My language experience prior to learning Hindi has been in a classroom-style setting and online, when I was learning French. My high school did not have a very good French department, so I often had to supplement classroom lessons with outside efforts in order to really learn the language. I often got frustrated with the way that high school classes were structured, as they didn’t really seem to facilitate language learning. Because of this, I enrolled in an adult course at a French library one summer to focus on conversational French, which I wasn’t getting from endless verb conjugation in class. This showed me that learning “from the books” can give students a good foundation for conversation and “survival” with a language. I later skipped a level of French, learning it myself over the summer, then took the next level online, later taking a college course in the language.
After looking at the FIRE model, I would say that my learning style is a combination of insightful and rational: I like organization and learning rules, but I also like to dig deeper into issues that interest me. For my Hindi learning, I have bought a textbook and workbook, which provide a structure to lessons and a gradual progression of what is learned. When I started, I had neither, and was simply going to learn phrases through Mango. However, I was overwhelmed by this, and felt like I couldn’t start with nothing, as a tried to listen to the Mango activities which featured all Devanagari text. I realized that in order to best understand Mango conversations, I couldn’t just ape the sounds, I needed to develop a base in the alphabet and word structure. The textbook I bought understands this, and enabled me to gradually learn the alphabet, learning key phrases, questions, vocabulary, and grammatical structures at each group of letters. This structure has made learning the language much easier, and I think that having this base will make Mango learning much more effective.
In terms of understanding culture and language together, I think that watching movies and other media items. Literature is also important: I have an Eyewitness guide to India, a book on religious history in the area I’m visiting, and a novel set in the north Indian mountains on my bookshelf. Each of these pieces of literature gives me a different perspective with which to see the culture. The Eyewitness guide offers more of a Western view, telling the (presumed white, educated, First World) traveler what to do in an unfamiliar culture. Contrastingly, the religious book takes a more in-depth look at Indian history and religious belief. Thus, the first book looks at what to do, what to see, and (occasionally) what to say, while the second book looks more at the people themselves, giving the reader a better understanding of what they may believe/value. Finally, the novel offers what anthropologist Clifford Geertz described as “stories people tell themselves about themselves.” It enables me to see values, aspects of etiquette, and inherent values in the culture, similar to what a Bollywood film might provide me with. To improve my competence, I will need to practice speaking, reading, and writing, but also continue to immerse myself in the culture.
