I do not think I had realistic expectations of what I could accomplish through self-directed Hebrew at the beginning, and it took some time and some readjustment of goals to create a lesson plan that was achievable. My prior experiences in language classes led me to believe that I would be able to master more words, tenses, and overall grammar than I ended up being able to. I think that not having a teacher leading the pace and setting the agenda made it a lot more challenging. After working with Dr. Scinarello to adjust my lesson plan though, I can honestly say that I think I met a lot of my goals. I have learned the vocabulary for several different content areas including family and weather. While these words I have not memorized, I can recognize them in books and if someone were to say them. I know how to say greetings and question words orally. I have also become a much more efficient reader and can recognize words rather quickly after being exposed to them.
I think the biggest challenge I encountered was motivating myself. It was hard to set aside time each day to practice Hebrew especially amidst the other time commitments of senior year. It was also challenging to coordinate schedules with Emily and find regular times when we could all meet.
What I liked most about the self-directed program was being able to set my own pace and trying to adapt the content so that it was meaningful for me. I think this was unique from other language classes where teachers dictate what vocabulary you are going to learn and often it seems useless. In this class, we were able to choose what types of vocabulary we wanted to learn and what would be beneficial for our own studies of Hebrew.
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