Before Spring break, my language partner and I agreed to continue dictation practice, but we did not discuss what else we will be doing so, my language partner and I spent a little bit of time discussing our trajectory for the rest of the semester during the first week back. We agreed to do situational practice. For example, talking to the doctor about an illness. Additionally, we decided to break the household good vocabulary into rooms. Lastly, we decided to continue with learning proverbs.
Before starting the situational practice, I expected it to be really difficult and useful. I figured that it would be good practice for changing my personal form of address, and learning vocabulary. I still find it awkward sometimes addressing myself to strangers. However, when we actually started, it was too easy and each situation only took about 2-3 minutes. I realized that this wasn't the right exercise for me. After trying 2-3 practice situations, we decided that it was best to spend the time doing something else.
Other than that, we also spent some time discussing marriage values in Vietnam and comparing it to the US. This was an interesting topic for me because during Spring break I had watched a Vietnamese talk show about marriage and found that some of the things that were said didn't match my conception of Vietnam. For example, one of the ladies said (in Vietnamese) she "decided to play a game…the single mom game." I thought this was a weird thing to say, since being a single mom is hard, especially in Asia. Divorce is still largely frowned upon and blamed on the women. Being single is also considered a bad thing for women as demonstrated by the term "leftover women." Discussing the topic with my language partner was really informative and gave me a better understanding of the thinking in Vietnam.
We haven’t started the dictation practice or learning proverbs yet. I am hoping to focus on those two things for the next two weeks. Additionally, I want to spend some time talking about my final presentation topic with my language partner.
Comments
I think situational practice is a great topic. It is very important to learn terms and behaviors necessary to have conversations about different issues. It is great to hear that this was an easy task for you because it really shows the applicability of your learning. In addition to this, it is crucial to learn about the culture related to the language. It does not only help to better understand the language, but being culturally aware is an important skill to have.
I think you made a good decision to move on to different practice methods. I think that we learn and grow further if we challenge ourselves. I am currently challenging myself to read difficult Korean news articles and I can confidently say that my Korean has improved compared to when I first started meeting my language partner.