With regard to evaluating my first artifact, I did not realize how difficult it would be at first for me to produce a recording that I actually liked (similar to what Claire said about recording her video). At first, it seemed stressful to be able to talk about greetings and introductions with my language partner while using the correct verb conjugations, greetings, etc -- all while being taped on the Flip cam! After about three tries (yes, it took me a while), I finally had a recording that I liked. I found that as I became more unaware of the video camera, I was able to focus more on the grammar and pronounciation. However, I am still aware of my accent in pronouncing "maii" vs. "mai" ("I" vs. "in"). When I was practicing, I kept having to differentiate between the two, and when my LP and I were recording the conversation, I forgot the very slight difference. One of my most complex sentences was the one in which I responded to my LP's query about my family by saying, "My family is fine, but my grandmother is sick. But the doctor gave her medicine." I think this was a little too much of a grammatical stretch for me, since I haven't really studied the past tense of "to give" yet. If I were to improve upon this, I would use a simpler phrase that I am more confident in saying, such as "...but she has medicine." It was very helpful to write out the script. Although it was difficult not to see it during the recording, I felt that not using the script was a better measure of my ability to improvise, remember, and actually have a real conversation with my LP. One other improvement I would make is making the hand gesture while saying Namaste. I had studied this, but my LP (who is young) said that young people do not really make the gesture when talking with other young people. I just wanted to make a note to remind myself that if I interact with an older person, I would definitely make the "hands together" gesture.
Evaluation of Learning Goals for Weeks 4 and 5:
Week 4: Week 4 was really successful in terms of the activities I did. I loved listening to the Jab We Met Hindi film dialogues -- it was amazing to actually recognize words. Most of the words I could recognize were colloquial expressions about identity, family, or questions. Contextual clues helped a lot in determining what was said (like the film star's facial expressions, etc). I noticed that when I did not have the subtitles on, there were definitely many parts where I misinterpreted what was said. This usually happened when the conversation was talking about the past or about the future, since I haven't studied those yet. With regard to grammar, the grammar activities in learning about unmarked/marked masculine and feminine nouns were helpful. I did grammar drills from "Introduction to Hindi Grammar," by Dr. Usha Jain. It takes me a very long time to read the words (the exercises are all in Hindi, not transliterated), but I think it is helpful. A very helpful additional activity was the script I created for the video artifact -- it was definitely difficult and I did make a few mistakes with certain letters (forgetting to put the line on top of the "p", etc), but overall, it was definitely worthwhile.
Week 5:
I really enjoyed learning the interrogative words, but the word order when using them is somewhat tricky, and I did not account for that in my goal. Thus, I am spending a little more time than allotted to hopefully master these question words and word order. I am able to talk about myself in present progressive and imperfect, but I need to work more on using verb conjugations for others (he/she, they, we, etc). I think I will continue working on this for this week. The post-positions are not as tricky as I expected -- I am doing drills in the Intro to Hindi Grammar, and many are similar to Punjabi. The ones that are different, though, are definitely ones that I must get more familiar with. Hopefully I will review these with my LP this week!
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