I’ve realized that I need to be a much better planner than I am right now. That is my biggest flaw, I believe, that I don’t schedule my time well and this causes me to not do my best on everything the way I am capable of doing. I also think that I need to gain a better sense of taking my work seriously and that if I do this it will become more interesting and rewarding.
Now, for tangible topics, I do believe in the end I accomplished a little less than I had set out to, but not so little that it is disappointing. After studying the language and learning parts of it, I think setting vocabulary goals and not Grammar goals was a big mistake in terms of trying to put sentences together. I realized that learning vocabulary is not effective unless you know how to put an entire idea together, and Grammar is the way this happens. With only a knowledge of Vocabulary the speaker can sound no more intelligent than a baby who just speaks in single words; i.e. “me want”, “hot”, “yes”, etc. However learning the vocabulary is not a complete waste as it familiarizes you with the language.
I learned that learning a language is difficult, however it is not impossible. It takes a different type of studying to learn a language as opposed to being in an English or history class. Where the latter are associated with acquiring large sums of information in short periods of time through reading, learning a language is about learning small sums of information over a longer period of time, and it is through constant repetition of the information that allows it to sink in. I really started to learn this towards the end when preparing for my final evaluation. I realized that just reading over the information in our study sessions then a couple more times at home is not enough to retain information for an entire semester. I realized that the only way to learn and more importantly retain the information is to constantly go over the old information along with the new stuff you learned in order not to just replace the information you previously learned but retain that and learn new things.
It think the best learning techniques that can be used to learn the language is a combination of different things I tried throughout the semester. First, Rosetta stone is very effective. But also, there are videos on YouTube done by a group of people who just want to educate others. These videos show you how the word is written and then has people saying the word so you can hear it used in a human voice. I think watching these videos then making note cards out of the vocabulary you learned is advisable. Then, with these note cards, repetition is key. Ideally half an hour to an hour a day should be spent going through the note cards a few times. This repetition is crucial to learning.
Having the language partner and also someone else studying the language is important too. I think that just reading and knowing the words is not nearly as important as putting them in practice. So going to our weekly meetings with Maya, DC and I were able to practice Hebrew orally. Also Maya brought a unique view of Israeli culture to the meetings, because she was born and remains an Israeli citizen. She was able to greatly help us with our ideas for culture topics and also many times was able to call her parents who were fluent in Hebrew to assist us in learning the language. Talking to a native speaker of the language is important, I believe, because they bring something about the language that a book can’t. For example such things as inflections put on words that can only be guessed at by a foreign speaker learning from books.
In the other part of the class, learning about other cultures, I believe I come out of this course knowing a lot more than I used to about Israel and the way things work in that country. I think also just going over the history of language and the ways language works in the textbook is also useful information for going forward into the world. Knowing that difference in languages can influence culture and how cultures differ so much more than just through their language. I never had the opportunity to study abroad so I didn’t get to experience other cultures in the ways I would have liked, but I think this class taught me a lot about culture’s that I didn’t before know because of my lack of exposure to them.
I think overall I benefitted a lot from my taking this class. I think that the material is not what benefitted me the most, but rather the exposure to self-taught topics and the steps I need to take in order for self-motivation. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about other cultures and about language itself. I would encourage people to take this class in the future.
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