WEEK III

[ReidSchluter]

I'm going to paste my 3 paragraph learning plan from this past week, and comment on how effectively I accomplished the goals within each paragraph:My learning plan for the week will focus on fundamental conversations. In other words, I wish to master simple, everyday conversations within Dutch—and as a byproduct hone my pronunciation skills—and use those as a basis point for expanding my knowledge. I’m of the opinion that this is the best way to approach the language, since I think that pronunciation may well be the biggest hurdle I face in learning it. Once I have conquered this issue, I will be able to have dialogues in my head (i.e. start thinking in Dutch) far easier, and at that point the language will become second nature.REACTION: I did great work on my accent this week, but will touch on that more in reaction to the next paragraph. With regard to fundamental conversations, I don't yet possess the ability to think, react, & pronounce properly if I were to have a random conversation in Dutch. I am okay with basic phrases like 'hoe gaat het... - how are things...' or 'kan ik u helpen', 'wat kosten', etc... and can say those at the drop of the hat. anything substantially more complicated would still be a stretch as I don't yet possess a complete enough vocabulary. That will come in time though. This week I learned a lot of words/phrases useful in grocery store (or really any service establishment), so more vocabulary will come through reading more of the book.My tasks for this will be simple. My primary objective will be repetition of the many different sounds in Dutch. As an example, I mean differentiating between ‘OO’, ‘O’, ‘OE’, etc… and all the alterations that can occur from the letters positioned around them. There are large amounts of varying vowel sounds, and after meeting with my language partner for the first time, I am beginning to get a pretty strong grasp on them. I’ve learned simple introductory conversation to another person as well as a variety of everyday situations in a restaurant or store. I need to focus on making this more seamless though, so that I do not have to think about what I am saying. By continuing to work on my pronunciation by myself as well as with my language partner, I think I could develop a very strong knowledge of these basics this week, which will serve as a launching point for a far steeper learning curve.REACTION: I did very well with this based on both Jan's & my own estimation this week. Now by my third meeting with Jan, I'm becoming quite good in differentiating vowel pronunciations, and as a result my speech has become noticeably quicker (while still slow), and I find myself not thinking about it as much. It is becoming like second nature, and that has been my overall goal for the early weeks of the course. After our second meeting, Jan told me my vowels had developed, and I should switch my focus to R's, V's, & CH's. I don't think I've mastered any yet, but he said there was a marked improvement on all three after our third session yesterday. Jan is very honest with me, and we both are of the opinion that my accent is developing about as well as either of us could have hoped. I am hoping that within two weeks it will be good enough that it could get me around the country, and I can start working through vocabulary, conjugations, & the other structures of the language that will rapidly advance my skills.My evaluation of what I’ve learned will rely heavily on my language partner. We met briefly on Sunday to develop a schedule and see what we would be working on in the near future. Yesterday we had our first official language instruction though. He pointed out my main flaws as ‘R’s’ that occur in the beginning of sentences, and a lack of awareness of differentiation in vowel sounds. As a result, I have to work on my ability to pronounce R’s, as well as merely remembering which vowel sequences produce which sounds. My improvement over the hour I spent with him yesterday leads me to believe that I could more or less master these skills in the next week or two. He says my book is very good, and has encouraged me to work with certain words he has given me as well as some phonetic examples given in the book. My ability to have a simple conversation with Jan will serve as a very effective barometer of how much I have learned in this regard. He will evaluate me in this regard, but hopefully I can go from scripted conversations with a few glaring pronunciation errors, to unscripted conversations with little or no pronunciation errors.REACTION: I touched on much of this in the last paragraph. I wrote a fairly lengthy dialogue that we practiced with yesterday. Writing it was not too difficult, but doing something similar unscripted still wouldn't be possible (unless maybe it was very honed in the lessons/phrases I've learned thus far). My pronunciation has improved to the extent that a native speaker would completely understand what i was saying [I think]. In yesterday's meeting, Jan did not point out any glaring errors, but merely subtle ones that did not disrupt the conversation as a whole. I'm pleased with this development, am starting to feel as though I'm no longer speaking a 'foreign' language, & honestly think I'm about to takeoff in terms of my learning.