Language Learning Experiences

[Brian Mahoney]

The only real experience I have had in learning a language formally is with Spanish. Starting in seventh grade I took four years of Spanish before stopping after my sophomore year of high school. I was exempted from the language requirement at UR so I haven't taken any language courses here before now. At the time I was grateful that I didn't have to take a language, but I've since changed my mind and am now looking forward to the opportunity to learn a new language. I wasn't excellent at Spanish, but in general I was fairly successful in learning the language. Despite how long it has been since I've taken any Spanish, I have found that I have retained substantially more of what I learned than I would have expected.In general, I would say that I fall mostly within the insightful category of the FIRE model. I am much more able to learn and retain knowledge when I can apply some sort of rational system that it fits into. I think this is one of the reasons that I was relatively successful in Spanish. There are so many similarities and connections between English and Spanish that I had an easy time making connections between the two and fitting what I learned into an analogous framework. In order for me to learn a new language, therefore, one of the most important things for me to do is to get a good understanding of its grammar. I am much less successful when it comes to memorization and strict recollection then in other areas. I find that I lose almost all motivation when dealing with something that has to be approached through memorization. Because of this, I think activities such as reading the language is the best way for me to learn. My vocabulary will grow faster through exposure to new words through some sort of medium than by simply memorizing lists of words. It will also be important for me to listen to the language a lot, as I have found that oral comprehension is the area of language learning that I typically struggle the most with.