The University of Malta textbook has continued to be helpful for guiding my language sessions with Karen. Last semester, I identified pronunciation and speaking as a challenge that I wanted to focus more effort on. At the beginning of the semester, I noticed this too. After continuously reading words and sentences out loud with Karen, though, my skill is improving. As a result of being called out on my mistakes, I am more motivated not to make them again. Additionally, repetition and applying the pronunciation of similar words facilitate my progress. During weeks 7 and 8, Karen and I worked on chapters in the Maltese textbook together. These chapters contained 1 page each of new vocabulary for me to memorize, a new grammatical topic, sentence examples, and explanations. We read through the vocabulary together and she quizzed me on the meanings and corrected my speech. Additionally, she provided her personal insight into how traditional grammar differs from Maltese in practice.
At the end of the more intermediate chapters, there are practice exercises. I really enjoyed the exercise for translating basic sentences from Maltese to English. The vocabulary and grammar come from previous chapters in the textbook, so it reinforces what I have learned. I have previously mentioned that I wanted to begin enhancing my reading abilities so these exercises helped me to do so. Translating the sentence grammar in the correct order was somewhat difficult for me because word placement differs from English. I was surprised to find, though, that I could largely interpret the meaning and most of the vocabulary words.
In order to keep practicing these skills during the week, Karen and I agreed that I would complete the English to Maltese sentence translations by myself. This was significantly harder because it required correct spelling and careful attention to syntax. Writing abilities is likely a good area of improvement for the future. Continuing to practice translating very basic sentences from English to Maltese, then checking my answers, would be a great way to do so.
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