Reflect on your experiences as a language learner. What did you enjoy? What did you dislike? Think about the FIRE model and surveys you have just completed. What kind of learner are you? What kinds of language learning activities suite your learning style? How do you think you should expand your learning activities?
My interest language learning developed at the age of 14 on a trip to New York City. Before going, I distinctly remember being excited about seeing all of the famous attractions like the Statue of Liberty and Times Square. Aside from those, I knew nothing about the city. Throughout the duration of my entire trip, one thing kept piquing my interest… SO MANY PEOPLE SPOKE LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH. I was so jealous because I could only speak English. At the time, I was in my third year of taking Spanish, but I could not speak it or understand a native speaker whatsoever. From this observation, I decided to actually take my Spanish class more seriously. However, I became incredibly discouraged at the pace of the course upon return to my school. I realized that the class structure did not align with my goals of proficiency in the language.
Thus, I decided to take my studies outside of the classroom, in which I would use all of the possible resources that I could find. YouTube, especially, became one of my best friends. I would search for videos of other learners (in English and Spanish) talk about how they learned Spanish. It was a nice start for me to practice my listening skills because they spoke nice and slow. Every now and then, I would encounter videos that I could not understand, but that only motivated me more. In addition to watching YouTube videos, I used to listen to podcasts, distinctly one named Coffee Break Spanish and Showtime Spanish. These two podcasts helped a lot because they helped me develop a stronger foundation of material that I already knew. After a while, I began to get more comfortable with my listening skills. In terms of speaking, I often would chat with my native Spanish-speaking friends in high school. I believe that this was one of the most challenging aspects of independent study for me. I wanted to speak Spanish as much as possible but I only had limited access to my friends’ patience to my broken oral skills. Consequently, I believe that my speaking skills were the last to develop.
The most enjoyable part about the learning process was when I began to observe results from my hard work. I mostly sought for results in my comprehension of television shows and movies. This excitement began with Mexican shows because it was the easiest to understand. When I felt more comfortable with the Mexican accent, I slowly made my way over to the Peninsular accent from Spain, which proved to be one of the most difficult accents for me to understand. In this stage of the learning process, I had a fairly good understanding of the language, but I needed to sharpen my auditory skills. Thus, I began to watch several movies with subtitles to develop a better ear for comprehension. I would also take note of the new words that I would learn in the movies and shows. It was very frustrating at times because I could not see the end result of my hard work. However, I am now pleased with the fruits of my labor.
The results from the surveys aligned with my previously observations about my preferred learning style. They revealed that I am 40% auditory, 45% visual, and 15% tactile. While studying Spanish independently, I noticed that I preferred to write out words and visualize them to learn better instead of just hearing them. At the same time, I was surprised to find out that my auditory skills were as high as they are. I intend to employ some of the same approaches of study from Spanish in my learning of Turkish. I am going to start by studying grammar and pronunciation, because I am a very straight forward and factual person. I believe a very structured start to learning the language would be the most beneficial for me. I intend to expand my language learning by using new language learning websites and programs like Duolingo and Memrise. I will adopt more methods along the way.
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