Week 3 Reflections and Plans

[Brian Mahoney]

This past week I didn't make as much progress as I had hoped. Part of this is due to the fact that I've been really sick, but I also am finding that it is harder than I expected to figure out some of the things that I want to learn. I have come across many sources that point out how rapidly evolving the Persian language is, and I think this makes it considerably more difficult to learn what is appropriate in different contexts. The substantial differences between the written and spoken languages, in addition to formality and uses in different settings has led me to find that many things I've learned are no longer used in most everyday language. These subtleties are often hard to pick up on from a website or a book, so Mona has been very helpful in this regard, as even things such as the conjugation of some verbs differs between written and spoken contemporary Persian.I have been able to achieve most of my goals with regards to learning new vocabulary. I've also made some progress in my listening skills, but it is slow in coming. I find that even when I recognize everything within a sentence, I often still have to pause to think it through to determine what the sentence actually means. The Insta-Class recordings have proven fairly helpful with this. To be able to gain much from intensive listening, I've found that it is much more effective if I have access to the transcript of whatever is being said. I try to listen without the transcript, but it helps a lot to be able to pause it and check the transcript for things that I miss or words that I'm not familiar with.For this week:Goals- continue to work on improving oral comprehension- learn vocabulary associated with government and politics- learn present progressive tense for verbs I'm familiar with- get used to using prepositions to describe the order and timing of eventsMethods- listen to Insta-Class recordings intensively to try to understand as much as I can without the transcript, stopping to catch up and to read what I don't recognize- read news from BBC Persian to look for common terms used in politics to learn; listen to news broadcasts to try to pick up on vocab learned- write a story in the past tense about going to a restaurant to practice prepositions and review food related vocabEvaluation- ability to recognize subject of news stories read- how often it's necessary to stop and re-listen or read the transcript of Insta-Class recordings- ability to describe things that happen around me in present progressive without prior planning