Over the past years of my adolescence, I had learned English gradually when my family and I immigrated to the United States when I was 9 years old. Then, during high school, we were required to take additional languages, at first I chose Spanish but quickly transferred to Latin. During my time studying English, I believe the most beneficial factor was being situated in an all-English speaking environment. It was very tough and disheartening at first because I only knew a couple of words and phrases and could barely communicate with anybody. Therefore, I have had to force myself to learn as quickly as I could by following the ESL curriculum at school and try to talk as much as possible with other classmates. I do believe that this is the most expedient method of learning a language, however, the most painful as well. When you are in a situation where you could talk to no one except your parents and sibling, it felt alone and separated.
Entering into high school, the curriculum required a new foreign language for graduating students, I chose Spanish but the class quickly lost my interest. The main reason being the extensive vocabulary, a lot of grammar rules, and most importantly, the method that the teacher employed to teach. It was very paragraph/word – based teaching. After transferring to Latin, although it is also a vocabulary intensive language, the teacher made it more enjoyable by employing various graphics, comic strips, songs, to help us remember key concepts and grammar rules. Reflecting upon the surveys and self-assessment, I am indeed a more visual learner, learning by reading or seeing pictures, and also remember things by visualizing. This trait had definitely manifested while learning Latin and English. In addition, one of the other surveys suggests that social or interpersonal skill is ranked as one of my top three intelligences. While learning English or even many other subject, engaging in a dialogue or reading over equations with other people helps me to be more engaged with the subject and I learn better in this manner.
After exploring the learning styles and reflecting those on my past language studies, I am leaning more towards visual, interpersonal, and also reflecting on new ideas and information alone. In the past, different language activities I have employed in the past such as reading from graphic novels, doing a lot of extra practices on vocabulary and grammar rules, and reading new sentences while marking any familiar trends. After knowing about the various styles that suit my personality better, applying that to new language acquisition, this could mean introducing more visual and auditory activities, such as drama series, songs, podcasts, etc. In addition, because of the language partner and many other Korean speaking friends, I can easily have a conversation in Korean with them and be able to locate my mistakes while talking. As for learning vocabulary and grammar rules in Korean, my learning style suggests that I do best by writing down key concepts and have visualizations during instruction, and have additional time ruminating and digesting new information on my own, while speaking them out loud reinforces the memory.
Additionally, the different blog posts shared in the homework assignment by Tim Ferriss and Benny Lewis provides additional learning tips. The one I paid special, close attention to is the “interact in your language daily without traveling,” this to me could mean listening to songs, speaking in that language with other people, things I can do to practice the language every day. Also, creating realistic goals for myself and not rushing through the process, a big mistake I always make while learning is that I rush through things. For example, I could theoretically handle something in paper, but once I get to apply the concept, because I rush through learning it initially, the concept is not deeply ingrained and I haven’t spent the time to fully digest the information. I look forward to using these new learning activities to learn Korean in the upcoming semester.
Comments
Great post, Devin. Yes, unfortunately, most high school language instruction in the US is grounded in the translation approach, which has many downsides, but instructors continue to make strides toward communicative methodologies. Programs that stress community-building and real-world scenarios seem to have some of the best results. The emphasis on social interactions is ideal. There are different cognitive functions activated in social circumstances, and when you use or hear a word or phrase with a specific group of people, you are much more likely to remember it. Benny Lewis and Tim Ferriss provide great recommendations for armchair travelers, but the internet is also kind of a phenomenological cultural microcosm that delineates, at least in part, how a particular group of people chooses to think, discuss, and organize information relative to their experiences. As the semester progresses, you may want to change your email or browser settings to Korean to immerse your digital communicative activities in the target language and culture. Also, maybe instead of using Google as your default browser, consider giving Naver a try. More on these suggestions, as well as vocabulary acquisition will come up in class.