Overall Reflection on Meetings with Language Partner

[Kaitlin Markoja]

Working with my language partner Prayas has been the most rewarding and effective component of my language learning this semester.  During many of our meetings, we used my Hindi notebook from India and did grammar drills.  This helped me to become more confident in using the different tenses in Hindi.  Each day, we focused on a particular grammatical area.  For example, we did drills using past, simple past, habitual past, future, and present tenses separately.  In addition, we practiced using other sentence constructions such as, “I can” or “I want to” statements.  We also worked on my vocabulary and pronunciation skills.  More recently, we have switched to just engaging in conversation.  This is much more realistic, way harder, but a lot more fun as well.  We have talked about topics including daily routine, things I did in India, what life is like in Nepal because Prayas is from there, and plans for the days ahead.  I like the conversation learning because it is a challenge for me to see how much of what Prayas says that I can understand, and an additional challenge to develop an appropriate response.  From listening ot Prayas speak, I have picked up on some new vocabulary I wouldn’t necessarily have thought to look up directly.  I’ve found that I have a habit of sticking with just one tense when conversing.  It is important that I listen closely for changes in tense in conversation.  Overall, meetings with Prayas have been great.  He has been an awesome resource throughout the semester for my language learning.