Learning Journal #1: Reflect on your experiences as a language learner.

[Mark Kligman]

As a language learner I have learned English, Russian Spanish. I learned English as a 5 year old, as I recall it was not very difficult since I had just moved to the US and was surrounded by an English environment, forcing me to learn English quickly so that I could fit in amongst my peers. I learned Russian as a 10 year old and had to start from scratch so that I could catch up with my Russian peers. I took an intense learning course for the duration of a year where I was learning the language everyday for multiple hours. I focused primarily on vocabulary and writing since I had already been familiar with the pronunciation because I lived in Ukraine for some time. I learned Spanish throughout my Sophomore to Senior year in high school. I took the honors course my junior year and found myself learning drastically more since I worked on various conjugations, tenses and level of vocabulary that I had to apply in my tests in order to do well. It was initially very difficult, but with dedication to the course I succeeded. I noticed that the more time I spent on learning the material and applying it in homework or quizzes, the better I got at the language. Luckily, that summer I traveled to Spain and was able to apply what I had learned throughout the academic year. It was amazing how much my language capability had changed in a year and I was very satisfied with my results. However, my Senior year I decided I would drop the honors and take an easier basic level class. Unfortunately I did not learn much that year since it was basically review of what I had perfected the year before. I also noticed that my language capability deteriorated because of the downgrade in difficulty level of the course. What I learned from all these experiences is that it is highly important to put in a good amount of work if you expect to improve quickly and that practicing the language outside the classroom is essential in improving confidence and speed of conversation.