Over the course of the semester, I learned a lot about myself. I had thought that keeping myself on track and following my self-set schedule would be a lot easier than it actually turned out to be. I also thought that I would have a much harder time learning from Amaia than I would learning by myself, but the opposite turned out to be true. I surprised myself to learn how much the learning process differed from other language classes that I've taken, not necessarily for the better. That said, I did actually learn a lot about the language, and I'm proud to be able to say that I even speak a little bit of Basque. Even though keeping myself on-task has been pretty hard, I've had a wonderful time learning from Amaia, about the culture and the language. I'm hoping to continue my learning through the Aurrera workbook and Memrise, and I hope that some of my favorite language learning sites like Duolingo will be able to help teach me Basque soon as well. Personally, of all of the readings that we did, I found "Figuring Foreigners Out" to be the most useful, because it helped me to understand the Basque language from a cultural perspective, and although I'm already pretty familiar with Basque culture, in made sense in comparison to that of the U.S. As for learning activities, I really liked doing the cultural presentations. It felt good for me to be able to share my culture with the other students in the class, and I found it really helpful in learning about Basque culture too, because I was inspired to research more than I normally would have. Overall, I think that this experience helped to teach me to be a better language learner in general, and now that I have more of a background in Basque, it is something that I will continue to learn and study for the rest of my life.
As far as what I've learned, I didn't accomplish nearly as much as I thought I would. I think that I might have been setting my expectations a little high, because at the time, I wasn't sure how well I would learn, or how my plans would change each week. My future goals are to be able to reach the level that I am supposed to be at in my learning plan, as well as continue to review the things that I've learned through Amaia. The sentences that I'm able to form at my current level are very basic, but my comprehension has grown exponentially, and I hope that through some more practice listening, I'll be able to improve my Basque organically as well.
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