Initially, I believed participating in a self-directed language course would not be difficult considering I had always done very well in all of my other language courses. However, after making my own learning plan and realizing how challenging it would be be to reach those goals instructing myself. I had assumed that I was a very visual learner from the start of the course and used that throughout my practices to my advantage; in learning the entirely new alphabet that Farsi required. I came to realize very soon that the visual aspects of learning would only bring me so far in my learning journey and I would not produce as successful results as I had in my other language classes. Throughout the semester I learned more and more of what it would take for me stay on track stably as a Farsi self-directed language learner.
In my learning journey I basically utilized repetition, mainly in writing, as my self-directed activities. This taught me all of the Farsi alphabet, Farsi numbers, days of the week, family members, basic introductory conversations as well as simple conversation, and a handful of verbs to use in basic conversation. I learned also through this method better pronunciation of these words. It was clear from the beginning that Farsi pronunciation is very distinct and also difficult for non-native speakers. There were new sounds to produce which meant new ways to form these sounds with the mouth that I had had never had to form before. Through repetition, however, I would practice learning the alphabet, improve my handwriting, and also improve my pronunciation by repeating the word aloud. This was very helpful and I could always receive help from my language partner if my pronunciation was off. Also, within my learning journey my language partner suggested dialogues, between her and myself or with my roommate Laila, who is also taking Farsi. The dialogues were a tremendous help as well. As we practiced each dialogue thinking in Farsi (in only a little) became a little more easier as we had to recognize words to respond and know what should come next in a basic conversation. It was also worth while to see the progress we made through speaking in dialogues.
The most worrying challenge in self-direction would have to be time commitment. If I didn’t make sure that I practiced outside of the meetings with my self-directed language partner I would easily be able to make it up in the meetings of course, however, it would always result in us not moving forward as much as we should be able to because of the review. It was also difficult, and still is, to adapt to the grammatical structure of Farsi. To begin with Farsi is written completely backwards that was confusing enough for me when starting out. As we began to make sentences later on I noticed that I could not make sense of how the verbs were placed in relationship to the subject and other sentence particles. That definitely took a while to semi-understand. As I had mentioned before pronunciation is very different and unless I could actually here and mimic I would end up not pronouncing something correctly and prevent myself from being understood which was always frustrating.
The self-direction in itself I found difficult as well. I have always done very well in instructor taught language courses but having to formulate my own learning plan for Farsi was difficult because it was hard to know what I should know in one semester. It was also difficult for me to utilize the resources found at the Global Studio being that I did not have a lot of free time this semester. For new self-directed learners I would recommend setting a learning plan that is realistic and appropriate for their current academic situation. I would also recommend using the Global Studio as your number one source and not just your assigned language partner. I would improve drastically if I had used it more because I was not very creative on my own in figuring out things I should learn or broadening the range of what I new, I mainly depended on my language partner for the creativity. I enjoyed the 105 course and discussing with other self-directed learners what we enjoyed and what we found to be complications in instructing ourselves. Knowing that we all were learning different languages was also interesting but the languages themselves never entered the classroom and I believe it would really make a difference to have more individual language interaction. Overall, the class provided good support in enforcing common knowledge for understanding a different language in all it’s aspects, in types of people, culture, and geographical differences.
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