I've had a number of experiences with different languages and cultures. I am originally from Ethiopia, a country in the horn of Africa where more than 100 languages are spoken. That is where I had my very first experience with language-my mother tongue of Amharic (the national language of Ethiopia). Until I was about four years old that is all I knew how to speak. Soon after my family and I moved to Russia where I began to acquire the Russian language, at least to the extent that a four-year-old attending an Indian preschool can acquire the Russian language. When I was around six years old I moved to the United States and had my fourth experience with language, the English one at that. This was the hardest language experience I've experienced, mostly because of the insane pressure put on a six-year-old to learn such a complex language in a matter of months. Additionally, American culture was also one that tolled with my perception of my identity the most, perhaps because it was the most different from all my other experiences. Lastly, starting from third grade to my junior year in high school I have been learning Spanish in the classroom; my fifth experience with language and culture. Weirdly enough, even after all those years of instruction, I still don’t know how to actually speak Spanish and most of what I do know of the language is through my Spanish-speaking friends that I’ve had for just as long, This, I believe, is a testament to the point made in the How to Successfully Learn a Language This Year blog post about the detriment of viewing language learning as an academic pursuit. My sixth experience as a language learner began here at the University of Richmond where I spent all four of my years as an undergraduate student learning the French language. I made the decision to start fresh rather than continuing my pursuit of Spanish because French is the “language of diplomacy” and as an International Affairs student, I believed learning it would serve me well in the future. It doesn’t end there. Ironically, instead of studying abroad in France during my junior year, I decided to spend three months abroad in Italy where I had my final experience as a language learner. Though the program required us to learn Italian in the context of a classroom, it was so refreshing to be able to take what we learned in the classroom and use it as soon as we stepped outside the school building. I realized there that, for me at least, that is the best way to truly acquire a language rather than merely having small unproductive encounters with multiple languages. That is how I enjoy learning a language-using it outside the context of academics, seeing the language through the people that speak it everywhere I turn. This is in alignment with the learning style that best matches me according to the survey-visual and auditory. It extracts the pressure that is associated with academics and the desire to be motivated by grades rather than learning the language even if it means failing at times. Academics doesn't provide me the comfort of failing.
I often find myself perplexed by the fact that I was able to learn English because right now I can’t imagine speaking another language at an advanced level. When I was in Ethiopia this past summer, I almost lost hope in my pursuit to learn Afaan Oromo because it felt like it could never happen without living amongst people that only spoke that for a year or more (a situation that isn’t realistic for me right now). But through this class, I think my hope will be restored. I need to speak and practice. I need to let go of the idea that I will only speak when I’m “perfect”. I will use what I know about myself as a learner to foster a language-learning environment that will best serve me. For instance, some learning activities I hope to use is listening to music in Afaan Oromo and using both the context of the music video and the words/lyrics being said to discern what story the music is telling.
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