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As I write this, I have not had any further formal education on the topic at hand since leaving Reba Poole's introductory ASL course at the end of the spring semester. Instead, I intended and partially achieved my goal of having a relaxing and work free summer where I did no studying whatsoever and caught up on my sleep. However, I found myself presented with the unique opportunity to practice my foundational skills and thus renew my interest in the language. 

I have experienced many deaths in my family this year and met, by chance, at a funeral the widow of the event. Both parties were deaf and had attended the same deaf school in Staunton, Virginia. The widow and her hearing daughter spent a good deal of time with my immediate family in their period of mourning. It was during these three meetings that I realized I had absorbed a good deal of information in my elective class and that I had a long way to go to achieving fluency. 

I chose to study ASL because I generally enjoy learning languages. My goal is to be thoroughly conversational by the end of the semester so I may communicate with my few deaf relatives. In order to achieve this, I intend to partner with an iTalki tutor and meet with them twice a week to immerse myself in the language. My relatives will serve as a resource, also, whenresearching the deaf community and deaf culture in Virginia. 

Parisa Mershon

SDLC 105: Introduction to Self-Directed Language Learning

Dr. Marsh-Soloway

August 28, 2022

Reflecting on My Language Journey

If I were not on the pre-med track, I would most likely be pursuing a career in linguistics. I could say my passion for language began in my elementary school days on Duolingo, but I am not entirely sure; I can say, however, that COVID-19 accelerated my drive to learn Farsi. At the time, my father was simply visiting family. Once the pandemic hit, the airport shut down, and his month-long stay turned into a year-long one, culminating in his decision to formally move back to Iran (where he is now). Learning Farsi is one of the ways we can stay in contact, and as I’ve grown older, I’ve wanted to try and bridge the cultural divide I have with my Iranian family 一 at least a little.

The other language I have been learning is Mandarin Chinese, which I started in my freshman year of high school and am continuing here at UR. I fell in love with writing characters and would spend many hours practicing. Chinese was the only non-Latin-based language, which, for some reason or another, has always been more intriguing to me (especially languages with a different writing system/alphabet, like Farsi). 

My likes and dislikes heavily depend on the language I am focusing on. In Chinese, I loved writing (both characters and grammar structures), as well as listening and reading. Speaking, however, has always been my Achilles heel, as the tonal system in Chinese is a considerable challenge for me. In Farsi, my pronunciation/accent comes much more naturally (possibly because I have heard the language most of my life), but forming sentences is comparatively more difficult. I would suppose this has to do with Farsi being a Subject-Object-Verb language, yet I am not entirely sure. 

It is rather difficult to say my dislikes, as I largely don’t have any. I enjoy working on my various challenges in language. Nevertheless, if I had to highlight one, speaking with other native speakers/public speaking in my target language has always been an area I am not quite fond of. I am not particularly invested in improving public speaking, but I feel as though my hesitancy to converse with other native speakers is holding me back more and more as I progress in each language.

I try not to ascribe to a particular learning style, as I am not convinced systems like the VARK Learning Styles are truly beneficial. In terms of general learning, spaced studying and mock assessments are beneficial. In terms of language learning, I find that long-form writing and conversational speaking (alongside the aforementioned study methods for vocabulary) are particularly valuable. In long-form writing, I can ascertain the limitations of the grammar I have learned. I can also start understanding which words have what connotations, and which words are more formal versus informal. 

Since my focus in the course is Farsi, I will not reflect on how I can improve my Chinese-learning methods. I think I should try to speak with other native speakers of Farsi (preferably those who are familiar with Iranian vernacular / colloquialisms). Though my father has been an excellent teacher, he moved to the United States when he was 17 (due to the 1979 Iranian revolution), and until 2019, had not stayed in Iran for more than a couple of months at a time. Consequently, his Farsi is slightly odd compared to others, as he has lost touch with certain cultural practices (such as being too direct/blunt). And as he always jokes, Farsi was the one class he failed in (Iranian) high school. I also have delved deep into writing, so I would like to practice both the script and the more formal language associated with it. 

 Wahoo~

It’s great to be back to actively learning a language again!

This week was mainly about planning out a rough idea on what I wanted to learn about this semester. Although I am a native speaker, there is so much information about Korea I don’t know about since I grew up and attended school in the U.S. I hope I learn a lot about my home country and can also share what I learn with others in the future.

It’s been about a year since taking an SDLC course and this will be my first time taking Korean after having the experience of also “teaching” Korean through the SDLAP program. While most of my language partners focused on learning the Korean language as an introduction, I want to focus on learning Korea’s history and the roots of the culture’s unique traditions. I enjoy watching Korean variety shows such as Sixth Sense or Running Man, and I realized that I didn’t quite understand some of the jokes or references. They frequently play games to “guess the saying/idiom” and although I could participate occasionally, I found that I needed to actively study to get a better and broaden my knowledge of Korean culture.

 Another reason I wanted to take this course again was because of the influence of another course, Art & Asia. When I tried looking for a history gen ed, I was encouraged to take this course and discovered that the professor was Korean and studied art history, mainly that of China, Japan, and Korean. When I think of the “arts” in Korea, like many people, I think about the popular music or dramas that are recognized internationally. While those topics are relevant and interesting, I also want to dive into learning about Korean art history and how it shaped its culture.

This semester, I will mainly do my research on Korea independently, but use my community language partner (Vivian Shon) to continue conversing in Korean and help me keep accountable. Although this might seem simple, I understood the large impact of frequently using Korean while being a language partner. I find that when I come back to school after staying home, I sometimes am unable to find the right words in English. This also happens when I return home but seems to be more extreme such that I sometimes need to use a translator or describe the word I’m looking for. I haven’t informed Vivian about my plan yet, so that’ll be the first thing on my list I’ll have to do this week!

I’m looking forward to study the unique traditions in Korea and to explore both traditional and modern art. And since the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is close by, I plan on visiting too! This semester I hope to compile my weekly study in a Google Docs so that I can keep track of the topics I covered throughout the months. Since I’m also a language partner for others, maybe I can use this compilation of information and share them with my partners next semester!

My past experience with language learning has been positive for the most part. Spanish is one of the first languages that I gained interest in. I began my language learning journey with Spanish in elementary school and continued to become more advanced with the language from middle school to high school and college as well. Most of the experience I have when learning Spanish was based in a classroom setting. And each piece of information we learned would allude to what skills we would be need for the next unit or next piece of information we would learn. For example, when we learned conjugating verbs in Spanish it would go in the order of learning present tense, past tense, conditional, and future tense. And if a unit was based on health, we would learn basic vocabulary that would be associated with that unit, such as food (types of healthy/unhealthy, exercise, check-ups/doctor’s appointments, etc.

I enjoyed the feeling of being immersed into a new language. Learning the language of a culture I admire really helps me to feel more connected to that culture and its people. During the process of learning a new language I enjoyed the small little victories achievements I’ve made, which continue to bring me closer to actually being able to conversate with a native speaker or someone that spoke the language comfortably. I’ve come to realize that I like the process of being able to learn new vocabulary and form sentences through writing and speaking.

As a language learner however, I dislike the struggle I faced with differences in grammar between my native language and the language that I was learning (Spanish). Sometimes I would have difficulty memorizing some of the rules or it would take me a while to get used to the changes and differences. And while learning Spanish in college in comparison to learning it in high school, I feel a little left behind in the sense of differences of learning style I experienced and missing vocabulary.

In regard to the fire model and surveys that I took, they concluded that I am more of a visual learner, and secondly an auditory learner. With these given characteristics it was recommended that I color-code notes or draw pictures to associate a word or concept to help me in the learning process. I will definitely take these tips into consideration when I begin my language learning journey with Korean. In one of the surveys, it stated that one of learning styles is being music.  It went into detail to explain that using background music can help me while reviewing important information or memorizing important material when learning a new language. This is something I do on occasion but now I will definitely incorporate it more when I am learning Korean. Since music is something, I truly enjoy, I think analyzing Korean song lyrics in order to learn new vocabulary would be a good strategy to memorizing important vocabulary faster and more efficiently.

As of now, I’m learning about the different types of learning styles and what kind of learner I am. This will help me have a greater chance of succeeding in my language learning journey. During this research, I discovered that I am a visual and auditory learner with music being one of the best ways I learn and retain information.

There are so many things I wish to accomplish when learning Korean. But as a start, I hope to be able to read Hangul and be able to pronounce Korean words more efficiently as my first small goal. In addition to the Korean alphabet (Hangul) I also want to learn the Korean number system and learn everyday greetings and phrases in order to have a simple conversation in Korean. I hope I can slowly build from that point into a more intermediate conversation within a year. Some strategies I could use is learning vocabulary from Korean music and learning how to analyze Korean songs. I would do this in order to improve my listening skills, in combination with watching Korean Dramas and selecting words that I do not know or recognize. Then I can look-up that word in order to find its meaning. Some resources I will use are books from the library, resources in the Carole Weinstein International Center, and resources posted on Ning, and my language partner. I will build on what I have learned by firstly making a list to visually see how much Korean I know and work with my language partner to figure out the best way to go from there (as I am knowledgeable with some phrases, some hangul characters, limited vocabulary, and the Sino-Korean number system).

My first experience with a foreign language was learning German throughout middle school and high school. It was not the most popular language to learn, which I ended up loving. By eighth grade we had a cohort of people who had studied German all 3 years of middle school. It was our little community of (self-described) oddballs that continued until we graduated from high school. I think one of my favorite parts of those classes were how much our community enjoyed humor. We would be assigned skits about going to the grocery store or something equally as simple and it was a competition to see who could have the class rolling on the floor with laughter, while saying all of the German with a straight face. It was through this environment that I realized how much I loved collaborative language learning. I am now seeing how this manifests in the form of a high Social score on the Multiple Intelligences Survey and being an evaluative learner in the FIRE model. All of the statements in the E column spoke to me and made sense in the context of my learning experience with German and other languages as well.

From when I was very little I knew I was a visual learner. I wasn’t the best listener, I was distracted easily, and I needed to create my own focus in order to hone in on anything. If I could digest something put in front of me myself, I was able to comprehend it much better than anything explained to me, particularly without a visual cue. I also have always known that I am a much better writer than speaker, no matter what the language. I particularly struggled with this in German. However, I also think that our teachers were always kind to us, allowing us to have a script or know prompts so that we were not forced to speak off the cuff. However, this also ensured my speaking skills did not improve much over the 7 years I learned German.

The other language I have had experience in is Spanish. At UR, I joined geography research about the Amazon. As I became more and more invested in the less technical aspects of the research and particularly as I began my own research project, it became apparent that my lack of language skills in Spanish and Portuguese were a barrier. I had picked up key words and phrases along the way and could guess at what was being said in meetings at times. It was my first time learning a language for practical, applied reasons. I was frustrated I couldn’t take a Spanish course about sustainability, geography, and the Amazon! This experience made me realize that languages are key if I want to continue research abroad and that the way to learn a language is exposure to native speakers and having a goal of what you need to interpret and converse about. That is why I am excited for the structure and autonomy this course provides in regard to language learning.

In the fall of 2020, I began doing research for Dr. David Salisbury in the department of geography and the environment. He specifically focuses on regions of Peru and Brazil in the Amazon. I started out mapping roads for him and at most Google translating the names of shapefiles. I would sit and blink while my professor spoke rapid-fire Spanish and Portuguese with on-the-ground collaborators about our maps.

I then moved on to my own research project mapping COVID-19 among Indigenous communities. This involved working in a research team with my professor and two other professionals, one of which only spoke Spanish. From that point forward, anything involved in my data analysis was translated into Spanish. I couldn’t hold a conversation with anyone, but I started trying to comprehend the meetings more and I began to know some of the key phrases from the excel sheets and data visualizations that were all in Spanish. It was such a vastly different approach to a language than any that I had previously taken.

I took an introductory Spanish course over one summer in an attempt to better understand what was going on in meetings, but I needed more practice listening and speaking than what we did in a class. That was when I realized that I would not be able to learn these languages the way that I thought I needed to through any standard path because they were not as focused or applied. However, I also knew that I was not someone who could learn a language on my own. I am someone built for setting aside a specified time for something and I also am more motivated by collaboration. These are some of the reasons why this program really appealed to me.

This past summer we, as a student research group, traveled to Peru for a workshop about environmental issues in the Peru/Brazil borderlands of the Amazon that we study. We got there and I was thrown into a language blender with Spanish, English, and Portuguese coming at me from all sides. Most of it I didn’t understand. A lot of times I needed someone to translate or I would type things out on my phone. However, an amazing part was how much people were willing to teach me or communicate in broken Spanish or Portuguese. I learned an insane amount because I had people willing to engage with me.

I say all of this because I now have a research collaborator who only speaks Portuguese and after hearing about this program I think it could be what helps me to meet my goals of conversation, comprehension, and investigation when it comes to Portuguese, particularly in my area of study. One of my main goals as a part of this program is to speak as much Portuguese as I can. It is the most challenging aspect of any language to me, but I also think it pushes me to be more competent in that language as well. I also hope to put a specific focus on communicating in the context of the research I am doing. I recognize that I do not even know foundational Portuguese, but I think being able to communicate with my collaborator will be a good initial motivation.

    I have followed two language courses throughout high school and college: Italian and French. I took French in high school and enjoyed it, especially since the lessons were structured and comprehensible. However, at times they were also stressful because of the difficulty of the other courses I was taking, which made it difficult to “find” time to study. I will say, however, that during this period I did not have an efficient idea of how to study, manage my time, or reflect on my goals or mistakes. Something that I much preferred to a college setting with French is that the emphasis on communication between partners was stressed more, with more activities to develop vital listening and speaking skills. It is difficult remembering much else of French class as the last class I followed was about 3-4 years ago, but I do remember very much enjoying the process of learning a different language and the culture attached to it. 

    With Italian, I am finding it easier to develop specific goals and strategies in how to improve with the language. For example, I exposed myself to efficient study strategies like spaced repetition, dual coding, and recall methods that have made it easier to memorize vocab and understand how effective language learning takes place. I also appreciate the emphasis my Italian courses have on immersing oneself in the language, pushing students to read, write, listen, and speak in Italian while also engaging authentic sources to further one’s studies. One critique I would give to language courses at Richmond specifically, however, is the way in which professors encourage students to develop goals around language, because they often never do. I have thus had to determine my own goals, such as how Italian relates to my academic and personal interests, to promote a sense of intrinsic motivation that allows me to study the language despite the frustration I might experience with it. Developing goals is something I think will help continue with the language learning process, and I am glad that the articles we read emphasized this point. 

    Based on the Learning Styles Survey, the Multiple Intelligence Survey, and the Fire Model, it seems that I am a hands-on learner who appreciates “factual” learning. I enjoy very much learning from examples and examining what makes them correct. I also find that I am able to correct my mistakes easier when I can review from something concrete rather than thinking about why the general idea is correct. I will say, however, that I don’t entirely trust these surveys considering the pedagogical debate surrounding learning styles and whether promoting them is a detriment to the many ways a student can engage in self-directed study. Although, I am willing to drop this practical bias to determine if adopting some of the study methods they provided, like memorizing things through mnemonics, journaling, and speaking aloud may help in improving my learning. 

    Based on these learning styles, things like journaling (perhaps reflecting on the topics that I learned or the mistakes I made) would aid in self-directed language study. Additionally, gathering concrete examples when it comes to grammar rules in order to check for accuracy and develop my own problems could help in my comprehension of the ideas attached to these rules. Reading and writing activities like transcribing and identifying unfamiliar words could help build my vocabulary and improve my ability to interpret texts. Tips that Benny Lewis offered in his articles like learning cognates and immersing myself virtually in unconventional ways like changing my computer’s setting to my target language or utilizing online textbooks and websites that offer authentic sources (for free) may prove to be useful. Setting SMART goals is also another practical aid since it would better identify my own intrinsic motivation for learning languages. And, challenging myself to speak the language everyday might also help in making me more comfortable with making mistakes when communicating with people and understanding that those mistakes are an opportunity to learn. 

    I think a good place to start in expanding my language learning activities is to choose one of the aforementioned strategies in respect to the four key areas of language study: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. For example, engaging with texts that correspond to my proficiency level would help introduce appropriate vocabulary that will help me to continue my learning and eventually move on to harder material. Likewise, writing in my target language would encourage me to better understand the grammatical structures of the language and realize the mistakes that I am making (a good activity could be journaling in my target language and perhaps asking my language partner to review it). For speaking, talking with a teacher on italki would vastly improve my ability to engage in conversations across different areas so that when it comes time to engage in organic, unplanned conversation, I am able to identify how and in what manner to speak. Lastly, transcribing audio, listening to podcasts, watching films in my target language, and listening to other materials would force me to try to make sense of the words and phrases that I am hearing. I am hesitant to try some of these methods as they stray from the conventional study methods that many pedagogists promote, but I am willing to try them based on the results of the surveys and the success that Benny Lewis has had in learning multiple languages.