So far my self-directed learning experience has taught me a lot about how to effectively learn a language when one’s environment does not immerse them in the language. I have learned three other languages besides my primary language, but for all three of these I learned at least the introductory level in a classroom with a syllabus set by the professor. Trying to figure out what works best for me has been difficult not just because effective language learning is complicated and in many ways subject to the learner, but also because at times it can be difficult to differentiate between the ways I like learning and the most effective ways for me to learn. I find memorizing vocabulary and sentence structure rules tiring and monotonous, and for two of the three languages I have learned I was able to be immersed in the language as well. This immersion meant I was constantly hearing commonly used words and subconsciously taking in different sentence structures/becoming familiar with how whole sentences should sound – I was able to learn without having to intentionally memorize much besides verb conjugations for different tenses. Learning Urdu has been different because although I have many Urdu speaking friends at the University of Richmond they are not constantly speaking Urdu nor am I constantly around them. As a result I have seen how important it is to intentionally memorize vocabulary/grammar rules when one is not immersed in the language. Though I still believe it is easy to place excessive emphasis on this type of memorization, my approach to learning Urdu so far has not incorporated enough of it (I am most fluent in Spanish besides English and I never did much intentional memorization of vocabulary and sentence structure- but I was in primarily Spanish speaking environments for over a year!) I realized this last week as there were many things I felt I should know how to say when talking with my language partner, but I either messed up the ordering of words or did not know vocabulary that I should have.
The most important aspect of cultural understanding which has helped my communicative competence is the proper application of respect and gender while speaking. Urdu, like many languages, has a “hierarchy” of respect/authority and gender in the language. In Urdu both verb conjugations and morphology of nouns and adjectives are subject to these factors. The three levels of respect in the second person have allowed me to better understand not only what is being said, but also understand implications to the relationship between the speaker and the person being spoken to. For example, between two people of similar age and gender who use the lowest form of respect when speaking to each other usually implies the same gender and either disrespect (or some sort of antagonism) or very close familiarity/friendship. In a similar situation where the middle level of respect is being used one can infer that the two are not very close/not even friends at all or of a different gender even if they are very close.
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