Beginning of the semester: When I stated my goals in the beginning of the semester, I was a complete beginner in Hebrew. I only knew a few sentences that I learned from my Israeli friends. My goals for the semester were to learn the alphabet, and to comfortably talk about my learning tasks. My ultimate goal is to read and speak Hebrew.
I started learning the alphabet on my own before I met with my language partner. I used several websites to learn the alphabet and their pronunciation. When I met with my language partner, we went over the alphabet together and she sent me a list of words which I had to match based on the first letter. This helped me learn writing quickly.
I tried using the software available at the global studio and BYKI, but I only found random lists of words and phrases in those resources. I am a systematic learner and I like to learn things in order. That is why I did not use these resources this semester. When I tried to learn the numbers, I search on Google until I found a good website to use. As with other tasks, after I learned the numbers I showed them to my language partner for assessment.
In addition to my tasks, my language partner gave me homework that included translating sentences to Hebrew. She only provided me with the correct verb conjugation, while I had to translate the other words by myself. This became part of my learning. I performed my own research and translation to fulfill my learning tasks, while my language partner gave me sentences to translate based on our sessions. She gave me question words and verb tenses that I had to incorporate into the sentences. These verbs where challenging since there are several conjugations and there are many exceptions to the rules.
Middle of the Semester: I borrowed a children book from the global studio to improve my reading. This became a big part of my learning in the second half of the semester. I translated a page or two of the book, and I would then read it to my language partner to work on pronunciation. I also worked on some of my favorite learning tasks during this part of the semester, such as talking about the family and telling time. As part of my homework, I prepared over 10 sentences for these two tasks, and I used some of them in my artifact. At the same time, I was reading from the book and progressing slowly. I wish I spent more time this semester memorizing all the words I translated from the book. Unfortunately, I spent a lot of time this semester applying for jobs and organizing my post graduate plans. If I had put the time into memorizing those words, I am certain I would have been able to converse at a beginner level.
End of the Semester: I have the full assessment of my learning plan in a separate post called “SDLC 110. Learning Tasks Self Assessment”.
Towards the end of the semester, I started to have longer meetings with my language partner, and several times I met with her and David. We read the books together, and David and I helped each other with translation. This was a good technique to change things and make learning more interesting. During this time, I continued with my learning tasks such as the weather, answering the phone, and talking about sports and hobbies. Fulfilling the tasks towards the end of the semester was not interesting at all. I was only interested in reading and translating words.
One of my favorite resources this semester is a dictionary application for the iPhone that was recommended by my language partner. The dictionary is called (morfeqes). Unlike Google Translate, this dictionary gives several meanings for each word, in addition to the different pronunciations.
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