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Jocelyne Rodriguez
Journal Entry 2

How have you organized your self-directed learning plan, and what have you learned so far? How will your studies allow you investigate your target language and culture more deeply? What first prompted your interest, and motivated you to start learning?

Based on the FIRE model, I am both a factual and rational learner. This means I like to have rules and specific grammatical guidelines to learn languages. I also work a lot with memorization. For this reason, my learning plan emphasizes grammatical learning of rules and patterns in my target language. I am interested in learning how to determine when to use certain words, how to determine when to use specific articles, propositions, etc, and rules for verbal conjugations. Furthermore, I want to be able to build a more extensive word bank for which I plan to rely on exercises that use memorization.
Moreover, I know I am also a rational learner and that learning the reasons behind rules and general fun facts helps me retain information and remember rules. For this reason I want to use some time to learn more about cultural influences in language, language development, and the origin of certain rules and practices.
My language learning is motivated by my interest in Latin American politics (including Brazil). For this reason I do not only want to learn about grammar but I also want to be able to incorporate some cultural learning. So far, I have been learning basic useful phrases like greetings, phrases to express basic personal information like ‘my name is..,’ and ‘I am from…’. Although my study of Portuguese has been very basic so far, I have already encountered differences in communication between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese which highlight cultural differences between the two countries. For example, Portugal uses the informal ‘tu’ (you), while Brazil only uses the formal (voce).

After receiving feedback from your classmates and Dr. Marsh-Soloway, what changes do you anticipate making? 

I plan to review my learning plan once I find the most appropriate learning pace for me and how long it takes me to master certain topics. Furthermore, a big part of my learning plan includes building a word bank. For this I am still looking for a way to organize the new vocabulary words I learn. Currently I am organizing words under topics but I would also like to separate words according to their use. I would like to organize words not only under topics but also under parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives).

Jocelyne Rodriguez
Journal Entry 1

What parts of the brain are most important for the production and comprehension of speech?

According to the article How the Brain Handles Language, The left hemisphere is dominant for language in most right-handed people (estimates are usually over 95%). An interesting concept explored by this reading is thinking of the production of language as a process with different steps that involve different parts of the brain with different functions (e.g. conceptualization of a message, semantics, phonology representation, send signals to muscles, and self-monitoring).

How do you conceptualize or process meaning? Do these readings bring to mind any questions or motivations that could help promote your foreign-language abilities, retention, and recollection?

The article How We Mean, provides a motivation for language learning by arguing that it is crucial to look at different languages because if we restrict our view to just one language-our own- we will never truly understand the distinction between sense and reference, because it is natural to think that ‘our’ way of talking about the world is the only now, or the most natural one.
Another interesting point raised in this reading is that of interpretation of meaning that there is more than one way to explain meaning. One can have a visual representation, a definition, or derive meaning from experience and logical conclusions. Furthermore, it brings into attention the importance of studying the meaning of words in context rather than in isolation.
It is argued that “words by themselves do not actually make sense. only when they are used within sentences do they make sense. Sentences exist to enable us to make sense of words.” This is because isolated words have the potential for conveying too much meaning while words in sentences have more specific meanings that are easier to comprehend. This last point has motivated me to study vocabulary in context. Before, I would only look up the translation of words from my target language in English. Now I am motivated to also find sentences in which the words are used to make sure they are used in the same way that their translation would suggest.

Jocelyne Rodriguez
Response Paper 1
SLDC 105

My experiences as a language learner have been very enriching since they allow me to learn more about the target language but also my own by giving me a point of comparison. My study of Portuguese is my fourth experience as a language learner. My first language is Spanish and so my first experience as a language learner was with English. Then, later in high school I took a couple of French classes. Most recently, I studied abroad in Italy last year so I studied some Italian on my own before leaving and took a course while I was there. Each experience had been different and allowed me to learn more about my learning style. For example, while learning French my classes really emphasized grammar and written exams and compositions and so my French was much better in writing than verbally. On the other hand, while learning Italian I was able to immerse in the language, practice speaking, and listen to it on a regular basis. My classes for Italian were mostly discussion-based and so my speaking became better than my writing. This time I want to find a balance. I want to develop both speaking and writing skills and Portuguese and so I want to incorporate diverse forms of learning. I know now that I have more than one learning style but that depending on the style I choose (visual/ listening), my learning outcome will be different. Therefore, based on my learning goals, I want to incorporate visual learning exercises that emphasize reading and writing at the same time that I incorporate verbal exercises to practice speaking and listening. Listening to music with lyrics and watching shows with subtitles might be very helpful since they incorporate both sound and writing simultaneously and allow me to see the connection between the two.
What I enjoy the most as a language learner is being able to see progress. That moment when you are listening to a song that has been in your playlist for a month and you are finally able to make out some of the words, or when you see a word in a class reading about the country of your target language and you actually know the meaning. Something else I enjoy is the ability to incorporate culture along with your study of language. I am an anthropology minor and so I truly enjoy learning more about new cultures, not only because it is fascinating but also because it helps you put into perspective you own practices and question the things you thought were normal for everyone but were actually characteristics of your own particular culture.
What I do not like about language learning is the time it takes to master a new language. Sometimes I become frustrated when I cannot master simple things from my target language like pronouncing nasal sounds (which are very common in Portuguese). Another thing that I wish I could change is the exposure to the language. Learning a language with limited immersion can be hard as you are not naturally exposed to the language but you actively have to seek this exposure. I wish I had more people around me to practice speaking Portuguese but having a language partner and media resources has been very helpful.
Using the FIRE model, I have discover that I am both a factual and rational learner. I like to know rules and have concrete expectations and guidelines, at the same time that I like to know the explanations behind the rules and exploring intriguing questions I encounter. Factual learning for me is a form of summarizing what I learn, while rational learning is more of a way to form meaningful connections between facts and personal experience that allow me to remember rules and facts.

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Gökhan and I usually message each other in Turkish to organize our class meet times and to talk about what we will cover so here is an example of that where Gokhan asks me what we were going to cover one specific evening.

Because of classes and other commitments for wrapping up the semester, the amount of lessons that I have a week have unfortunately decreased. My sessions with Gökhan have mostly focused on polishing my speaking skills. I believe that I have gotten to a point where I am a familiar with most grammar structures - i.e. I can recognize a lot - but I have problems with producing the structures in timely manner. My biggest challenge is talking about “I said…”, “you said…”, or “he/she said…”, which requires the use of this complex subordinate clause structure. I am able to produce it correctly (...sometimes) but it requires A LOT of thinking. It honestly feels like a math equation. However, in comparison to the beginning of the semester, I believe that I have made a good amount of progress on my timing on responses and also with my listening skills. I intend to practice what I have learned a bit with Turkish people when I go to New York. (Hopefully I can understand them!) I am looking forward to the summer when I am going to have much more time to practice these skills. Gökhan told me that he can set me up with some of his friends so that I could skype them to keep my skills at par. I am also looking forward to seeing my progression in the language in the future.

Ohh! Also, I started watching this show on Netflix called Winter Sun to improve my listening skills. I watch the show with the subtitles in Turkish so that I would be forced to pay attention to what they are saying. I think that it is working out pretty well. I also found this youtube channel of this native Spanish speaker who posts videos helping Turkish people learning Spanish. His videos are also helpful for my listening skills because he speaks a little slower (I think). I think I can also understand him for the most part which makes me happy haha.

Here is a link to one of his videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUFeszBlDQI

I just realized how little time that I have left since the semester is coming to an end. Therefore, I decided to crank my lessons with Gökhan up a notch. Earlier in the semester, we had been meeting twice a week for two hours each but now we have started to meet every day in the week for an hour or so. I figured that this would be better as it would give me more exposure to the language. I believe that it has been working out well from my initial perspective because I am now constantly searching for words to contextualize the world around me. Gökhan also put me in contact with one of his co-workers from Turkey so I have started to practice my writing more with him.

Also, a friend and I just bought tickets to go to New York right before graduation so I decided to revamp my personal Turkish journal entries writing about random things. I want to have as much exposure to the language as possible so that I don’t take forever trying to say a single sentence when I meet people. In my first couple entries, I reviewed writing my self introductions, why I want to learn Turkish, and also about my time in Barcelona. I had Gökhan edit what I wrote to make sure that the sentences were right.

With regards to the lesson, Berhaun reacted fine for the most part. I think that she might have been a little overwhelmed because I covered a lot from “hello” to asking someone how they are. I think the only thing that she really remembered was how to say “hello” and “good bye” because “hello” in Turkish is the same as in Tigrinya and she has heard me say “good bye” to Gokhan a lot in Turkish. I guess I now know not overwhelm my student with too much next time.

A few weeks ago, Gökhan and I covered grocery vocabulary. I really wanted to put what I learned to the test so we decided to go on an excursion to Short Pump and Target with Berhaun (who drove). I did not review as many words as I should have before the trip so Gökhan had to re-teach me a lot of words. However, I believe that everything worked out well because I could actually visualize the vocabulary that I was learning. Many of the words, such as gömlek (shirt), aşkı (hanger), and elbise (dress), stayed in my head after the experience. I was also happy about the experience because I could practice using the -dık suffix that allows me to form subordinate clauses in Turkish. I am looking forward to more learning activities like this to keep the process interesting.

Also, in class, we started reading children’s novels in Turkish. I usually read the sentences in Turkish first and then I try to translate the sentences to make sure that I understand. I have improved with recognizing grammatical structures. Some of the vocabulary has been very specific and not very useful but I have still been able to improve my pronuncation. After reading the small novels, we covered responding to easy questions about the story in Turkish, which I believe helped alot. I am going to keep up with these things and try to do some more stuff to keep practicing.

Also also, I am going to teach my friend, Berhaun, introductions in Turkish using the mind map approach that I covered with Gökhan a couple weeks ago. I am a visual learner so I thought it was an extremely helpful way to learn. I don’t know what kind of learner she is so I think that it would be interesting to see how she would react.

So I guess I should start of this post sharing that I figured out the mystery of the potential tense. It turns out that it’s not as hard as I thought it was. I think that there was mostly a misunderstanding between Gökhan and I so I kinda freaked out and shut down. In that lesson, we had already gone two hours covering other material so I was probably a little stressed. In the event that you are curious how to say them, gelemem (I cannot come), gelmeyebilirim (I may not come), gelemeyebilirim (I may not be able to come) are the forms and they all come from the verm gelmek (to come). I think I am getting to the point where all of these suffixes are starting to look the same so I am going to review them more with Gökhan to make sure that I understand them.

Aside from those, Gökhan and I made a mind map of daily things (e.g. bed, closet, spoon, fork, knife, glasses) and also of the airport (e.g. security, make an anouncement, baggage). I thought that it was a nice and new way to learn vocabulary that I hadn’t considered before. We covered a lot of words so I have a lot of review to do but I am interested in the activity and look forward to doing this with other languages that I study.

Okay! So things were going great for the past few classes until my last class covering the potential suffix! This suffix allows you to form sentences like “I can come”.This is fairly simple to make for positive sentences in the present tense. In my last class, I learned that this can get a little more complicated for negative sentences because a subtle change in entonation and morphology can make that potential statement either “I cannot come”, “I may not come”, or “I may not be able to come”. To be completely honest, I still do not understand it. Thankfully, there is a lesson of this on the podcast that I listen to (Turkish Tea Time). I listened to the episode some time last semester but I thought that it was too advanced for me at the time so I did not pay as much attention. But since I am a Turkish pro now (not really haha), I am going to check it out again and take notes before I ask Gökhan again.

On the bright side of this somber entry, I am getting more used to this really complicated suffix to form subordinate clauses, specifically forming sentences like “I think that …” Unfortunately, it takes me an arm and a leg to finally make the sentences so I will be practicing those sentences a lot for the next couple weeks in order to improve my speed in production.    

We’re back!! Woot woot! I did a lot of studying over winter break so the transition for me getting back to work was not that bad thankfully. I had a lot of time to polish the tenses that I learned. I also made a list of the most important words for communicating in any language. These are words that I believe to occur more frequently in everyday speech. I hope that this will help me be able to communicate with not so long pauses. I also have a list of transition and filler words to help fill in these blanks. I showed the list to Gökhan and he gave me some suggestions for some more words.

For the semester, I want to improve my speaking and listening skills overall so I started writing journal entries. In my first entry, I wrote about what I did over the winter break. After I wrote it, Gökhan edited it and gave me some suggestions. Writing the entry was pretty easy for the most part because I used fairly easy words, but I am going to try use more complex vocabularies and structures in the future to challenge myself.

As far as class, we briefly reviewed all of the tenses and cases that we covered last semester and then went right into learning more vocabulary. I wanted to learn how to talk about movies in Turkish so Gökhan prepared a worksheet for me on movie reviews. From the class, I learned the passive tense saying sentences like “the movie was directed by…”, which was fairly easy compared to other tenses that I had learned before. In the next few classes, I am going to practice this tense more to make sure that I understand it.

I’ve founds that I really enjoy learning another language. It’s been a fun mix of language learning and cultural exploration and all of it’s been very interesting. Even the difficult parts were still interesting and held my attention. I really enjoyed being able to explore a non-traditional language and I will continue this Sanskrit practice as I dive further into language acquisition and yoga practice which will solidify this cultural, language based  immersion.

The format of being able to post blogs and discuss in class about our learning experiences has been really beneficial. In the past I’ve found it really difficult to stay focused or stay on track but by having a language learning community it’s a lot easier to stay motivated. It’s been so impressive hearing all of the wonderful things others have been learning this semester. I’ve really enjoyed being able to learn about other cultures that are really diverse and different. It’s been cool to see the number of Korean learners and to hear the different ways that they’ve been tackling language learning. I enjoyed the cultural blog posts especially and it gave me excuses to explore parts of the language and culture that I knew very little about. Overall it’s been a really positive experience being able to take part in this community of language learners. I will continue my language acquisition through continuing my online and book learning and by eventually getting to read primary Sanskrit sources.

I found some parts difficult in language learning such as keeping on track with the speed of language acquisition or the completion of tasks. In some ways Sanskrit was much more difficult to learn than other languages I’ve learned, such as French, because the resources and ways of learning are much difficult. There aren’t TV shows, movies, or modern novels to practice language skills with. Most of the learning comes from ancient texts that are usually religious or poetry based, and then there are a lot of cultural focused resources and grammar guides. I learned a lot from studying the yoga books and vocabulary, and it was really interesting to see the words that I’ve been familiar with in the past but am studying them under a different linguistic lens now.

I liked some of the classes/activities that focused on morphemes and word building. There was one activity where we were piecing together meanings of morphemes and entire words in a very agglutinative language (I think it was a Native American one). I’ve done similar exercises in the past and it was cool to see how fast I could do it after learning it over a year beforehand originally. I really enjoyed some of the readings on language acquisition and the readings on bilingualism: the one from the New York Times and the other from ScienceLine. I remember studying about bilingualism in my intro to psychology course and it was cool to see the concepts all come together across departments. I’d like to know more about the disappearance of languages and efforts to preserve these dying languages, since I don’t think we talked about that too much.

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There are lots of amazing things to see and do in Turkey. But, this is the moment that I fell in love with Turkey. 

Turkish people drink coffee a lot. Gokhan once made Turkish Coffee for us. It tasted really bitter. We then had the sweet lokum to deal with the bitterness in our mouths. Turkish people have a tradition of fortune telling from the coffee leftovers at the bottom of the cup. And Gokhan showed us the mobile app that uses the photo of the coffee leftovers to talk about future. 

This is Turkish Latin Alphabet. It has 29 letters and it was created within three months during the letter reform. It had a huge impact on increasing the literacy rate of Turkey.

This is Turkish Latin Alphabet. It has 29 letters and it was created within three months during the letter reform. It had a huge impact on increasing the literacy rate of Turkey.

We went to a Turkish restaurant. Gokhan recommended several traditional Turkish food and desserts. They tasted so good!!!!

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     Wow, what a semester. Looking back, I really set high expectations for myself. I forgot how difficult it is to learn a different language. On top that, teaching yourself along with the help of a language partner is not as easy as I had imagined. My language partner helped a lot and gives us plenty of tips to remember certain words and phrases. She also provided us with activities that helped me practice my grammar and my speaking. 

     However, I really wish I had one more semester of being able to take Indonesian. There is definitely a learning curve in the first couple of weeks because you are still adjusting to your learning plan and learning what the best way to learn a language is. All in all, I greatly enjoyed meeting with my language partner and learning Indonesian. It is also helped that there was Bo along to work with. Having a second person in the course was great. 

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