Reflect on your experiences as a language learner. What did you enjoy? What did you dislike? Think about the FIRE model and the surveys you have just completed. What kind of learner are you? What kinds of language learning activities suit your learning style? How do you think you should expand your learning activities?
My first encounter with formal language learning was in my eighth grade French class. I had an incredible teacher who was always willing to give me additional learning materials to accelerate the pace in which I could express complex ideas. I fell in love with the fact that there were somethings that felt more authentic to express in French, that I could get closer to meaning by expanding my toolbox of languages.
Growing up neurodivergent, I found myself easily able to mimic the speech patterns of others-- I used this talent not only to help me pick up on linguistic patterns in foreign languages, but also to intentionally drop my Appalachian dialect at one point (which I now regret having done.) At the age of sixteen, I left Tennessee for a year abroad in Germany with the Department of State's CBYX program. This marked my first immersive language learning experience, and I arrived to the country with no prior German knowledge. Although it was undeniably one of the hardest years of my life, I learned a lot about my language-learning styles in that program and have remained at a C1 level of working proficiency. When brainstorming what was helpful, I realized that:
- Forcing myself to express and circumlocute ideas in my target language was both exhausting and crucial to building speaking skills. Even when I made little to no sense or embarrassing mistakes, it started a dialog with whomever I was speaking with through which I learned a more efficient way to express something in the future.
- Passively listening to the target language led me to a gradual building of comprehension and vocabulary. It took me roughly two to three months to be able to understand most things and about four months to be able to respond with more effectiveness.
- Although mimicking the language acquisition patterns of children might have contributed to my existential woes of no longer being able to express complex thoughts and emotions, it helped me in the long run to think and speak more intuitively in German.
After returning from Germany, I felt empowered by my ability to express myself in a new way and connect myself with a greater variety of people. I took an introductory Chinese class, but found that the emphasis on direct translation limited my ability to understand the language from a Chinese perspective. I then did a short stint of time in Nepal in which I was able to learn much more in much less time by focusing on conversation. This makes sense considering my Learning Style and Multiple Intelligences results-- I'm a tactile learner, and my greatest intelligences are Social and Language. Conversation to me is experiential, and the most important component of language learning, personally.
Currently, I'm taking a 300 level Spanish class and beginning my studies of Bahasa Indonesia. For both languages, I want to try speaking as much as possible while placing more of an emphasis on grammar than I have in the past. As part of my learning for this semester, I'd like to challenge myself to write complex reflections with the help of external resources in order to quickly build a sense of grammar concepts.
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