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Ketawang Puspawarna is a famous gamelan composition from central Java, Indonesia, attributed to Prince Mangkunegara IV (reigned 1853-1881) of the Mangkunegaran Palace in Surakarta (known colloquially as Solo). Today the piece is played as the prince enters the palace, and at the end of an all-night Wayang, or shadow puppet performance. 

"Ketawang" refers to the gong-structure format of the piece, and denotes it as having 16 beats between strikes of the gong ageng (meaning "largest gong"). The buka, or introduction, of the piece is played by the rebab, a two-stringed bowed lute with ancestry from the middle east. The kendhang (drum), who acts as the rhythmic leader of the ensemble, enters soon after and leads the ensemble to slow the tempo down. The pesindhen, the female singer, enters later on, accompanied by the gerong, the male chorus; they sing during the ngelik (chorus section) and add stylistic cries to mark the ensemble's position within the gong structure. 

Within the context of the Javanese court, gamelan music is played in a Pendhapa, a large, open-walled structure similar to a pavilion (seen below). If you listen closely to the recording, you can hear birds nesting in the rafters of the pendhapa calling -  in response to, or in spite of - the gamelan music below.

Gamelan music experienced a period of flourishing performing arts practice during the 18th - 20th centuries, as four rival courts in Surakarta and Yogyakarta (both in central Java) competed to refine the art forms of music, poetry, and dance. Today, central Java is considered by the Javanese to be a major hub for performing arts, even with the diminished feudal power of the courts. Indonesian performing arts - and their many regional and island variations - are a source of national pride for Indonesians, and today, government-sponsored events such as the Bali Arts Festival and Art Jog work to maintain popular interest in traditional and contemporary Indonesian arts.

I am extremely interested in Korean's interpersonal relationships in colleges and universities. Because I moved to America at such a young age, I can't really understand any of the school culture that my friends in Korea talk about. I've always had fantasies of what it would be like to go to a Korean high school or college. In between the Korean students, there are slangs that go around, and it is really interesting. Also, the relationships between friends and classmates is completely different than that of American schools. Korean students speak formally to strangers or people that are even one year older than you. Age plays a huge role in Korea as to how you talk to someone, what words you use, and how you deliver your message. To learn about this school culture, I have to know formal vocabulary and what words I can use or not. For example, there are three different ways to say the command "eat" in Korean. 밥먹어 is informal and used commonly to friends or people younger than you. 식사하세요 is formal and used commonly to strangers or people older than you. 진지드세요 is super formal and used commonly to your grandparents or someone that is significantly older than you. I've incorporated advanced vocabulary and preparing for Yeonsei in my learning plan to engage these topics.

This is a blog post I have been anticipating writing for some time, as my initial interest in Indonesian culture was through the traditional gamelan music of Bali and Java. Because of Indonesia's existence as an archipelago of thousands of islands, many styles and regional variations of ensemble music have developed, and there is huge variation as far as the instruments used, the socio-cultural context of performance, its relation to local dance styles, and the overall mood evoked by the pieces. As these styles of music have often been developing for centuries prior to the standardization and nationalization of the Indonesian language, the vocabulary related to performance - and, if applicable, the language used for singing - is often the regional/island language, such as Balinese, Javanese, etc. 

In Javanese gamelan, the lyrics recited by the pesindhen (female singer) and the gerong (male chorus) are usually sung in Kawi, a standardized form of Old Javanese with a considerable amount of Sanskrit loan words. The Javanese language is hierarchical in nature, meaning that there are essentially three distinct languages within one - the lowest form is meant for speaking to a person of a lower social status, the middle form for speaking to someone of an equal class, and the highest form being reserved to speaking to priests or royalty. Kawi is considered the pinnacle language of this hierarchical structure. This language is largely esoteric in modern Java, so most Javanese listeners do not understand the lyrics being sung; rather, the music is meant to promote a pensive, meditative state for those who do not understand. 

Through my participation in the gamelan ensemble throughout most of my time at UR and my education with Indonesian music teachers, I have been immersed in the introductory language used to describe Balinese and Javanese music. For pretty much every note or sound played by the gamelan, there is a vocal representation for it, especially for the drum patterns and the cyclical "landmark" instruments, like the gong, kenong and kempul. I plan to research Javanese sung poetry at some point in the future, but I consider it most important at this point to study Indonesian, as this is likely the language that will be shared between myself and music teachers. In my learning plan, I have included learning more gerong texts and popular songs in Bahasa Indonesia.

One thing in particular that interests me about Malta is that despite a chaotic history of political rulings, it has been able to develop successfully as a nation. The country has existed independently, as a republic, for less than 50 years (December 1974) and joined the EU in 2008. Over the course of history, Malta has been conquered by multiple other countries that have had a tremendous impact on the development of Maltese culture. It is surprising to me, though, that the disorganized political ownership has not left the country in worse shape.

Malta was first discovered around 5200BC and was first colonized by the Phoenicians around 800BC. Following this, the Roman domination started in 218BC, followed by the Arab (870) conquests until 1090. During the Middle Ages, Malta was conquered by four different groups (Normans, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese). It was said the Arab rule was one of the harshest, resulting in the migration of many people to nearby Sicily and significant death. In 1530, though, the Knights of St. John arrived in Malta to revive the society and introduce Renaissance ideals. The population experienced significant growth during this time period and the reign was more positive than the last. The period under St. John was short-lived, as Napolean Bonaparte conquered Malta from the Knights in 1798. Similar to the last, the French occupation of Malta only lasted a couple of years until the British officially established Malta as a British Crown Colony. It was during this political period that the Maltese natives begin to fight for self-government and independent ruling. It was in 1964 that Malta was granted independence within the British Commonwealth and in 1974 that Malta became its own republic. From this point onward, Malta has pushed to become its own independent nation within the EU/Eurozone.

It strikes me as unusual that an island in the Mediterranean, conquered by so many other large world powers, is functioning fairly well and developed today.  It seems more typical that small island regions, like Malta, are left extremely resource-depleted, dependent, and underdeveloped after experiencing the political rulership of so many different parties. On multiple development indexes, Malta tends to fall just below Italian rankings and above some of the other countries in the Mediterranean. For example, Malta’s GDP per capita for 2017 was approximately $27,145.81 and Italy’s GDP for 2017 was $34,877.83. Other close GDP per capita approximates include Cyprus at $29,432.67 and Greece at $23,027.41. Although the GDP figures appear low compared to US per capita GDP ($53,128.54), it is important to consider factors such as nation size and adjusted rate for PPP, that can render Malta’s GDP more valuable that it seems at first glance. On the Human Development Index, Malta ranks an overall .878, in comparison to Italy that ranks .88 and the US at .924. In the areas of life expectancy at birth and inequality-adjusted HDI, Malta actually ranks higher than the US.

The first area that I looked towards to better understand what features of Malta left it stable, despite thousands of years of political conquest, is geography. I am studying the effect of the “natural resource curse” in my Economics of Developing Nations class and one thing I noticed about Malta is that it is not particularly rich in any one natural resource. I researched online and discovered that tourism, small-scale agriculture, and some manufacturing are the primary sources fueling GDP. The service industry (88.1% of GDP) makes up most of the economy, manufacturing (10.6%) comes in second, and agriculture comes in third (1.3%). This type of GDP composition, service-oriented, is reflective of a very industrially developed country. The fact that Malta was not rich in resources such as metals, agricultural products, or oil could have possibly protected it from exploitation over time. As a next step, I am very curious to better understand the development of similar island-nations, with a disorganized political histories.

Another factor of the Maltese economy I would like to explore more is the potential impact of immigration. Malta has been considered a discouraging addition to the EU because of its role in North African immigration into Italy. Malta is located conveniently close to Libya and Tunisia (North Africa), so it serves as a first stop for illegal immigrants. Surprisingly, it seems that the Maltese economy may actually have a need for migrant workers, considering it has an extremely low unemployment rate filled by its large working-age population and increasing economic growth. While conducting research online, I found that the Maltese government is outwardly very resistant to African immigration, but many workers are slowly becoming integrated into the informal economy. I hope to do more research about how the culture and backgrounds of these people will become a part of the larger Maltese story.

One aspect of Korean culture that really interests me, is the popularity of cartoons called "Webtoons". While cartoons in American culture are usually considered to be in the children's realm of entertainment, the popular internet service/app "Webtoon" is catered specifically for a teenage/adult audience and has attained enormous success. The authors or lead artists of popular webtoons gain celebrity status, which I saw first-hand through a youtube video. In it, people described their ideal boyfriend or girlfriend to someone who was separated from them by a wall, and when they revealed the artist to whom they had described everything, people were shocked. The person on the other side of the wall was the lead artist/writer of an extremely popular webtoon, and every one of these people who were from all different walks of life, all knew him and were star-struck. This behavior towards the writer behind a comic-book series is possible in American culture, but would have to be from a group of fans of that specific comic series, thereby making it a niche culture; for Korea, it seems to be a national adoration.

However, one of the aspects of the webtoons that contributes to its popularity, is its replica of colloquial Korean, and even the type of slang used in texts.There is a very distinct difference between texting in Korean and speaking normally in Korean, just as there is usually a difference between texting and speaking in English. Often times, people will shorten words like 스타벅스 (starbucks) to 스벅 (sbuck) or even mix different languages like Japanese or English in these shortenings. The meaning of this kind of slang can be hard to decipher at times, and with this kind of vocabulary being used throughout webtoons, it means I need to study it in order to understand what's going on in them. I included in my learning plan that I wanted to be able to read an entire webtoon and understand everything that's going on, without looking anything up, and in order to do so I'll need to learn more about slang along with the general culture of Korea. My Korean teacher Jimin took this into account and showed me clips of Korean variety shows, gave worksheets with lists of Korean slang vocabulary that we then translated and went through common Korean idioms or sayings so I would be able to expand my knowledge of both slang and Korean culture. 

 I have been interested in Korean slangs for a long time. I've been exposed to it since I was young and would always hear it on tv shows without knowing what they mean. There are so many slangs in Korean language because they can be improvised very easily. Slangs in English are completely separate words, but in Korean, most slangs are formed by putting syllables of different words together. In a sense, if one knows more Korean vocabulary, it is easier to at least guess what the slang means just from hearing the different syllables from different words and which words it combined.

I wouldn't particularly say that one needs any special vocabulary or linguistic knowledge to learn the slangs. To learn different slangs, it is as simple as just figuring out which words are shortened to make the one particular slang. In addition, exposure is very important in learning slangs which is why watching Korean variety shows helps a lot. 

This is one example of a slang formed with two words:

I have been watching some tv shows with my tutor and every time a slang word would come up, I would write it down and try to guess which words form the slang. Usually, context and just syllables are enough to give the meaning away, but sometimes, there are difficult slangs. Also, just like learning new vocabulary, making vocabulary cards for slangs is another great way to learn them. I have missing sentence exercises to practice my application of slangs as well. 

Slangs are used a lot more among the younger age groups, and by being able to use those slangs, you will be able to have more native-like conversations with young Koreans. 

I am interested in the culture around drinking coffee in Greece. In Greece, besides being at the beach (only in the summer), going for coffee is probably the #1 pastime. So much so that, most of the time, when people want to arrange a meeting they don't really say "let's go out". Instead, they say "let's go for a coffee". Coffee is also really big in Greece because of smoking. The majority of the Greek population over 20 years old are smokers, and coffee is directly linked to cigarettes for almost all smokers. 

There are a lot of different types of coffee in Greece, and they are labeled differently than in the US. Initially, this was not in our learning plan, but Dan and I decided to devote a class to learning how to order at a coffee shop. 

I'm really interested in learning more about how interpersonal relationships work in Korean culture. During our last study session, my learning partner and I talked about how age plays a huge part in determining social relations and hierarchy. More specifically, Korean culture emphasizes an individual's birth year more than their real birth date, which is conventional for Americans. Birth years determine which grade year someone is going to be in -- a lot of the time children start school early or late just to be in the same grade as others who share the same birth year. This ensures that people build social relations with others in their age group, and helps to eliminate confusion and social tension later in life when people go into the workforce. Age also determines how Koreans interact with one another -- when talking to someone older we have to use formal language and pronouns. This isn't the case in English; however Bengali does have similar language rules when it comes to formal/informal language. Although age groups don't play as big a role in Bengali societies, because of the similar rules in most Asian languages, I want to learn more about how informal/formal language plays a different role in the different cultures. 

I was first introduced to Korean culture when I was in primary school. Korean dramas became very popular at that time, so I began to be interested in Korea. As I grew up, Kpop became more and more popular, so I got more access to the Korean culture. From listening to Kpop songs and watching Korean dramas, I found out that Korean and Chinese share a lot of similarities in speaking and writing.

Chinese was first introduced to Korea in the first century BC when the Han dynasty invaded the north of the peninsula and established the Four Commanderies. Buddhism arrived in Korea from China in the late 4th century and spread from there to Japan. The Goguryeo kingdom strengthened itself by adopting Chinese institutions, laws, and culture, including Buddhism. Research shows that all formal writing, including the official annals of the Korean dynasties and all government documents, was done in Chinese until the late 19th century. This explains why the Korean language now has different writing characters, but a lot of them still share the similar pronunciation with Chinese. This similarity makes it easier to understand Korean since the sentence composition and grammar all not entirely novel for me. When I practice Korean speaking, I could combine my knowledge in Chinese with the Korean grammar to learn faster. And during my learning, I found it fascinating that the Korean language borrows English as well. It is very interesting for me to compare the Korean language with the languages I am familiar with,

Growing up, I always assumed the Korean that my parents spoke to me in was the Korean that everyone spoke. However, after many confused stares from family friends' kids and soft chuckles from their parents I soon learned that there are many different dialects of Korean in which there are many unique phrases and pronunciations of words- hence, the stares and laughter. 

Due to Korea's mountainous terrain, Korean is split into small local dialects. There is the Seoul dialect which is spoken in Gyeonggi, Incheon, Seoul, and Kaesŏng (North Korea). This is the basis of the standard language. Others are Yeongseo and Chungcheong dialects. The Gyeongsang dialects also called Southeastern dialects are spoken in cities such as Busan, Daegu, and Ulsan and are easily distinguishable from the Seoul dialect due to their varied pitch. The Jeolla dialects or Southwestern dialects are spoken in Gwangju(where my parents are from). The Jeju dialect is spoken on Jeju Island which sometimes considered a separate Korean language. 

Dialects are the different ways in which sound is produced within the same language. These dialects may stem from the different uses of primary and secondary manners such as complete obstruction to no obstruction of the production of sounds and voicing, length, stress and pitch.

Not only are dialects fun and interesting to listen to but they also create a smaller culture of that region within the culture of Korea just like in the United States. In researching, I would need to learn some unique common phrases of some of the dialects as well as the linguistic differences in how they pronounce different words whether that be lengthening vowels or emphasizing different parts of words. I plan on speaking with my parents and learning more words of Jeolla dialect as well as seeking out videos and movies that feature dialect in their dialogue. I would also like to find the history of how these dialects came to be depending on social, environmental or foreign influences. 

Even though I grew up surrounded by Korean culture, I've never learned about the differences between the Korean language in South Korea and that of North Korea. I've heard from my mom that my grandfather was forced to leave his family in North Korea in order to move down to South Korea, so I think this would be a good opportunity to learn more about the history and how the separation influenced the language. For my final presentation, I may want to dive a bit deeper into the spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation differences between North and South Korea. As I research, I think the phonetic transcriptions we learned about in class would help.

This is a table of some words that North and South Korea pronounce differently.

And this is another table that gives some examples of the grammatical differences.

I think it's interesting to see how the language in both countries changed and developed over time.

Other topics I might want to do for my presentation are food, dialects, and maybe the differences between the Korean language of the past and today.

Food has always been a big part of my life, especially among my family members. Korean cuisine is something I’ve grown up with, and I honestly cannot imagine myself without it even for a day. I wanted to know more about traditional Korean cuisine, but I need to know more Korean in order to do so since there are traditional Korean vocabularies used. There is a lot of history involved with this topic, since it has been around since ancient times, and I would also like to research the actual history of Korean cuisine on my own. There’s also a social aspect within the history, for people in different social classes ate different kinds of food. In order to fully understand this concept, I would need to include learning new vocabulary words in my learning plans.

Turkey has always been a fascinating country to me. It is one of the cultural centers of the Middle East, both a giver to those cultures around it and a receiver of those cultures as well. Simply a look at Istanbul or any other major Turkish city shows the beautiful remnants of the Silk Road and hundreds of years of culture compacted into one living, breathing city. The beauty of Turkish architecture is echoed all throughout the Middle East, and the architecture of other parts of the Middle East are visible in Turkey as well.

This mish-mash of hundreds of years is clearly reflected in the Turkish language, a language composed of original Turkish words, Arabic loan words, Persian loan words, and a bit of English and French loan words. Knowing Arabic, Persian, English, or French is not necessary to learn Turkish, but it is certainly helpful. I find many times my knowledge of Persian allows me to recognize many of the Arabic and Persian loan words. I do not know much about Arabic grammar, but I do find that the grammar of Turkish is very similar to Persian. The addition of suffixes to words to create sentences is identical in both languages, and the actual suffixes used are quite similar at times. I do want to consider adding the slight study of Persian vocabulary and grammar into my learning plan though because I actually believe it will help me in my understanding of Turkish greatly. Otherwise, my study of the Turkish language and its vocabulary as is already stated in my learning plan (study sets, interacting with my language partner, listening to Turkish music, etc.) is plenty enough to learn not only about Turkish but the other countries that gave rise to the current state of Turkish and Turkey.

SDLC%20Post%20Learning%20Journal%20%235.docx

     First, a brief comment on the cultural and linguistic diversity in India, the country where my target language is spoken. India has 22 official languages and hundreds of unofficial local languages and dialects, and along with those linguistic differences come cultural and historical differences. I am aware that it is not completely appropriate to speak of “Indian culture” and “Hindi-speaking culture” as equivalent. For the purpose of this course, I will try to focus my cultural awareness on North India (the more Hindi-speaking part), but I cannot guarantee that cultural artifacts I mention necessarily align with Hindi-speaking Indians.

     A few aspects of Indian culture that interest me so far are the history and architecture of India. I have been to such beautiful forts in India, and the stories surrounding them are fascinating! For example, in Jiapur, Rajisthan, I went to Nahargar Fort which contains beautifully painted rooms. A guide there told us that each bedroom was for a different wife of the king - and the king had hidden passageways built for him to move between the rooms! The same king had Jal Mahal, or Water Palace, built for his Queen. It is a whole palace built on a tiny island in the lake. Everybody can see it, especially when it is lit up at night, but nobody can access it to harm the queen!

     P.S. Fun fact about Nahargar Fort: it is rumored to be haunted by the spirit of a certain Nahar Singh Bhomia - hence the name! ;)

This is me in one of the bedrooms of Nahargar Fort. Photo credits go to Ashish Bharti and Snapoholic.

This is Jal Mahal, the Queen's Water Palace, at night. Photo credits go to Ashish Bharti and Snapoholic

     In the future, I would love to have conversations with native Hindi-speakers about their rich architectural history, but for this semester I think the closest I will get to talking about architecture and history will be something like “I like such-and-such place” and “This palace is beautiful”. I will leave more complex conversations about culture for when I can do them justice. In my learning plan, I do have goals related to telling about the past, so I suppose I could talk about times when I visited such places. For that, I shouldn’t need special vocabulary or linguistic knowledge besides knowing the names of places.

     For the past four weeks, my language learning partner Atul and I have been working on grasping a basic knowledge of the Hindi script. I used the textbook “Elementary Hindi” from the Global Studio and Atul helped me a lot to learn the letters and how to join them together. The script, with its many new letters and conjuncts, is more complex than I anticipated. Although I can read and transcribe basic words, I am not as far as I thought I would be by now. However, since my main goals this semester are related to interpersonal communication rather than written skills, I will move on with my learning plan to learn verbal skills in tandem with written skills.

     This week for verbal skills I been working on basic Hindi greetings and introductions, such as commenting on my origin, my job, and the weather. I did not learn numbers and dates yet as I planned, but I think I will try that after I get some more basics down. I listen to Mango lessons in the car during my commute, and I practice with Ashish (my fiance) and Atul. I think that combination is very effective - although the Mango lessons feel slow, they are really drilling the language into my head, and then I get joy from being able to creatively produce similar phrases. Following is an example of that. (It is correct as far as I remember.)

Namaste / Hello

Mera naam Kelly hain / My name is Kelly

Main Amriki Hun / I am American

Main student hun. / I am a student [Hindi-speakers often use common English words in place of the Hindi equivalents]

Aaj mosam bahut achha hain. Gurmee nahi hain. / Today the weather is very good. It is not hot.

     As far as near-future plans, for verbal practice, I am going to continue completing the Mango lessons - I hope to have all 69 lessons done by the end of the semester. It is so great that I can do them during my daily ~2 hours of commuting instead of that being wasted time. For writing practice, I really enjoy copying the practice passages from the textbook and translating them. It takes me a very long time, but it is like a satisfying puzzle to me if I can have the dedication to sit down and do it. I will attach an artifact of one of those passages. For interpersonal communication practice, I mostly try practicing what I learn from Mango. Specifically, my next learning task is talking about likes, dislikes, and daily activities. For this, I will set up a vocabulary deck to learn important nouns and verbs.

The artifact, transliteration, and translation follows.

Namaste. Mera naam Kavita hain.

Aapka naam kya hain?

Main Hindustani ladki Hun.

Kya aap Hindustani Hain? Kya aap Amriki hain?

Yeh Kaun hai? Yeh mera dost hai. Iska naam Deepak hai.

Yeh mera ghar. Mera ghar dilli main hai. Mera ghar bada hai.

Yeh mera kitab hai. Mera kitab neela hai.

Hello. My name is Kavita.

What is your name?

I am an Indian girl.

Are you Indian? Are you American?

Who is this? This is my friend. His name is Deepak.

This is my house. My house is in Delhi. My house is big.

This is my book. My book is blue.

Unlike English, Korean consists of phonology that is different in terms of where the sound comes and stops. The ㄹ for example, is a sound that does not exist in English because it sounds like the mixture of an L and an R. For example, pronouncing the word 한글 is extremely difficult with just English as the ㄹ make it almost impossible to pronounce using the English alphabet. In my experience, I feel that most Korean sounds use the tongue body and the palatal with exceptions to couple letters. Korean also feels more distinct in between each letters or words. For example, in between 한 and 글, there is a point where you stop the air from coming, which prevents the connecting of the sounds. Unlike English where all the letters within a word seem connected, Korean has something like "cut, cut, cut" in between the letters. In order to achieve the perfect native sounds, I think it just require practice and listening over and over again and having your language partner fix your production of sounds. 

I am interested in the alcohol culture in South Korea, I have seen in variety shows and movies a lot, where the people would constantly drink beer/sake and have fried chicken. I am interested in analyzing why that is. This topic relates to language because there are a lot of cultural norms and rules governing how individuals have to behave, towards similar age groups and elders. Korea has a strict rule on using formal language when referring to elders and this rule is also expressed over the dinner table, with alcohol. For this research, I would need to understand the different ways of using formal language, what words describe elders and the proper etiquette over the dinner table.

Korean has 19 consonants, and 21 vowels. I have been trying to memorize the alphabets, and expand my vocabulary. As expected, the words that I have been having the most difficulty remembering or pronouncing properly are the ones that don't exist in English. For example, the consonants ㅈ and ㅊ sound very similar to me because their sounds exist in English. The closest comparison in English would be a j and a ch sound, but none of them actually give the ㅈ and ㅊ sound. I have also been having difficulty with the vowels -- I am not used to using so many vowels and having to deliberately change the pitch in how I pronounce i's and e's. In Korean there are different i's, e's, and o's. Moreover depending on which consonant they are paired with, the stress that you use also changes. So far, I have been trying to listening to more recording, and have conversations with my language partner more often. Although I haven't been able to perfect my pronunciation, I think practicing has definitely helped me in distinguishing the sounds when I hear native speakers.

Seonghye has now moved me to the intermediate group with three other girls so that I can practice conversation and a more group oriented classroom experience.  We've met in the library a couple of times, but Seongye has rented a room in Jepson for us to use for our future classes.  In these past couple of weeks, we have been learning how to order at a cafe and some grammar points that correspond to that.  More generally, I've been wanting to learn how to navigate through a day in Korea and this is one of the steps.  First we went over terms and then practiced using them in sentences.  We would pair up and enact a scenario in which one person would be the cashier and the other would be ordering food.  This was effective in establishing the flow of a real-life conversation and allowed us to apply what we are learning.  

Seonghye has us using a Korean app on our phones that has lists of all of our vocabulary.  On the app, there are little games you can play to help you learn the words.  It even gives you a score at the end that you can compare with other classmates.  This is really helpful because its a way to study that feels like a break, and its very convenient to do for a few minutes here and there during the day.  When we come back to class the following week, we will have a little competition game to see who has mastered the vocabulary.  Its a fun activity that gives incentive to study.  

I hope that we will continue to use these strategies as they are very helpful and a fun way to learn.  I enjoy being in the group instead of one on one because its small enough where I can still ask all my questions, but its better to practice with each other.