Susan Jelanizada
Dr. Grove
SDLC 105
Reflection Paper # 3
Learning a new language is one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had, at the same time, it is also one of the most challenging experiences.
I have always been a lover of languages different from my own, and I have been a quick language learner. My purpose in SDLC 105 was to expand on my learning skills of a new language and know more about the culture and traditions of different people around the world specifically my target language “Urdu”. Also, spending some years in Pakistan as an immigrant I never had the chance to learn and know their culture professionally. Therefore my goal in SDLC 105 was to keep and maintain my language skills in Urdu from my past experience, and gain more knowledge about the culture. More specifically, I wanted to be able to navigate between the past, present, and future tenses with relative ease, learn and understand about Urdu poetry and understand short sentences and conversations well.
These goals were very realistic and easily attainable for me, because I had past experience with speaking and hearing Urdu language. The course covered material ranging from grammatical constructions and syntactic structures to cultural aspects of the language, such as music, poetry, and regional social norms of Urdu-speaking countries like Pakistan and India. In the process of taking SDLC 105 I was able to have a structured schedule of language learning. I can say with confidence that I am now able to navigate with greater ease throughout the various tenses in Urdu, and I learned a tremendous amount of new vocabulary words, I can read and understand short and simple poems and understand conversations very well.
Another aspect of SDLC 105 I was really pleased with was the cultural presentations. Through these presentations, I had the opportunity to research and learn more about different cultures and traditions such as Hindi, Gujarati and Bosnian. I was able to learn more about the respective languages and cultures my fellow classmates were learning. It was very interesting to see the existing patterns inherent in many languages and to see how cultural tendencies tend to overlap throughout many cultures. I also enjoyed the required readings for the course. While some of them were a bit technical and hard to understand (i.e. How the Brain Handles Language), I found it very helpful to learn about the theories underlying language studies and about the various strategies for approaching language learning. The information provided through this texts are not common knowledge and I might not have sought out such information on my own if it were not for this course.
Overall, I am extremely pleased with the progress I made in SDLC 105. I have accomplished the goals I stated in the beginning of this course. I was able to practice my speaking as much as I wanted with my language partner, and gained more information about the culture that most likely would not have achieved without the structure provided by both SDLC 105 and 110. In the process, I gained a wealth of knowledge about languages and cultures I previously had very little contact with. Thank you Dr. Grove and Professor Scinicariello for your assistance in this process.
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