Enrolling in Self-Directed Language Course 105 together with 110 sections is one of the best decisions I have made as a student and a language learner. To be honest, I was a little bit worried about whether I would be able to create my schedule for learning Hungarian, allocate specific times in my schedule for the meeting with my community partner, maintain motivation throughout the semester, and other concerns. However, approaching my Hungarian learning ended up being very easy, fun, engaging, and entertaining. I had such a positive experience mostly because of my community partner - Szonja who is a Hungarian native speaker with a fully Hungarian background/family. During our classes, she did not just show me some tricks on how to memorize specific words, structures, and complex topics, but also shared her own stories from her time living in Budapest. We almost immediately connected, and it allowed me to maintain motivation and passion for learning the language the whole time.
One of the main insights that I have gained about myself as a language learner is consistency and discipline. No doubt, there were days when I simply did not want to open a Hungarian book and do grammar exercises just because I was tired or overwhelmed with my other responsibilities. However, I realized that it was much more helpful to do some small tasks on a day like this (such as one class on Duolingo, watching a short YouTube video in Hungarian, listen to a song, or doing an easy drill) rather than skip the day completely. Language learning is all about practice, and the more practice I have - the faster I will succeed. And honestly, these little language activities were my favorite part of the learning experience. Me and my community partner - Szonja, we were trying to incorporate as many as possible.
One of the most challenging parts of learning Hungarian is a lot of cases, conjugations, and irregularities that are an essential part of Hungarian grammar. It took me a while to get used to some of them because there are no similar concepts neither in Russian nor in English. However, this is something that I got better at by the end of the semester, and this is something that I am planning to work on more!
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