The following activities I have been doing in order to practice and finally improve my Hindi skills:
Week 1 (Jan, 27-Feb2):
At the first meeting with my tutor Niyati we spoke about the main feelings and emotions. It was interesting for me to see the parallels to the many bollywood movies I had watched. Especially, I could relate to the songs and memorize the emotions vocabs well beause I can precisely picture the scenes where feelings like sadness or happiness is expressed. I watched some bollywood songs among which the most memorable for me was 'kabhi khushi, kabhi gam'-
'sometimes happyness, sometimes sadness'. Besides I revised all the other emotions vocabs (happy, sad, smile, suprised, angry, etc.)
Week 2 (Feb 3- Feb 7):
In the second week I did some analytical activities. To be more specific, I watched- I know, again- some bollywood songs and tried to translate the lyrics and understand how the song fits the movie. At that time I noticed that certain vocabs were used more often than others. They mostly were about love stories and feelings. So this activity was a good revision of the first week of studies.
Week 3 (Feb 10- 16):
Unfortunately, I had no meeting with the tutor this week as we experienced difficulties finding a date. However, I focused on verbs and phrases used for smalltalk.
Week 4 (Feb 17- 23):
At my meeting with the tutor we did grammar, namely conjugation of main verbs in present and past. Those include: t be, to say, to take, to walk, to live etc.) Surprisngly, in Hindi there is no verb 'to have'. Instead, 'to be' is used in the third case. This is nothing new to me as the same construction exists in Latin (Dativus possesivus).
During the rest of the week, I memorized these verbs and tried to form simple, but proper sentences.
The goals of this week were to memorize and understand the conjugation of verbs in present and past. I practiced the conjugation of common verbs and paid attention to the suffixes. I can say, that I now know how to conjugate verbs, both in present and past, which is essential to build sentences.
Week 5 (Feb 24- March 2):
At the meeting with the tutor we spoke about the human body and the names of the bodyparts. Later in the week I revised what I have learned.
This week was more relaxed than the one before. I just wanted to name and be able to address the parts of the human body. For example, I wanted to know how to say, "Give me your hand." or "Close your eyes.". Also, those words are important as they are often used in Bollywood songs. Niyati showed me the different parts of the body by painting them down on the blackboard. Later, named them, which worked pretty well.
Week 6 (March 3- March 9):
I did not meet with my tutor since the day we had our meeting on, classes were cancelled. Nevertheless, I focused on how to describe a typical day in my life. (getting up at 7am, having breakfast, going to classes, studying, lunch etc.)
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