I really enjoyed being an autonomous learner this semester and not worrying about learning or pacing myself through someone else’s standards. Focusing on my own individual goals was an awesome change of air from the learning I have been accustomed to for more than 10 years of being a student. I believe the main hurdle most people have in autonomous learning and especially in autonomous language learning is motivation. But for me, from day one I knew this was never going to be an issue due to the pain and discomfort I have felt for years by not assimilating in my Persian community back home. Sticking with the rational model/framework even thou sometimes I wanted to stray toward other mechanisms and having the discipline not to really helped me have a consistent level of learning during the many weeks.From the outset I wanted to focus primarily on the oral elements of the language and especially the sub-areas that would help assimilate better in the Persian community back home. By far, the greatest resource for me was my language instructor. The resources provided to us, i.e. Rosetta, TV channels, textbooks, etc were okay but I didn’t feel they played even a minor part in my development throughout the semester. Having stockpiled an array of personalized recorded clips that my language instructor and I critiqued was the by far the main resource in my learning process. Hearing and listening people has never worked for me, I have been listening for more than 10 years in the Persian community and it hasn’t helped one iota. Therefore, I focused on recording myself as much as I could and continuously going back and forth until I perfected my recordings for whatever area I was working with at that time. This also helped me realize which areas I was progressing with and which areas I was not, i.e. the “ka” sound was one of the most troublesome, tongue-twisting areas for me. Working with various forms of comedy no doubt was extremely interesting throughout the semester and I feel that I can somewhat go back home and at least not feel as uncomfortably conscious of my Farsi when I am with strangers. My flashcards helped me maintain the vocabulary I learned starting back from week 1 because I knew there were too many words for me to use on a regular basis and so a more systematic approach worked better on that front.The cultural project helped me understand the context behind shifting my accent from Khandari to Kabuli. Throughout the semester as I worked on having one consistent dialect in my speech, I did not bother to understand the history and underpinnings behind the two variations of Dari, and the cultural project as a whole helped bridge my overall learning between the two accents. Understanding precisely how and why the two dialects emerged from one language and not just the differences on the surface can help escalate my long-term development in mastering a single accent.My original learning objectives were not realistic or precise enough for me to be consistent and successful throughout the semester. I had too many goals and if I tried to achieve each one before the end of the semester I would’ve had no progress at all. Therefore after meeting with Dr. Scinicariello and revising a new plan with my language instructor I decided to focus on comedy (jokes, riddles, satires, sarcasm) and elevating my childish, Khandari-esque accent into a more mature Kabuli variant form. On the comedy side, I believe I’ve made huge strides as I can comfortably understand most children jokes, and I’m gradually getting a bit more comfortable in the longer mullah nasrudin jokes. The most difficult part in this front was trying not to translate a Persian joke in my head into English to understand it, most Persian jokes don’t make sense in English let alone be comedic, therefore the ones I posted in my blogs were the closest I could muster that were at least somewhat witty in both languages. My pace in telling jokes is a bit slower compared to my conversational pace overall, but when compared to the gap that existed early in the semester, I believe I am close in developing a consistent pace in both areas.I know some people spend decades without completely erasing their accents in a language, so therefore this semester I primarily wanted to work on developing at least a more mature tone in my conversations and not sounding like a child. This area was a bit more difficult than my other learning objective, but I feel more proud in my development in this area because at times I felt completely frustrated as I never did in my development in Persian comedy. Working on pronunciation and many tongue-twisting, i.e. 5 or more syllable words were areas I primarily focused on in my weekly recordings. At our sessions, I spent more than 80 percent of the time talking and I believe that was the correct way of approaching it. I am extremely glad with my progress in phonetics and intonation and overall I see them as very good building blocks that I can carry into the future to further remedy my accent.
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