Complete Reflection Paper #2 (500 words) and Post to Your Blog in the Ning
Reflect on your language learning so far and the relationship between understanding the target culture and the target language. What do you need to improve your communicative competence?
I am beginning to understand the importance of learning the target language and the target culture and how they go hand and hand. In the beginning I thought that understanding the culture of the target language is trivial because learning a language can just be learning a language. Culture is language itself! Learning a language is automatically learning a culture. A big example where learning a language is impossible without learning the culture is expressions of phrases.Phrases, words, syntactic forms and concepts are impossible to translate directly because they sometimes don’t exist in some languages. Differences in language between cultures are evident when you compare how some countries have different definitions for certain phrases. A prime example is that generally a “good day” for a Western speaker means a sunny day, however a “good day” for an African speaker will mean a rainy day. It is all context. If I were to learn an African language and did not know this cultural references then I would not understand a lot of the context and fail at accurately understanding the language.
Culture can also have a huge influence on how we communicate. For example in Thai, the words we tend to chose are like a pyramid where formal talk is reserved only when talking to or about the royal family. Then the formality goes down based on age no matter their position. For example; at work, if A is lower in position but older than person B (person B has higher position but is younger), person B will still have to address person A as if A was B’s superior. However in America and many English speaking communities, this is not necessary and in fact frowned upon. If I were not to know these differences then learning the language would be difficult since I would not know what is appropriate and what is not. Hebrew also has the same references as one would address a boy versus a man versus an old man. The degrees of seniority or importances determines what word choices you should use.
I think to improve my communicative competence, definitely learning the cultural by reading the newspaper, talking to natives, watching movies, music...etc will definitely learn the culture and the language at the same time, so you’re killing two birds with one stone. However also sitting down and learning the language is also important in achieve communicative competence. Learning the language is a formal setting will help me track my progress and learn Hebrew “correctly”. I think that some people after spending time with many speakers of that language are able to pick up phrases but if you wanted them to build their foundation and to continue the language they are unable to do so because their foundation was not strong enough to continue and build. I still feel incompetent in learning the basic root words in semitic languages. I don’t understand what it means to find root words because I can’t find the similarities. I also have problems but they are similar to this where I just a need a few clarification and from then on, if I see the problem I am able to relate it and build upon my skills. Fortunately, I am still young and have ample of time to build my solid foundation into rock solid knowledge. I am not too worried about my communicative incompetence because I know I can improve with more effort and time.
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