Blogs

(a) an evaluation of your First Artifact conversation, and (b) an assessment of how well you met your learning goals for weeks 4 and 5.

I post my first artifact on Ning including pictures of my notes, audio records and texts .The major contents of my first artifact are self-introduction, greetings, and farewells. In my introduction part, I talked about my name, age, nationality, school, current grades.

I finished my learning goals pretty good. I practiced with my language for several time. I can speak sentences accurately and display cultural appropriateness. I checked with my language partner about the formality in Korean when I practiced. So my final artifact conversations reflects appropriate Korean conversation's courtesy. However, I still have strong accents when I speak Korean. To improve it, I will keep repeating sentences from Korean dramas.

Here is my third Hindi artifact!  Since I had already described my family in Artifact #2, I decided to instead describe a photo I took with my friend while in India at the Golden Temple.  I utilized present tense, past tense, present progressive, post-positions (in front of, in, of, but, but still, on, etc), colors, and vocabulary related to sightseeing and the weather.  My Hindi description is below the photo, and the English translation is below the description in Hindi. 

Please note: Another way to write "Golden Temple" in Hindi is to utilize "half-consonant" sounds, so the phrase would be गोल्डन टेम्पल.  Just wanted to make sure both ways were included in my artifact! : )

Since this is towards the end of the semester, it is really amazing for me to look back at the past few months and think about how at the beginning of the semester, I had no knowledge of the Hindi alphabet or script at all!

Here is the photo I am describing:

Description in Hindi:

 English translation:

"Amritsar and the Golden Temple"

      In this photo, my friend Terren and I are in front of the Golden Temple.  It is a religious building that is in the city of Amritsar.  The Golden Temple is very old (ancient) but still it is very beautiful.  When we were there, the weather was really hot.  However, in the mornings, the weather is really nice.

    In this photo, Terren and I are wearing salwar kameez (a type of Indian dress).  The color of my salwar kameez was blue and white and the color of Terren's salwar kameez was purple.  The color of Terren's scarf (dupatta) was black.

    In the Golden Temple, we ate langar (where everyone eats together - communally - as equals...**a cultural experience that is difficult to translate into English).  On weekends/holidays, many people come to the Golden Temple (there are a lot of crowds). 

    In the city of Amritsar, we did some shopping.  We bought Punjabi shoes!  Punjabi shoes are beautiful but they cause pain in the feet.  The colors of my Punjabi shoes were red and black. 

   Seeing the Golden Temple was a lot of fun for both Terren and me!

Hindi Artifact #4: Document a learning task that you have completed that meets a personal goal.

For my fourth Hindi artifact, I chose to make a VoiceThread that demonstrated the different parts of the body.  I had never made a VoiceThread before for an artifact, so I really wanted to learn how to utilize VoiceThread.  It was extremely helpful in providing the structure for me to record in Hindi the names of the different body parts.    I learned the words for:

(Parts of the body) - शरीर के अंग

1.  Head - सिर

2.  Hair - बाल

3.  Eye - आंख

4.  Ear - कान

5.  Mouth - मुंह

6.  Tooth (teeth) --दांत

7.  Arm -बांह

8.  Hand - हाथ

9.  Elbow -कोहनी

10.  Fingers - उंगलियों

11.  Belly - पेट

12.  Back -पीठ

13.  Leg - टांग

14.  Foot - पैर

I also learned vocabulary relating to diseases, but I included most of them in the post about my cultural presentation (caste and health in India).

Here is Hindi Artifact #4 below: (Please make sure your volume is turned up)

(link in case you do not see the artifact below: Link to Hindi Artifact #4)

Hello!

My second artifact is in 2 parts.  The first part is a videotaped conversation between me and my language partner.  I am asking her questions about her identity, hobbies, family, and background.  She is, in return, asking me questions about myself/my family as well.  Before our conversation, I came up with ideas for questions (based on what I have learned from "Teach Yourself Hindi" and "A Door into Hindi") to ask someone about their life (hobbies, favorite food, etc), and I scanned the page in.

The second part of my artifact is a written description of myself and my family  members, including their hobbies, favorite food, etc.  I also recorded a similar description to this in the attached file.

The audio link: Hindi Artifact 2, Part 2 -- Describing Others

The text: (says Description of My Family at the top)

Here is my first Hindi artifact!  It is a video of my language partner and I having a formal introduction/greeting conversation, and then an informal introductory conversation.  I also wrote out most of what we said in Hindi, which you will see in the pictures of the written out dialogue.  We did not refer to the written out dialogue while recording the video, so I made a few mistakes that I corrected while speaking.

:)