Reflection Paper 1

[Kevin Kim]

From my early high school years, I was always involved in a language class. During high school, I did not have many options for foreign languages and decided to take on Spanish. In the beginning levels of Spanish, it was very enjoyable because the course was just to give students an idea of Spanish/Latin-American culture. A lot of time was invested in learning about the culture through movies, food, and music. This phase of learning was very enjoyable because I am more of a visual/tactile learner. I even found learning the basics of the Spanish language enjoyable because it was well mixed in with the other activities. However, as the Spanish level progressed, things got more and more complex. And with it, things like grammar, syntax, and other detail-oriented learning began to stress me out. In my junior year of high school, I was not fond of Spanish at all. I had the option of going into a more advanced course next year, but I opted out of another year of Spanish because I was simply burned out.
Looking back on my experience with Spanish, I would like to have taken a different approach. My first year taking introductory level Spanish was enjoyable because the learning process was not only worksheets, drills, and exams but filled with other activities. These activities were not pointless but were well mixed in with learning goals. I genuinely enjoyed my leaning experience when I was immersed in the culture. This was done with a variety of cultural music, foods, and other activities that supplemented the language portion of the learning goals. In higher level Spanish courses, most of the days were spent taking notes from lectures and doing drills. This made it really hard to be enthusiastic about learning on most days. All the material was simply on paper and later tested verbally or with pen and paper. This put a lot of pressure on performance and did not make learning fun.
Another experience I had with learning a new language was with English. English was not my first language since I was born in Korea. I moved to the United States with my family when I was only seven years old. I took English lessons in Korea, but they were not at all practical when speaking English in real life. When I first got to the United States, I was very lost in elementary school. I did not know any English and could not communicate with anyone. I remember this process being so stressful that could not make it to school the next day because I became sick. However, as the years passed, I learned English the fastest out of all my family members. This was primarily due to my habit of watching a lot of television as a child. I learned a lot of English from watching TV because I enjoyed watching all the cartoons. I often recognized many phrases used in my daily life that I once heard from television. I then deciphered the meaning of the word or phrase by trying to recognize what context it was used in on TV. This really accelerated my learning process when I first came to the States.
My previous experiences with languages show that I am not a learner that thrives from repeated drills and exams. I like to be immersed in culture with many other aspects other than the language itself. I think it really helps me appreciate the language and the culture. Learning activities that really suit my learning style was watching TV and deciphering the meaning of words by understanding the context. I would expand my learning activities by watching more difficult-to-understand materials such as watching the news in Korean with no subtitles. I look forward to revisiting the Korean language once again.