My prior language experience consisted of three years of middle school Spanish, two years of high school Spanish, and one year of Spanish here at the University of Richmond. One part that I never quite enjoyed about learning Spanish in a standard school format is that it becomes so formulaic. At first, I was excited to learn the language, but as time went on, I got very tired of learning one chapter of vocabulary and one tense at a time to get a good grade on an exam. Eventually, I lost interest and did the bare minimum to get good grades on exams and papers. However, at the higher levels of high school Spanish, once the classroom spoke only Spanish and no English, I found that my interest returned, and I made much more progress. I found myself translating words a lot less and thinking in Spanish. My teachers had always preached to me not to translate in my head, but I never really understood what it meant until I had some level of immersion with the language. Unfortunately, the extended time away from Spanish caused me to forget almost all of it, and my studies at Richmond did not rekindle my motivation. At one point, I also downloaded Duolingo to learn French. My brother-in-law is a native speaker, so I am interested in the language, as it is likely that France will be the first European country that I get the opportunity to visit. I enjoyed the app but never stuck with it long enough to remember anything. I have picked up a couple of phrases from my sister and her husband’s attempts to teach their son French like “À tes souhaits.”
After taking the learning style survey, I was surprised to learn that my results showed almost a perfectly even split. My scores were 30% auditory, 35% visual, and 35% tactile. I feel like as I have gotten older, my learning style has gone from primarily auditory to primarily tactile. For example, I’ve gotten more out of internship opportunities where I can implement concepts than textbooks or lectures (unless the lecture is really intriguing). In the strengths assessment, body movement was at the top of the list which makes sense for me. I love to move around, and I often find that it helps me think as well. I like the recommendations that the website provides such as changing the types of tools used to take notes and taking walks as study breaks.
Throughout my years of studying language, I have relied on flashcards quite a bit, but I feel like traditional flashcards are more likely to get me a good grade on a quiz rather than help me learn a language. I’ve chosen to study Dutch because I think the Netherlands has an interesting culture, and I have relatives that speak the language. I would like to try using flashcards with pictures on one side instead of translations. Most, importantly, I want to be as consistent as possible with mostly speaking and listening practice. My main goal is to be able to understand natives and have basic conversations, so I must design my studies around that goal.
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