Dominique Brown
Dr. Sharon Scinicariello
SDLC 105
1 September 2015
Reflection Paper #1
My first experience encountering another language other than English must have been when I was really young. I lived in a neighborhood that was very diverse. Not only was English widely heard, but I also frequently listened to my neighbors speaking Spanish, Chinese, and many other languages. This is not to say; however, that I understood a word they were saying. It was just, to me, something different. No, perhaps my real encounter with actually listening to and understanding another language would have to be from watching Dora the Explorer as a young kid. I really enjoyed that show. It is only through that show that I am able to possess the skills of counting to ten and saying ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ in Spanish…sadly, that is about all I can remember.
Besides my Dora the Explorer days, the next time I was immersed in a language learning setting was during my four years of high school and my first year of college. I was attempting to learn French. In high school, the experience was so-so for me. My French teacher often spoke to us in English, and the class was, for the most part, based on cramming as much vocabulary and grammar into our brains for the exams as possible, only to partially forget what we have learned a week later. In total, the class watched a French movie perhaps twice in all four years (there was only one French teacher). However, what I enjoyed most about the class was when we were given food projects, mostly because we got to eat delicious food for the whole class period. In addition to this, I really enjoyed learning not only about France as a Francophone speaking country, but also about other countries, such as those in Africa. During the last few days of senior year, we learned some belly dancing moves from one of these particular countries.
In college, I feel as though the method of teaching French was not all that different besides the fact that French, and not English, was mainly spoken by the teacher. I liked this aspect a lot; however, I felt really pressed for time moving from one topic to the next. I think my overall experience would have been better if I perhaps enrolled in the entry level French class freshman year, or if I took a refresher class to brush up on my French grammar. I could understand the majority of what was being said, but I did not, and still do not, possess the confidence to converse comfortably in the language without overthinking the possibility that I could be making/will make a mistake.
So because of my past language learning experiences, and according to the Fire Model of Integrative Thinking, I think that I learn best in an environment that has a slow pace and which is not too focused on completing specific language tasks immediately after the other. I am more interested on the cultural and everyday aspects of foreign regions. For example, my target language is Korean, and I hope not only to converse with native speakers and others freely, but to also be able to read and understand others aspects of their culture, such as their literatures, dramas, movies, music, and much more without fully relying on English translations and equivalents. It is also very interesting to me to compare aspects, different and similar, between Korean and American culture.
Thus, in order to accomplish this, I will try my best to incorporate the suggestions made to me by my Learning Styles Test results. According to this test, I am a reading/writing learner. So, I will definitely make use of habits such as using the dictionary to look up definitions, reading (hopefully I can find a Korean novel with the English translation on the next page), and writing my notes out by hand.
