Over the course of the semester I have learned a lot about myself as a language learner. First off, I learned the importance of having regular practice. Without regular practice, I could clearly see my decline in what I knew in Portuguese. I also learned that when learning a language there are multiple elements. There is vocabulary, culture, and grammar. Each play a crucial role when trying to learn a language. By knowing vocabulary, you have the tools to say what you want to say. But you can’t put those tools to use without knowing grammar, as grammar helps you to put together sentence structure. Finally, there is culture, which helps you to understand under what context a phrase or word should be said. Without a good understanding of culture, I feel that knowing a grammar and vocabulary are only knowing the language at a surface level. I learned that each language has a culture of its own and its the mesh of the culture and language that makes each language unique. As cultural explorer, I found that being immersed culture helps to you to understand the culture a lot more. Although I was not able to be in Brazil I immersed myself by taking a class on Capoeira. By taking Capoeira I learned a lot about singing in Portuguese, Brazilian customs, and Afro-Brazilian history. While going through the language learning process I found grammar incredibly difficult. I thought that learning vocabulary relatively easy as there are many ways to remember words, and their association, but without a textbook, or an instructor I found it almost impossible to learn sentence structure, or sentence forming. I also found learning tenses and conjugations difficult without a textbook informing me about strict guidelines on when and where to conjugate. While learning Portuguese I enjoyed applying it to what I enjoy, which is soccer. I particularly enjoyed learning slang phrases about soccer in Portuguese, as in the language rather than saying what happened, commentators often like to use analogies or short phrases that literally translate to something else, but are used for certain actions in soccer. I will continue learning Portuguese by continuing to better myself in soccer terms in Portuguese. I also have a friend who is currently on a mission in Brazil. When he returns in a year I hope to be able to practice my Portuguese with him.
The cultural presentations helped learn about knew perspectives of other cultures. For example, I learned a lot about the high-pressure society of Korea. By learning about, how much work, and stress South Koreans must endure to get into college and get an unpaid internship, truly made me feel quite fortunate. The presentations also made me really realize how different each culture is. For example, having studied Portuguese culture the difference between the cultures in Portugal and Brazil, is very different than the difference between cultures in North and South Korea. The most obvious difference is that North and South Korea are hostile, while Brazil, and Portugal are not, but there are also other differences. For example, North Korea and South Korea now have different languages as North Korea, as adopted a more traditional version of Korean with integration of Russian, whereas South Korea has a more modern version of Korean. This is different than Brazil and Portugal as aside from a few minor slang terms the two have relatively the same language.
Of the readings, and activities I found the article about how people who are bilingual are smarter very interesting, as I am bilingual in English and Mandarin. The explanation of an executive function was quite interesting, and made me try and think of the process of how I think when I respond to things in Mandarin. I also found the article about how languages die quite unique. I had no idea that so many languages were dying. At the same time, I found it very interesting that to try and preserve a language linguists are creating dictionaries. I have never thought of a dictionary as an entire language. In terms of activities I really enjoyed the presentation where we had to teach the class a little bit of what we had learned. I really enjoyed not only being able to show other what I have been learning all semester, but also seeing how others have progressed throughout the semester.
I would like to learn more about sentence structure in Portuguese. More specifically how to formulate sentences and conjugate verbs. When conjugating verbs I would also like to know how to conjugate in to multiple tenses.
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