Reflect on your learning experiences this semester. (a) What insights have you gained about yourself as a language learner and cultural explorer? What did you find difficult? What have you enjoyed? How will you continue your learning? (b) Which readings and learning activities did you find most useful? What
I’ve prided myself for being a language learner and cultural explorer for most of my academic career. Still, I continue to learn new things about myself every semester. After my semester’s pursuit of Wolof, I know for sure that I have very high expectations for myself. I’m constantly reaching to do my best but biting off more than I can handle. Crafting my own course –deciding the skills necessary to accomplish a goal and following through with the agenda– is something I want to carry with me (and use) in the future. My only problem was not narrowing down my agenda to a couple essential tasks. I can now say that I understand the struggle that professors go through when crafting a syllabus and the corresponding course. There are just so many interesting topics and inquiries that lead me to a plethora of potential course materials. Due to this excitement, I put a lot on myself and eventually got overwhelmed. I enjoyed being able to follow my own agenda and come out on the other side with some of the knowledge that I aimed for. The difficulty here, though, was overcommitting.
My intense curiosity is the foundation for another difficulty I’ve encountered this semester –staying on my agenda track. During the sessions with my language partner and in my own research, I easily get sidetracked due to my inquiries. The material in front of me usually leads to other questions that could perhaps get me off-topic and onto a different road of material. You may have witnessed this in SDLC 105 (: I do think my curiosity and critical thinking skills have propelled my academic career in many ways, I must find the balance. In the future, I’ll continue to allow my inquisitive nature to lurk, but I’ll proactively steer the conversation thread back to the original agenda.
Related to this critical thinking and curiosity piece, I tend to connect ideas and concepts. A couple weeks ago I took the Clifton Strengths assessment to narrow my top five strengths. Two of them were Ideation and Connectedness. These themes became essential for me during SDLC 105 and SDLC 110 1) when I sought to understand and grapple with Senegalese culture and 2) when I sought to connect ideas from SCLC 105 to SDLC 110. The main thing that I enjoyed about SDLC 105 was learning about everyone’s target cultures. If we had a world map and pinned everyone’s corresponding locations, we’d find that everyone had their own nooks and crannies of the world to study. I found lots of connections to Senegalese culture by listening to my peers as they discovered ideals, morals, and traditions reflected in their target cultures.
One of my favorite readings/activities from SDLC 105 the discussion of Hofstede cultural dimensions. I wish we could’ve delved in other philosophical thought to have a more holistic view of this study, but I found in very useful grapple with Senegalese culture using the various dimensions. This discussion also hit on a very important point: cultures are never “this or that”. It’s much more complicated than the simplicity that most outsiders project onto other cultures and people. The reading challenged me to find the balance between learning more about the overarching culture but also realizing that there will be diversity. Overall, this unconventional course has stimulated my thinking in ways that I hadn’t been exposed to before. Thank you for this opportunity!
Comments
You raise a lot of excellent points here, Johnnette. The cultural readings in the course were popularly received by most of the class, so it will likely play a bigger in the course as the SDLAP develops. How did you relate the Hofstede dimensions to Senegalese culture? Since you state that culture is neither "this or that", do you think the Hofstede qualities accurately represent what you have encountered thus far? If not, how are the ascriptions problematic?