I would say that things are going as well as they could be with my language learning. This semester has proven to be difficult for me mentally and emotionally. The whole was to meet with Sara every week, but on average I have met with her biweekly. I will take it! I think that I have learned a lot about myself, Moroccan culture, Sara, and language acquisition in the process. I plan to meet with her at least two more times, maybe three. She is moving to Turkey for a year so her availability may change.
I think that my third language acquisition on top of keeping up with my second language has changed the most throughout the semester. Early on it felt much easier for me to speak French because I was straight out of France and my Spanish skills were little to none. Now when I speak with Sara, I have to warm up a little bit more. Around halfway into our 30 minute lesson I start to "get it back" (the best way I can describe it). Now that Spanish is on top of my brain, I have to juggle pronouncing words differently. Sometimes I trip up and pronounce all of the letters of a French word when I am not supposed to. This was something I never used to do before learning Spanish. With that being said, not much has changed in my language learning plan, but more so what it takes to learn two languages at the same time.
Something that has started to change in my conversations with Sara is flipping the narrative. Now I am starting to ask her more questions about herself and her life in Morocco. Readings in class have inspired me to ask her more questions to enhance the experience of intercultural communication. We show each other lots of pictures of things that we enjoy, whether in the US or Morocco. I would say that we are good friends now and know quite a bit about each other. Sara was originally asking me all the questions throughout September and October, but in November our conversations have shifted towards me asking her questions. I like the shift. It's also very good practice for me to form questions based around another culture and using the write terminology to do so.
For me I think that I could continue expanding my conversations with French speakers beyond Sara in the future. Next semester I intend to do a C-LAC with Dr. Kapanga because I am taking the Francophone novel class for my Luso-Brazilian studies minor. I look forward to expanding my communicative competence with him next semester, also considering that he is from a different African Francophone country. I'm excited to see how my French evolves next to my intermediate Spanish!
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