The beginning of this week was a much-needed fall break! I got to go home and see my parents for the first time since move-in. As native Farsi speakers from Iran, they were really impressed with how much I had learned in a few short weeks. We practiced speaking in Farsi often while I was home for the weekend. My dad showed me an online Iranian newspaper and had me read the headlines to him, something I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do at the start of the semester. My parents gave me some children’s books and a small Farsi textbook that I will definitely take advantage of.
This week, my language partner taught us some common prepositions in Farsi, like the words for on, below, outside, inside, etc. For homework, we had to write simple sentences using the prepositions we had learned, one for each preposition.
We also continued reading and translating the short story “The Search for the Dinosaurs”. We practiced dictation or transcribing – the other students in the class would read a word from the text, and we would have to write it in Farsi on the whiteboard.
We watched a short Afghan cartoon about a man who drove recklessly, to practice our listening and comprehension skills. I definitely had trouble understanding most of what was going on, but I was able to get the general idea of the cartoon, which was good.
While I am still utilizing the learning plan, I tend to focus more on what Mirwais is teaching us at the time. Since he is a certified Persian instructor, not the typical contemporary college student that other language partners are, I trust what he is teaching us. I will still use the learning plan for my personal goals, however. I am tending to use Rosetta Stone less, so I'm revising my goal to just finishing the first two lessons of the first unit for this semester. I am still using easypersian.com, but only to clarify any questions I have about the grammar Mirwais is teaching. For the rest of the semester, I'm going to keep focusing on what Mirwais is teaching in class, and mastering those topics.
Comments