I made a lot more progress in Slovak than expected especially when comparing my current language experience to my past experiences with Spanish and Danish. When I started learning Spanish, I was nine years old and a lot less familiar with any language, even English. I did not have a great grasp on the ideas of cognates, grammar, or speaking around unfamiliar topics. The first two years of Spanish were especially slow in introducing content as I only learned basic vocabulary and studied the present tense over and over. There was very little emphasis on proper pronunciation or practicing conversations and a lot of focus on memorization and workbook activities. When learning Danish during my junior year of college, I had the advantage of understanding linguistics and English at a fairly competent level. I knew the importance of identifying cognates, had experience with learning complex Spanish and English grammar, and understood the benefits of circumlocution. However, my Danish language professor fell back on a lot of traditional, systematic teaching methods. As previously mentioned in my past language learning posts, my Danish language learning experience mirrored the teaching methods of an early 20th century schoolhouse. My professor typically spent the hour and a half instructing us to read long paragraphs aloud in unison and focused on activities that felt more like formulas than natural language production.
With my Slovak language experience, I absorbed so much more knowledge in a more meaningful and natural way. Adriana taught me three different declension cases (nominative, accusative, and instrumental), two different tenses (present tense and preterit), how to tell time, and numerous categories of vocabulary (travel, food, city living, etc.). Despite only learning Slovak for three(ish) months, I gained so much more knowledge and confidence than I expected. Though I still struggle with pronunciation, I really feel more confident in my Slovak skills. When listening or watching Slovak media, I can better pick out familiar words and understand the general meaning of the video or podcast.
However, this semester, my proudest accomplishment is actually dedicating myself to a lingual and cultural tradition that my family completely lost as they assimilated to the United States. Though it was out of my control, I always feel great regret and sadness over the loss of my familial culture and language (both on my German and my Slovak side). Their late 19th century immigration to the United States also meant the loss of cultural and linguistic identity for their descendants. Throughout my childhood and young adulthood, I struggled with the absence of a strong cultural connection and the absence of my paternal relatives. These two losses feel like they go hand-in-hand as I lost the ability to interact with the older generations on my paternal side and lost their connection to family lore and traditions. In taking this class, I connected with a part of my ancestry and family that was previously absent from my life. In learning the language, the culture, and the cuisine, I feel slightly closer to this lost ancestry and my lost paternal connection. My connection to my ancestors and the older generations seems stronger and more tangible as I share a small part of their primary language, their cultural practices, their religious rituals, and food traditions.
Comments
Hi Emma! I totally agree with you in the old, traditional and banal and inefficient way of learning language in which everything is just memorization. The emphasis is in conforming everyone's learning experience and it isn't the best of everyone and months pass by without actually drawing a language and cultural connection or really even learning the language itself, but simple understanding formal, written form! But I love the way we can tailor our learning experience of language through SDLC and through our tutors and tailor it to our needs. I also feel like I learned a lot of grammar and syntactical order and morphology through the introduction of SDLC and through the class exercises and tests, I feel like I was able to stretch my knowledge of applying that to English to my target language as well!