Luke Orris Reflection #1

Luke Orris

SDLC 105

Reflection Paper #1

I have previously learned three languages in class and had experiences in a few others at work and while traveling. I took many years of Latin and French growing up and attended a school which was nominally bilingual (with French) during the first years of my life. I began Latin in 3rd grade and continued it to 8th, somehow using only one short textbook for all these years. I began Spanish in 7th grade and through studying abroad and classes in high school and university I have obtained a solid conversational level that probably hovers around the borderline of B1/B2. As a kid I spoke Bahasa with my godmother, who raised me for many years while my parents worked constantly, and I learned maybe 200-300 words of Bulgarian while working in Alaska with several J1 workers. Across my time learning these languages it is clear to me that the manner in which I learned them and my prior interests greatly affected my ability to make gains. 

Connecting language to my interests has been key. History has always been something that I am fascinated by and has offered a lot of material for my learning. During my gap year in 2022, I traveled a lot around North Africa and parts of the Near East. At the Roman sites I visited I could still read a fair amount of the columns and grave markers because I still had some important historical words memorized. Any conversational Latin had long gone but words relating to career accomplishments, conflicts, religion and similar topics remained. 

In Mexico I also focused my learning around history and politics. I found that just having conversations helped me learn the fastest and talking about these topics was a great way to have long interesting talks. Although I came to Mexico with the purpose of learning Spanish, I left with a lot of knowledge about the Revolution, socialism in Mexico, indigenous identity and the legacy of the Spanish conquest.

During my time learning French (and Spanish until university) the memorization and focus upon grammar took all of the novelty out of learning language. I have always been good at memorizing conjugations and implementing them when I use them and class became boring review rather than an exciting learning experience. I hope to avoid this in all of my future language acquisitions. 

I plan to incorporate a lot of conversation into my Portuguese classes. At this point of my Portuguese journey my ability to communicate is greatly restricted by my lack of basic vocabulary, but as the semester goes on I hope to increasingly have academic conversations with my language partner. As the tests I took affirmed, I am primarily a visual and auditory learner so zoom lessons can be quite helpful for me. Although I expect to begin with the basics, I know my background in Spanish will aid me considerably in getting to a conversational level in a short time (even if I am mixing a lot of Spanish into my speech). I also plan to buy some basic books on the history of Portugal’s empire to begin learning more about the history and culture at the height of Portugal’s power. From there I can begin to look at the evolution and differences between various Portuguese-speaking regions like Mozambique, Brazil, Timor, and Portugal itself.

I am taking LAIS 390 concurrently with this SDLC, so I am hoping to gain an accelerated introduction to the Portuguese language, so that I might have a more authentic and interesting experience during my study abroad in either Brazil or Portugal. My language partner will give me opportunities to use the Portuguese that I learn in my class and my studying outside of this will allow me to pick up greater vocabulary. My goal by the end of the semester is to have reached a solid A2 foundation in the language.

E-mail me when people leave their comments –

You need to be a member of The SDLAP Ning to add comments!

Join The SDLAP Ning

Blog Topics by Tags

Monthly Archives