN.
It is 7:30. Saadheh sat bujeh haiN.
Quarter past: "Savaah"
Quarter to: "Pauneh"
Ex) It is 7:45. Pauneh aat bujeh haiN. (It is quarter to 8.)
It is 2:15. Savaah do bujeh haiN. (It is quarter past 2.)
Overall, I think my language learning has been successful and I have been able to reach reasonable expectations. At first, I was a bit discouraged because I was not able to remember everything I had learned in India as fast as I wanted to, but once I realized that learning Hindi in America would be a bigger challenge because I was not constantly surrounded by it, I developed a more reasonable plan for myself and have been able to stick to it pretty well. The syllabus that I created on my blog at the beginning of the semester only planned out my first 8 weeks because I wanted to reevaluate my plan for the remaining weeks after mastering those tasks. I am glad I did this because, after getting through those 8 weeks, I feel like I need to spend some time reviewing old material before moving on. I also would like to spend some time learning about music vocabulary for my Culture Project.
I think the most effective resources I have used so far are Mango, flashcards (mostly my own, but also on interactive sites), my old notebook from Hindi class last year, and the GoogleDoc Sanya and I created to keep in touch throughout the week. I generally put questions on the GoogleDoc or formulate my artifacts there, then Sanya can see them to give me advice. I think that in the remaining weeks of the semester, I need to focus most on forcing myself to attempt to speak only in Hindi with Sanya. I find myself always reverting back to English when we meet, but I'd like to really try to use Hindi only for the rest of the semester. I also need to find more ways to incorporate all of the tasks I have learned so far into new conversations because often, Sanya and I have conversations only pertaining to the task for that week, which allows me to easily forget the material from previous weeks. Although I have all my vocabulary from the semester in a deck of flashcards, reviewing these doesn't allow me to keep up my ability to converse about these topics.
Learning about Indian culture as I try to learn Hindi as well has made this process a lot more interesting. Learning about culture has influenced the tasks that I wish to master in Hindi as well as the way I think about learning the language overall. I think this will be the most essential way to improve my communicative competence beyond just memorization of key words, grammar structures, and phrases. Sanya has already told me many times, "We don't actually say it like that," when I come up with a phrase during a conversation that is too complex or uses archaic vocabulary. In a few limited contexts, I would say that I have a "discourse competence" of Hindi because I can create many sentences and react to questions or comments from other people about certain topics. In an even more limited sense, I would say that I have some "sociolinguistic competence" from everyday phrases that I used a lot in India, such as introductions and common questions that I would find myself saying without even thinking first. I hope to master more tasks on this level before the semester ends.
Linguist David Harrison explained in the video that preserving languages is the biggest challenge to preserving history because languages are extremely complex systems that hold tons of information about the culture, history, traditions, and knowledge of a particular group. For example, Harrison talked about "folk taxonomy," which is when different cultures form certain vocabulary that other languages do not have based on their unique environment and needs. Groups of people in cold climates may have many words to describe different types of snow, but people in tropical regions may not have originally had any word for snow at all. These intricacies of language tell us about the situations people had to deal with, the things they were skilled at, and their histories.
Also, many historical information is stored by people through writings and literature in their language, so if the language dies, historians will not be able to interpret the texts. For instance, the Vedas are ancient Hindu scriptures written in Sanskrit that describe in detail almost every aspect of daily life in the Indus Valley Civilization. If Sanskrit had been lost, not only would that history be lost, but the origins of the Hindu religion, Indian philosophy, Indian medicine, and much more would also be lost.
On a much more personal level, Bud Lane from the article "Tribe Revives Language on Verge of Extinction" most likely lost any other speakers with which to speak his language, Siletz. Until he began the movement to revive the native language, he could no longer honor his culture and older tribe members by using the language they taught him.
"How we mean" and "How we analyze meaning" were interesting in the context of learning Hindi mostly because it shows that there are much fewer "words" we need to learn in order to be competent in a language. The chapter mentioned that Shakespeare uses over 30,000 words, but less than 20,000 lexemes. This makes learning a second language easier because, rather than needing 200 words to communicate, the learner may only need to know 100 lexemes, plus the general rules on how to transform these "root words" into other similar meanings. For instance, instead of needing to memorize walk, walking, walked, and walker in Hindi, I can just learn the root word walk and reference the grammatical rules I already know for changing sense of the word. This makes beginning a learning task seem much less daunting, but also emphasizes the importance of understanding grammar rules rather than just memorizing. In that way, a language learner can figure out how to say new phrases during on the fly rather than memorizing them beforehand.
"How the brain handles language" was also interesting for me because I am left-handed. I have always been told that this means the right side of my brain is more dominant, and therefore I'm more artistic and creative. This chapter proved that not to be the case. Rather, the chapter explains that each side of the brain is dominant at different times, depending on the task at hand. It is also interesting because it shows how fast our brains work to develop speech from the moment we think of something to the moment it comes out of our mouths. At this point, it is impossible for me to speak Hindi at that speed because I need to formulate sentences, then attempt to say them, which is more difficult than speaking English because it requires sounds that I am not used to making. I have spent numerous appointments with my peer tutor merely repeating one sound over and over again, then attempting to use that sound in just one word.
The most interesting part of the video was the diversity section, which proposed answers for the question, "Why do we need diversity?" One woman said that we need to create a curiosity about difference in everyone so that we can be more understanding about them. This question was raised many times during my program in Hyderabad. Why did we want to study abroad in India, or study abroad at all? What good would it do us as individuals, our community back home, and our Indian community? I was never quite sure what my answers were for these questions, but the Culture Shock video brought up some good points. It said that creating this diversity, both at our school in Hyderabad and when we return home, helps others realize that we are really not that different and begins a dialogue about other cultures that can resolve misunderstandings.
Another point that I identified with from the video was the advice that many students and faculty gave about joining clubs and getting involved on campus. This is something I wish I had done more of while I was in Hyderabad. I was lucky enough to have a host family and an apartment full of friendly neighbors to interact with and form genuine relationships with. However, I did not succeed in making those connections at school with many peers. I became friends with a few from class, but as the students in the video said, those were a bit superficial and were difficult to maintain once I returned home. I did form a great relationship with one professor, whom I am still in touch with, but if I had had the courage to join a club or group on campus, I could have had many more of these lasting relationships with peers. Our program directors told us about a former American student who was a great soccer player and used his skills to make friends all over campus. They said by the end of the semester, everyone on campus knew him as "the American soccer player." I wish I had used my talents or interests more to find Indian students I could relate to like he did!
Hindi is one of the farthest east of the Indo-European languages and is in the Indo-Ayrian subset. This is interesting for learning about Hindi for the purposes of going to India because, although Hindi is the national language, it is not spoken locally in the majority of the country. Most North Indian languages - including Hindi - are Indo-European, so there are at least some familiar characteristics for an American learner. However, South Indian languages are in no way related to Hindi or any other Indo-European language, so their structures and vocabulary are entirely foreign to me. I think this is necessary to know as a Hindi student because it is important to understand that not all people in India speak Hindi, and although the regional languages may seem similar, they may not be related to Hindi at all.
In reading about Indo-European languages, I found that the sounds p and k in proto-Indo-European sometimes changed in Germanic languages (such as English) to f and h. So if a word has f or h sounds in English, these may translate to p and k sounds in Hindi, which retained more phonemes from Sanskrit and P.I.E. For example, "father" in Hindi is pita, and "foot" in Hindi is pair. This is a helpful way to remember some key words such as these. More generally, it is useful to know that Hindi and English stem from the same proto language because, in learning grammatical structure, similarities become more noticeable and easier to remember.
For my Culture Presentation, I will discuss Indian music, from classical sitar, tabla, and violin to contemporary Bollywood and Tollywood music. I hope to do research on the different ragas, or types of music, that classical musicians play. I also hope to research the history of Bollywood and Tollywood so that I can trace the changes that have been made in contemporary Indian music since these industries began. I also hope to find out the importance of these two types of music in Indian culture today, and whether people prefer one type over another.
To discuss this topic thoroughly, I'll need to learn vocabulary relating to classical music:
names of instruments
words for song, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.
names of different types of songs
verbs like to play, to improvise
I will also need to learn vocabulary to describe contemporary music:
words for song, movie, dance, actor/actress, singer
names of famous singers
names of some famous songs
verbs like to sing, to dance, to perform
My first artifact was an audio recording of me reciting a common conversation that I would have with someone on the street if I were to ask how to find the Taj Mahal. The "conversation" only consisted of my half of the dialogue, but I tried to include some possible answers to my questions by repeating what a stranger might say in response. Because this was our first artifact, I also tried to include a few things that I learned in past weeks, such as a short greeting because these phrases might be necessary in this context.
I believe I reached most of my goals for Weeks 4 and 5. I learned almost all of the questions that I listed in the first section of my goals and how they could be answered by a stranger, auto driver, etc. I also learned numbers 1-10 as well as some common numbers in 5's, 10's, and 100's that could be used for money and price.
The one part that I did not learn as well as I would have liked was the second part of my goals for Weeks 4 and 5, which involved describing a place that I would like to go. I hope to add this task to a later week if I have time. I also did not practice as much as I had hoped to these past two weeks, so I have scheduled specific times in my calendar that I will use to study my vocabulary and conversation skills. Hopefully this will help me focus more on Hindi during the weeks when I feel too busy with other work.
