Final Reflection Paper

[Byongho Lee]

The biggest insight I have gained as a language learner is that I am extremely motivated to learn and put myself 100% in the language when I know there are no consequences. When I was first learning English, I think part of the reason why grammar was always so hard to retain was because I felt pressured to master it otherwise I would be a disappointment. With Czech, there was nothing at stake, either I learned it or I didn’t and I think I learned it better because I had many opportunities. I had the option to take advantage of those opportunities and I really enjoyed that free will. I find languages difficult to learn when I don’t have someone else involved in the process. Whether it be the language teacher, fellow students, or even just a friendly person I can chat once in a while. I think part of my lows this semester was when my language partner abroad was too busy to respond to my texts. I will continue my learning by using applications such as memrise, uchat, duolingo, etc. I just found out that Duolingo will be incorporating Czech hopefully by July 2017 so I am very excited. The readings that I found most useful were the how languages die article and why bilinguals are smart article. Both resonated with me for different reasons. The extinct language article made me realize that languages were dying everyday and with that loss comes a loss of culture. Even those Czech is not at risk, I am afraid that because it is not as big as English, Chinese, or Russian, it will eventually lose its relevance in the modern international world. As for the bilingual article, because I am semi-bilingual, I was wondering how much of my ability to switch between languages contributed to my academic and emotional strengths. My ability to see things differently and appreciate different types of approaches and styles was derived from my bilingualism. Finally, I would love to learn more about the connection between all languages. My favorite image was when you showed us the tree with all the languages and how they all tie together. I think the symbolism behind it is is beautiful and I would to learn more about the origins of languages and maybe even how each language interprets others and words and the new identities being created when different languages interact. Because I am Korean, but have largely American upbringing, and have a keen interest for Czech culture, I see a new type of self-identity forming in our generation. People are no longer as polarised as they once were and due to technology and transportation, we are all closely linked than ever.