Reflections of Week 2

[Taylor Napier-Runnels]

After reviewing what my objectives were for this past week, I can say that I have successfully completed them. I can speak and write the numbers, 1-20, identify and say 10 colors, say 5 more adjectives and use them in a conversation when asked how I am, and can say the days of the week in order. It seems like a lot to have learned in only a week, but I find that practicing them everyday whenever I get a chance really helps me to learn them. Sometimes in class when I would get bored I would find myself writing down the numbers and the days of the week to practice them.The drill instructions are also extremely helpful because there my pronunciation is corrected and I have the opportunity to converse with Mona and other students in addition to working on my comprehension skills. On Thursday, Mona decided that she would speak as much as possible in Farsi and I realized how much I could understand and the words I didn't understand I could figure out through her gestures/drawings on the board. It was also nice because every drill when we come in she asks us how we are and it allows us the opportunity to use the adjectives we are learning.This week hasn't been frustrating besides the fact that my Modern Persian textbook still has not come, but hopefully I will get it soon because I am finding it helpful, particularly for vocabulary and grammar. I haven't used the audio tapes yet, but will give those a try hopefully during this upcoming week. The one slightly frustrating thing is that I feel like I am focusing more on the oral/conversational side of Farsi instead of the written part. I know that the writing component I wanted to achieve was extremely basic, but I think I will need to focus more attention on writing in order to get where I want to be.On a cultural note, we learned from Mona that in Iran the weekend only consists of one day, Friday, the holy day. I find it interesting that there is only one day off, because when I was in Jordan the weekend was two days, but it was Friday and Saturday instead of Saturday and Sunday. I will be interested to try and understand why there is this difference and why they decided to only have one day off.Since this week went so smoothly I'm enthusiastic to see how much I can accomplish in the next week.