Week 1
- Alphabet/Pronunciation
- Days of the week
- Culture talk with language partner
Week 2
- Numbers
- Birthdays
- Practiced counting aloud with partner and played games with numbers. I found this to be quite helpful as it was and interactive way to learn. We also watched YouTube videos of children’s songs in Hindi.
Week 3
- Days of the week
- Greetings
- Practiced repeating phrases with partner. However, at times I found that simply repeating phrases wasn’t too helpful. Rather, it was more effective to sound out each syllable of the word and then the whole word. This way, my language partner could make sure that I was pronouncing the word correctly. Also, I found my pronunciation improved with this approach.
Week 4
- Family members
- Review from past weeks
- My language partner and I drew a family tree together. I found this to be very helpful as I am a visual learner. We also used one of the Hindi books my partner borrowed from the global studio.
Week 5
- Food
- Drinks
- How to order at a restaurant
- My language partner and I role-played as a customer and waiter. We pretended as if were at a restaurant and practiced ordering food. It was a fun, interactive way to practice the new vocab. I found this approach to very helpful. We used a Hindi vocab book from the global studio as well for this lesson.
Week 6
- Introductory phrases
- Start having simple conversations
- Review past week vocabulary
- My language partner and I started to have basic conversations with each other. We also played a game with the past vocab I have been learning. I wrote down the words that I still needed to practice. I found this to be helpful as I could go back later and review these words.
Week 7
- Body Parts
- Listened to Bollywood songs
- Worked on pronunciations of words
- This was a fun lesson. In many Bollywood songs, the lyrics describe a woman or a many using very cheesy lines. These lines often contain body parts such as, eyes, hair, lips, hands etc. So, my language partner would play a song and have me point out the words we just learned. This was a very effective approach for me.
Week 8
- Simple verb conjugations
- Practiced conversations
- Reviewed past vocab
- My partner and I used diigo this week and discovered some helpful websites that allowed me to practice Hindi phrase. I also started learning simple verb conjugations this week.
Week 9
- Statements about myself and interests
- Statements about my family
- Watched Bollywood movie with language partner. I definitely had to refer to the subtitles, but I found that I was able to recognize and understand a few words here and there. Sometimes, we would pause the movie and my partner would explain phrases to me. I also downloaded an app on my phone where I could learn Hindi vocab. It’s kind of similar to flashcards. I found the app to be very useful. Especially times where I don’t have my notes around me I can refer to the app.
Week 10
- Learned words related to dance
- Worked on pronunciations
- Pronunciations
- Since dance is one of my favorite things to do, I was interested in learning words/phrases related to dance. I also decided I wanted to do my final cultural research project on two different forms of Indian dance. Again, we used some books my partner and I borrowed from the studio.
Week 11
- Review past lessons
- Watch Hindi movie
- Discuss movie
- This week my partner and I went over past lessons that I felt I needed more practice with. We watched interactive YouTube video lessons that helped with some grammar questions I had. Reviewing past lessons was very effective. I realized that I had forgot some of the earlier words and/or lessons, so I was able to refresh my mind.
Week 12
- Talked about the weather
- Listened to Bollywood music and try to recognize words
- Had small conversations
- We used Hindi workbooks as well as attempted to try the Talk Now! Software. I found that sounding out words together was helpful. Also, when studying words I tried to make up mnemonics or refer to words I already knew to help me.
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