I worked on tenses in the past 2 weeks. I mainly focused on learning a future tense from my language partner. I also touched briefly on a past tense. It was efficient for me to learn the tenses in sentences. My language partner made me read two different paragraphs (attached under) and I answered the following questions. The first passage was about a phone conversation between two friends that are going on a trip. The second passage was about 65-year-old man who retired and going on a holiday trip. I learned about family relationship vocabularies through it. I circled on future tenses to distinguish them from the other tenses. I worked on making some sentences in future tense. Me and my classmate worked on different verbs and we conjugated the verbs into different tenses. It was really helpful because I was able to review what I learned, and was able to learn new verbs at the same time.
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Here are my Turkish learning goals and the learning calendar. I want to accomplish working on a future tense and a past tense this semester. My language partner will help me to achieve my goal. My level of Turkish has been improved that my Interpretive Reading skill is now in the level of Developing 1 that I can understand main points in readings. In addition, my presentational writing is also in the level of Developing 1 that I can write personal letters to my Turkish friends. However, I need to work more on interpersonal communication, because I am in the level of Beginning 2 according to the Levels of Competence document. I can talk about things that I have learned and can understand basic conversation. I also need to improve my interpretive listening skill, which is in the level of Beginning 2 that I can understand phrases that are commonly-used. My presentational speaking is in the level of Developing 1 that I can talk about my hobbies and family. I will work on more of speaking rather than working on readings this semester by doing role-plays with my friends and my language partner.
From my experiences growing up surrounded by both Ethiopian culture and American culture, I can say that they are very different. According to Hofstede’s dimensions of culture, Ethiopia has a large power distance, is more collectivist, masculine, and is in the middle of uncertainty avoidance. The large power distance is true in my experiences because in Ethiopia and Eritrea there is a large divide in the amount of power that is held by different people. Power is usually based on wealth and there is a small number of wealthy people compared to poor people. Ethiopians are also collectivist because they are willing to help others because they think that if they help someone, then their life will be better. The masculinity factor seems to show in the culture because men usually have more power than women and are seen as stronger. When I was in Eritrea, I was told that I should have been a man because I’m not weak. That comment was from a woman which shows their ideas of what a man and a woman should be like are still quite close minded. When talking about time, people do not follow the times that they state. For example is something is supposed to start at a certain time, it usually doesn’t. Also shops in Ethiopia and Eritrea close for lunch and stay closed for hours because people do not have strict time limits and do not rush. Even the bank completely closes for a few hours everyday so the workers can have lunch. In terms of time, everything is much more laid back and people don’t rush to be late because being late is not a big deal.
I experienced culture shock this past winter break when I was in Eritrea and Ethiopia. While in Eritrea, I was staying where there was no running water, no flushable toilets, no heat for the freezing nights, and solar powered lights that did not last for more than a few hours. At first I was a little shocked at the conditions even though I somewhat expected them. As time went on I began to try to become comfortable with the situation but it was so different than what I was used to that eventually it felt like I was losing my mind. It got to the point that all I could think about was going home because the conditions were so tough on me both physically and mentally.
Artifact 1 — SDLC 112
Bradley Fischer
“Apa harapan Anda untuk masa depan?”
Saya harap suatu hari nanti saya bisa mendapat pekerjaan yang menarik dan yang perlu ilmu politik dan psikologi. Saya juga ingin berkeliling dunia waktu saya bekerja nanti. Mudah-mudahan, saya akan bekerja dengan anak kecil yang mempunyai trauma. Selain itu, saya mau bekerja dengan Lembaga Sosial Masyarakat (NGO) di mana saja di Indonesia supaya saya bisa membantu pemerintah Indonesia untuk menyadiakan sarana-sarana yang berguna bagi berkemnangan sektor psikologi di Indonesia. Rencananya, yang pertama, saya akan melajutkan kuliah sampai saya mendapatkan gelar P.h.D. saya di Amerika Serikat. Yang kedua, saya ingin bekerja sebagi psikolog klinis untuk waktu yang lama di Amerika Serikat juga. Waktu saya bekerja sebagi psikolog klinis, saya mau bekerja dengan anak kecil dan yang mempunyai penyakit kejiwaan, seperti Obsessive Compulsive Diorder, Bipolar Disorder, Depression, dan lain-lain. Akhirnya, saya harap saya akan tinggal di negara lain, seperti Indonesia, karena saya benar-benar suka membantu orang-orang yang memerlukan ilmu saya.
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For my first artifact, I chose to write about my future career. I chose so because it was a topic that allowed me to incorporate new grammar and vocabulary into my paragraph. For example, this past week, I focused on the yang relative clause. We create yang clauses with adjectives, intransitive verbs, and transitive verbs. In essence, the yang clause allows the writer to take two sentences and combine them to make one sentence by modifying a head noun with a yang relative clause. What's more, the yang clause is used to characterize or describe nouns in Indonesian, which enables the writer to create a more detailed description. Finally, I the yang clause section concluded with the yang clause + active and passive verbs, which is critical -- especially with regard to the latter -- in speaking bahasa Indonesia.
All in all, it was a difficult chapter, but only because the topic is paramount in learning bahasa Indonesia. My first artifact forced me to think independently from the exercises in the workbook, which made it more pedagogically beneficial for me.
Learning Journal 4
At first I thought I might be able to study Sanskrit by just using the English transliteration, but I’ve quickly realized that it is necessary to learn Devanagari fluently to keep up with the language. Although Sanskrit can be written in any alphabet, the Devanagari system more adequately expresses the sounds of Sanskrit than the English language does, and I find the many diacritics in transliterations distracting. For example, Sanskrit has 4 forms of ‘S’, ‘t’ and ‘d’, and it is important to be able to recognize these letters when they appear. I’ve had familiarity with the alphabet in the past, but a number of letters have been particularly challenging since they look similar to other ones or we just don’t have them in English so I have nothing to compare them to.
Artifact 1.
I recorded myself reading the Korean alphabet from just the characters, and then counted from 1 to 10 from memory in Korean using the sino-korean number system.
For my first artifact, I recorded myself speaking about myself as well as asking questions to a second person. English translations of some of the things I said or asked are below. I enjoyed speaking in Turkish. I do not seem to have issues with my accent as I am familiar with the sounds of the language due to my previous linguistic experiences. I think for this semester, I will aim to be able to sustain longer dialogues with native speakers and be able to ask more questions, especially if I am ordering in restaurants or doing shopping elsewhere. I enjoyed this experience, as I combined what I knew from last semester and used tenses and what I've learnt these past 3 weeks.
Some examples:
Good afternoon. My name is Manya. what is your name? Nice to meet you.
I'm nineteen, how old are you?
Where are you from? Where do you live? .....
I also work as an assistant in post office. It is an interesting job. What do you do in your free time? How many languages do you speak? ...
-oh that is great. I did not know you speak Italian....Have you been to Italy?
-Wonderful. It was nice meeting you. I hope to see you soon in Istanbul...
How would you qualify or describe different aspects of your target culture? Reflect and your own experiences and expectations of the culture in question. How does your culture reflect various qualitative Hofstede dimensions of culture explored in class, e.g., body language, how people talk about time, etc. Also, have you ever experienced culture shock? If so, describe.
As it relates to one of the Hofstede’s qualitative dimensions, Senegalese culture leans more towards the community than the individual. I’ve come to this conclusion by making sense of certain social norms and expectation revealed by Wolof. For instance, to ask about someone’s livelihood, the direct translation to English asks about their location. Because everyone sees everyone daily, there’s no need to ask, “How are you?”. The communities are so close-knit that the question is used only to express concern. The cue “congcong” to enter a home is another testimony to the culture’s communal aura. Rather than knocking at someone’s door and waiting, many Senegalese people enter the homes of their neighbors with a “congcong” to announce their arrival. Everyone is always welcome.
My latest time experiencing culture shock was in a Buddhist temple. I was invited in by a Vietnamese community sharing lunch. Though they meant well with reassuring smiles and the great food, I felt excluded because I didn’t understand their conversations. All I could do was laugh when they laughed and ask for a translation later.
My first 3 weeks of spring semester were extremely productive in terms of my language learning tasks. I planned to generally revise the content of the past semester during the first week, introduce myself to the future tense as well as learn/revise different grammar cases of the Turkish language. I was planning to achieve these goals with the help of my language partner as well as online resources.
I managed to revise almost everything that we did las semester, including greetings, numbers, colors, days of the week, months, common verbs, family, times, etc. I used quizlet and classroom time to accomplish this goal. I engaged in conversations with my language partner and classmate. I also learnt the future tense this week and practiced conjugation of different verbs (positive and negative conjugations). My language partner corrected my mistakes and we learnt some new words while creating sentences and talking about the next day's plans. We then progressed to learning cases in Turkish language. We briefly went over this topic during the past semester, so I was familiar with some of the cases. We learnt accusative, dative, ablative, locative cases and a few other small grammar rules, and practiced those by creating sentences and expressions and by using cases with different nouns.
- What first prompted your interest in the target language?
I love how Richmond promotes international education and think it is amazing how so many students get the change to study abroad. But I honestly did not want to spend a semester (or year) anywhere else. Then I heard of CienciaUR. It is a program that allows students to do research abroad, and that made more sense to me than a study abroad program, since I am already studying abroad.
- Why did you decide to start your self-directed learning endeavors?
English is my second language and while I do not want to minimize the importance more “formal” language classes, I think I only ever became comfortable speaking and communicating in English when I came to UR. I first heard of SDLC when I was contacted to be someone’s Portuguese language partner. It raised my curiosity about languages/self-directed learning and later seemed like the perfect fit when I decided to study Catalan.
- Also, how will your studies allow you investigate your target language and culture more deeply, and what topic is most interesting to you?
Barcelona and Catalunya are surrounded by controversy due to the Autonomous Movement. What I find intriguing is that there were/are separatist movements in Brazil, but none ever reach the “momentum” we see in Spain. I know that there are economic and political reasons for this observation, but I am interested in the culture’s and particularly the language’s roles.
I also enjoy hearing my language partner’s, as well as other Spaniards’, perspectives to take a more subjective approach into something – which I do not get to do often studying STEM.
My first Cultural learning goal for the semester is to learn more about the home and family culture of the Brazil and how that has an affect on the Brazilian Portuguese language. To explore this topic I intend to try and seek out unique aspects of the language which might contribute to the family culture. I also intend to explore aspects such as Brazilian media and see how that compares with the media in America. From the exploration of culture I hope to gain a greater understanding of the Brazilian Portuguese language while also improving my language skills.
My Learning Plan
Learner Name: Berhaun Fesshaye | Semester: Spring 2018 |
Language: Amharic | Course: SDLAP 110 |
Where are you now? What can you do? What do you know?
Use the Levels of Competence document and the LinguaFolio® checklists to assess your current abilities in your language. For more information, see the SDLAP Wiki.
Interpersonal Communication-Beginning 0
Interpretive Listening-Beginning 0
Interpretive Reading-None
Presentational Speaking-None
Presentational Writing-None
What is your ultimate goal? What is your goal for this semester?
What do you want to be able to do with this language at the end of this semester and in the future?
I want to be able to have casual conversations by the end of the semester. My number 1 goal is to be able to have a conversation with my grandma. She doesn’t speak English and I’ve always needed someone to translate for me. In the future I want to be able to speak fluently and be able to read.
What tasks will you complete and what activities will you do this semester to meet your goals? How will you document and evaluate your progress?
Novice learners should consult the ‘Language Tasks’ page of the SDLAP Wiki and incorporate the required tasks in their learning. Be as specific as possible when planning activities, e.g., “I will watch YouTube videos to learn how to talk about the family.” or “I will consult a grammar text to learn about possessives.” Make sure you include some tasks that are relevant to your interests, e.g., “I will learn to understand soccer commentary.” or “I will learn to talk about the stock market.” Culture and language are, of course, inseparable. It is expected that all your language will be culturally appropriate and that every task will contribute to your cultural competence.
Task 1 | Learn classroom/life survival language |
Type of Task | _x__ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking _x__ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing ___ Interpretive Reading |
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I need to learn how to say “hello”, “goodbye”, “My name is Berhaun”,“I speak English”, and “I am learning Amharic”. |
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will learn this by talking to my language partner and asking how to say these things while also using youtube videos to practice my pronunciation. I will also try to find movies in Amharic to see if I can understand and pick out common phrases and get the big picture of what is going on. |
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will document what I have learned by recording myself interacting with someone and saying these things. I could also watch clips from shows or movies and translate them. |
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I will assess myself by talking to native Amharic speakers including my family to make sure that I am understood. |
Task 2 | Greetings/Farewells (formal/informal, for different times of day, male/female, single person/multiple people) |
Type of Task | __x_ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking ___ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing ___ Interpretive Reading |
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I need to learn how to say: good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight for male, female, plural, and elders (formal). |
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will learn this by looking at printed resources and online resources and then practicing my progress with my language partner. |
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will document what I’ve learned by recording a conversation with my language partner or another student that I know who speaks Amharic. |
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I can assess this task by greeting someone that I do not know. |
Task 3 | Introducing yourself (your age, where you are from, what you are studying, something interesting about yourself) |
Type of Task | _x__ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking _x__ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing _x__ Interpretive Reading |
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I want to be able to not only say my own age but the age of others, so I need to learn all of the numbers. I also want to be able to tell people that I am from the United States and that I am a student. |
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will learn this by looking at printed and online resources and practicing my pronunciation with my language partner. |
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will document what I have learned by telling a native speaker about myself and recording the encounter. |
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I will assess myself by being able to introduce myself to a stranger in Amharic. |
Task 4 | Identifying and talking about family members (names, relationships, professions, something interesting) |
Type of Task | _x__ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking __x_ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing ___ Interpretive Reading |
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I need to learn how to say all of the members of the family in Amharic and be able to say what career I want. I also want to be able to describe family members and other people by talking about their personality. |
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will learn these by watching Youtube videos, consulting books, and talking to my language partner. |
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will document what I have learned by recording a conversation between myself and another person talking about family members. |
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I will assess myself by describing my family members in a conversation without looking anything up. |
Task 5 | Telling time / asking the time, date, and weather |
Type of Task | _x__ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking _x__ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing ___ Interpretive Reading |
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I need to learn how to ask for the time and reply with the correct numbers. I also need to learn the Amharic months because they are different that what we say in English. I also want to be able to ask about the weather and reply if it is cold, hot, or raining. | |||
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will learn these by consulting books and maybe even look at resources that are meant for children to learn how to tell time, the months, the days of the week and the weather. | |||
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will document what I have learned by making my own clock and calendar (out of paper) in Amharic that shows how to say the time at each hour and the days of the week. | |||
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I will asses this task by recreating the calendar and clock that I used to study without looking at any resources. | |||
Task 6 | Asking for things in a store (Clothes, household items) | |||
Type of Task | _x__ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking _x__ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing ___ Interpretive Reading | |||
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I need to learn how to say different items of clothing and household items. I also need to learn how to ask how much something is. Since bargaining is big in Ethiopia I also need to learn how to bargain. |
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will learn this by looking at online resources and making flashcards to remember the different vocabulary words. To learn the language of bargaining, I will ask someone that lives in Ethiopia or visits there often how I would go about that. |
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will document what I have learned by keeping track of any conversations or letters that I send to native speakers asking them how to communicate about store items. |
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I will assess myself by going to a store that is owned by Amharic speakers and buying something. I would probably have to travel to DC for that but I could assess many other tasks there as well. |
Task 7 | Asking for food / buying food / ordering at a restaurant / describing food |
Type of Task | _x__ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking _x__ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing ___ Interpretive Reading |
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I want to be able to order food and drinks in a restaurant and know how to communicate any special requests for food. |
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will learn this by consulting my language partner and online resources about the names of foods and drinks and the appropriate way to ask for them. |
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will document my learning by taking a picture of an Ethiopian restaurant menu and translating it. |
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I will assess myself by going to an Ethiopian restaurant and ordering my food using only Amharic. |
Task 8 | Talking about your schedule / daily activities |
Type of Task | _x__ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking _x__ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing ___ Interpretive Reading |
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I need to be able to talk about other things like time and food so that I can make sentences about the order of events in my day. Words like “first”, “after”, and “finally” will be important for talking about the order of events in my day. I also need to learn how to talk about things such as going to class, doing homework, and sleeping. |
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will learn these activities by watching Youtube videos of people describing their daily activities and by looking through books that give vocabulary about daily activities. |
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will document what I have learned by recording a conversation with my language partner about our daily activities. |
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I will assess myself by describing my day to my language partner. |
Task 9 | Asking about past/future events |
Type of Task | _x__ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking _x__ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing ___ Interpretive Reading |
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I will need to learn the past and future tense of verbs so I can talk about something that has already happened and something that is going to happen. | |||
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will need to consult a grammar book to learn the correct tenses and then speak with my language partner to learn how to form sentences in these tenses. | |||
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will document this by recording myself having a conversation with my language partner about past event and future events. | |||
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I will asses myself by being able to have a whole conversation in the past tense or in the future tense. | |||
Task 10 | Writing my name and other basic words | |||
Type of Task | _x__ Interpersonal Communication ___ Presentational Speaking ___ Interpretive Listening ___ Presentational Writing _x__ Interpretive Reading | |||
What do I need to learn to complete this task? (goal) | I want to be able to write down my name and other basic words like Hello and Goodbye. |
How will I learn? (learning activities and resources) | I will learn this by studying an alphabet poster that I bought in Ethiopia and maybe finding a resource online that shows me how to write the letters. |
How will I document what I have learned? (artifacts) | I will take a picture of my writings and compare them to my language partner’s writing. |
How well can I accomplish this task? (self-assessment) | I will assess myself by writing my name and other things without consulting any resources. |
The reading from this week was about localization of brain functions. The reading mentioned that Broca's and Wernicke's area were the two main regions that were responsible for comprehension and speech. It also mentioned that memory can be improved by relationships meaning.
This reading reminded me of things I learned in psychology such as phrenology and context dependent memory. Although some functions are localized in some parts of the brain, the brain displays great plasticity if a part of a brain is damaged meaning partial recovery is always possible. Context dependent memory is a method for information recall by knowing the context. I have had a lot of luck with this method because knowing the context (either physical environment or conceptual) always seemed to help me transfer short term memory to long term memory.
My self-directed learning plan is organized from the bottom-up. This means that I tried to cover some basics of the language such as grammar and up to difficult comprehension material such as news. From my first session, I covered vocabulary used in informal settings from a reality show in Korean. There was no subtitles so it was hard to pick out the vocabulary but my language partner did very well picking out all the hard vocabulary. After the video, I went through the list of vocabulary and wrote the definitions of the list of words.
Through my learning plan I will learn proper language when talking formally and informally. I was first prompted to learn Korean again because of how much I couldn't say when talking with natives, in both formal and informal situations.
From the feedback I got from my classmates and my professor, I will have to try to find specific texts to supplement my learning. I am sure my language partner can recommend me a few from the Global Studio.
