When I first began to study Farsi at the beginning of the semester, I was unsure of how successful I would be in learning the language. Most of my language instruction has been through formal classes or by living in a country where I was forced to use the language to communicate. Neither would be true with my study of Farsi and I worried that I would not get as much out of the language as a result. When we had to make goals for our first week, I made mine much too ambitious. I had always heard that Farsi and Arabic were extremely similar and since I had taken Arabic I thought Farsi would come easy. I was mistaken. While the alphabet is similar there were new letters for me to learn and I still had trouble pronouncing some of the sounds from Arabic that were in Farsi too, like the ain and ghain. Even after a semester, my pronunciation of these sounds is still shaky. The first several weeks were trial and error, because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to learn, how much I could actually learn and what was the best way for me to learn.I think that for the most part I was overzealous in my goals each week, which allowed me to learn some things extremely well and others not as much. I was able to master all of my long term/semester goals of being able to introduce myself, say goodbye, communicate basic information, describe objects and order food. I also learned other things such as days of the week, telling time, some articles of clothing, household objects and classes. However, there were other pieces of information that I cannot communicate as clearly as I would have liked, such as weather and directions. There was so much information I wanted to learn because I was enthusiastic about learning Farsi. About halfway through the semester, I came to realize that I would learn more by learning less and learning the things I did learn extremely well so that they would stick with me from week to week. This worked well for me along with periodically reviewing the vocabulary from past weeks. Though I might not have learned as much as I would have wanted, I feel that I was more realistic in my learning approach and by learning less vocabulary I was able to spend more time making sure that I knew well the vocabulary I did learn.Part of learning Farsi was also figuring out the best ways for me to learn the language. At first I worked with a variety of materials trying to figure out which I liked best including, Rosetta Stone, BIKI, and several Farsi textbooks. I soon realized that Rosetta Stone was not helpful for me because when it would tell me words I wasn’t always sure of the meanings. Also, it was difficult for me to hear the word, write it down so that I could remember it and then do the project asked by the program. I also found that some textbooks were more helpful than others and decided to use the “Teach Yourself Modern Persian” book as well as a traveler’s Farsi phrasebook. The phrasebook was extremely helpful because it had a comprehensive dictionary in the back for many of the basic phrases that I wanted. It also gave clear simple explanations of grammar, which was much more helpful than the other books. I also used a variety of websites on the Diigo in addition to watching some movies.The grammar was always difficult for me to learn especially because of the way the sentence was structured with the verb coming at the end. However, after lots of studying and repetition I feel much more comfortable with the grammar. In order to do this, I had to take basic linguistic principles like language families and universals and understand how Farsi fit into or did not fit into those principles. I had to learn how to make a definite and indefinite object, how to conjugate verbs in several tenses, and how to form more complex sentences than just subject, object, verb, with adjectives and multiple subjects and verbs. For me, learning the grammar was interesting because it truly showed me how different the language was from Arabic in terms of structure and not just vocabulary. However, I feel that I was able to master many of the specifics of Farsi.I began learning through writing down lists of vocabulary and then transferring them to flash cards so that I could study. I also made a sort of cheat sheet of basic Farsi phrases and grammar that I could bring with me and anytime I couldn’t remember something or was confused about the way a sentenced was structured, I could look at it. This method of learning coupled with bi-weekly language sessions really helped me achieve my long-term goals. At first when I would be asked questions in drill in Farsi, I would get nervous and freeze up. By the end of the semester I was much more comfortable in answering questions and actually liked speaking in front of the class. It was great to be able to see the change from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester in terms of speaking and also in terms of how much I had learned.The other part about this program that I enjoyed was the fact that I was able to learn so much about another culture, and a culture that because of politics has more or less been closed off to Americans. Through my own readings, conversations with Mona and movies on the Iranian Revolution, the status of women and divorce in Iran, I was able to learn more about Iranian culture. It was interesting to see how Iranian culture was similar to Arab culture in some respects, but also had its own nuances. For example, Mona explained to us how it was common for people’s middle names to come from old Persian heroes’ names. I also really enjoyed learning more about the culture through my own cultural project as well as others. Through them I was able to learn more about certain movements within Iran, typical Iranian food, music and the importance of poetry. My cultural project on Hafiz allowed me to understand why he is such a prominent and beloved poet and how he has affected Iranian culture up until the present day. My favorite part was learning how people used Hafez as a fortuneteller and that there were websites you could go to, to have it done.Looking back on what I have accomplished over this past semester, I am proud of myself. I was not sure how I would fare in a self-directed language course, but I think that fared extremely well. It was nice having the freedom to decide what I wanted to learn, how I would learn it and when I would learn it. From January until now, I believe that I developed my skills as an autonomous learner and was able to draw on past language learning abilities to help me study and learn Farsi. Through this process I was able to learn what worked well for me and what did not in addition to learning about Iranian culture. For me this has been a positive course because it taught me a lot about another language and culture and how I learn best.
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