Posted by Laura Major on January 20, 2010 at 11:33pm
Besides the fact that I feel like a secret agent speaking a hidden code that only I and others within my surroundings can understand, I enjoy learning languages because it opens my mind to another culture from whichever part of the world that I choose. Sure it's difficult at times (and by at times, I mean almost always) learning another language but the process through which I learn it allows me to experience more than just the language itself but also its culture and history from the countries in which it's spoken. I would say that one of the most challenging difficulties I have encountered would be that no matter how hard you study a language, it can have many dialects and roughly be an entirely separate language (depending on which language, of course). I have learned Spanish through many years of high school and college courses but what I found when I went abroad to the Dominican Republic was entirely different from the Spanish that I was taught. Nevertheless I learned a great amount and can use the "new" Spanish to better my use of the language in other countries or merely just in class. I have realized that I learn best learning a few basic words of the language I am trying to conquer and then a few "meet and greet" phrases to help me understand the generic syntax. I then like to learn common verbs and how they are conjugated and how they fit properly into sentences. Overall, I learn best by understanding the simple bits and pieces of the language and then work my way up into harder concepts like grammar and verb conjugations. I find it easiest to divide my learning process into sections or lessons pertaining to my level of understanding from novice to advanced. In doing so, I test myself after each lesson so that I have a thorough knowledge of what I had learned up until that point. One thing that I find absolutely crucial for myself in learning another language is understanding the theory behind how the language works. In other words, I must know why a sentence is formed an irregular way or why a verb has been conjugated in a particular manner. I cannot simply just follow a language and accept it as it is unless it involves a rule such as an irregular verb, for example. I enjoy figuring things out on my own and working the language like it's a puzzle and figure out how it works. I do feel however that I can better my language learning by enhancing my vocabulary and using the new words in common or often used sentences. This way I will be able to recognize everyday words easily. All in all there is still so much to learn and understand from language learning as I am starting a whole new one from scratch.
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Posted by Zach Gottlieb on January 20, 2010 at 7:30pm
So I'm trying to learn Hebrew...finally...The first thing that I need to think about when looking at my past language learning experience would have to be 6th grade. I was in a French class in school that was probably the worst taught class ever. The teacher would walk in, turn off the lights, put Muzzy in the VCR, and it play. I know about 3 and a half words in French.The next year I began taking Spanish and was fairly quick in picking up the language, as we had an excellent teacher who taught his class in an immersion environment which enable me to excel. I also enjoyed Spanish and would take classes and travel to Spanish speak countries as often as I could. The time when I had the most growth in my Spanish ability was the two weeks I spent in Cadiz, Spain after my sophomore year of high school, where the complete immersion in the language (living with a family that spoke no English, living in a city that spoke little English, etc.) was crucial to my further development. I still speak Spanish periodically, though rust has definitely set in.After taking the two learner evaluation tests suggested, the learning styles that stood out the most for me were bodily/kinesthetic and logical. For learning a language I think that the bodily/kinesthetic will be the most effective considering both the tests and my previous language experiences, particularly spending time in Spain. One result of the tests that particularly drew my interest was the idea that I do not do well with aural learning. This definitely makes sense as I have some Hebrew songs on my iPod by HaDag Nachash and have barely been able to pick up a few words from them.
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Posted by Conal R Smith on January 20, 2010 at 2:05pm
First and foremost, I believe that there is no one specific way of learning a foreign language but multiple strategies that each individual, after time and experience, develops and that it suits their behavioral pattern and educational experience. I have been exposed to a variety of different languages, cultures, and countries in my short life. I lived in Italy for 3 years as a child though never spoke the language. I was forced to take French class for two years in junior high school though I wholeheartedly did not enjoy it. I began taking basic Spanish classes as a freshman in high until my senior year of high school. Within those four years, I took a full year of basic Latin and a one semester, a 5 month course of German. At Richmond, I spent my entire junior year abroad in two different cities in Spain. Thus, over time, I developed an affinity for languages. After having completed two multiple intelligence tests over the weekend, both tests reinforced the basic foundation of my learning style that now I had finally taken the time to realize and analyze. What stood out did not surprise me.I prefer to learn in groups, to see how other students think, develop repetitive strategies to comprehend and see the transition of the pronunciation of words from the first time spoken until students have nearly perfected it. Furthermore, I try to notice the change in pitch or inflection, principal stress(es) within a word from how a professor speaks or how a native would speak. Learning in groups gives me the ability to unconsciously analyze the strategies and sounds of other students. After spending time abroad, I think I have a developed very good set of interpersonal skills, thus being in a social environment is where I enjoy learning. Saying that, I think I carry a good sense of self-awareness, decent self-analytical skills, strong grammatical understanding, and solid linguistic background. I learn by doing and prefer to work alone. When I work independently, I am most efficient and learn best. I believe self-study is the one way that I am fully able to be successful in comprehending a language. I tend to be introverted and quite intuitive at times with my learning skills. After spending a year abroad and achieving a higher level of proficiency, I developed the art of imitation, the ability to imitate what one hears and then regurgitate the sound. I might not understand the reason for that particular sound at that moment but I do later on.What are my learning goals for this semester? Since I have no experience nor know very little about Persian/Farsi, other than it is a script alphabet and has Arabic origin and influence, I don't plan on being fluent or achieving the level of proficiency as a native speaker, clearly. I would like to be able write short, simple notes and messages, such as a small letter of correspondence. I want to be able to accurately pronounce the majority of sounds in the Persian alphabet, thus gradually leading to a simple conversation of basic information between myself and a native speaker, maybe even achieve the description of basic objects and general information. I would like to be able competent in reading very short, simple texts such as from advertisements, menus, signs in airports etc. I think listening will be the most difficult part of my learning. As I do not know what to expect, I would like to have the ability of understanding very basic phrases and simple dialogue when people speak clearly and not too fast. At the moment, I'm really hungry. Goodbye Mr. Ning.
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Posted by David Mowry on January 14, 2010 at 10:00pm
In my experiences, the most effective language learning is a combination of grammatical exercises in class and conversing with native speakers in everyday situations. Grammatical constructions are easy to memorize, but it is often hard to integrate new concepts into speech without conversational practice. With Spanish, most of my experiences are in the classroom. While my reading comprehension and writing skills are very good, my speaking confidence outside of class is low. I believe this is a result of becoming comfortable using designed phrases that refer to certain concepts, but I have had little incentive to adapt in-class exercises to day-to-day requirements.My first experiences with Turkish were limited. I was taught by a poorly qualified professor, and so even syntax and intermediate conjugations remained difficult. I lived with two Turkish roommates who would often speak in Turkish, but I was unable to follow their conversation. This past summer, however, I was instructed in the basic puzzle of Turkish. After learning basic vocabulary and structure, I was able to utilize new skills in my home stay, in which I would be constantly challenged and corrected. Having the opportunity to learn various concepts, hear them in context, and be corrected when my usage was out of place was the most effective way to learn the language.For self-directed study, I plan to utilize a similar strategy. I will attempt to return to my former language ability by speaking with my language partner, and I will use that time to identify further areas of focus (especially the -DIk constructions). My learning styles are linguistic, interpersonal and musical, so I plan to utilize media and conversation partners to improve. My Fire model is insightful, and to act upon this I will create specific outlines and study guides. I will begin by reading news articles and identifying the constructions with which I am unfamiliar, and I hope to move on to short stories and poems (Orhan Veli comes to mind). I will begin by reviewing what I already know, and I will continue by using academic resources as references for reading and listening comprehension. Finally, I must improve my writing skills, for which I will write short compositions on topics of interest. My strengths are speaking and listening, and I will attempt to improve my listening through movies, music, and attempting to understand increasingly difficult news segments and other videos (izlesene.com is the new YouTube equivalent and an insight into some aspects of Turkish culture). I will improve my skills in reading and writing, through which I will also search out new grammatical constructions and vocabulary, and I will attempt to build upon previous success in speaking and listening. I possess good command of basic vocabulary, and I will use or create vocabulary lists in more complex topics, such as politics and economics, in order to become prepared for more professional pursuits. My goal is to be able to use twenty new vocab words each week.
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This week, Mona went over how to say “How are you?” in different ways and broke it down grammatically. Also “What is your name” (and how to respond to the two questions). She also went over how to conjugate verbs, pronouns, and possessives.I thought these sessions were very effective. I was able to understand what was happening and break down the meaning of the words and their suffixes. I spent two hours with Mona total, and spent some time throughout the week reinforcing what I learned with Mona (about 4 hours).I also spent an hour going through the beginning of the Farsi phrasebook. While it is helpful, it is very simplified, and does not go into grammatical detail and breakdown, simply ‘how to say it one way.’I also learned some phrases to use on how to get somewhere if I was lost, but it was way over my head as far as learning the detailed grammatical specifics.My plan for this coming week is to start using the Pimmsler audio resource which I have at home. My goal is to do three 30-minute sessions a week. I will continue to read through the Farsi phrasebook a bit more. In addition, I want to learn how to refer to times of the day and tell time and such, so my task for the week will be to create a dialogue in which Mona and I discuss our schedules and figure out times to meet. The emphasis for learning will be on the times and different parts of the day, not the actual activities.I mentioned this before, but I do not think it would be worth my time to continue to learn the alphabet and how to actually write in Farsi. I think that is too difficult to learn simultaneously with how to converse, which is my focus. From now on, I will only be learning how to write Farsi using English characters.I think the best way for me to go about learning is to learn basic grammar structure with Mona, while learning how to converse more without knowing the grammatical details using Pimmsler and the phrasebook.
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Persian has six vowel sounds, all represented by the letter alef. There are three main ones, and different accent marks are used to distinguish. Stress is generally placed on the last syllable of the word, althought it is placed on the first syllable for proper names. Nouns are made plural by adding the siffix -ha at the end. Persian has five cases to show the function of a noun or pronoun in a sentence, using prepositions and postpositions to indicate the role of the noun. The five cases are the nominative case, the accusative case, the dative case, the locative case, and the ablative case. Verbs in Persian change their form according to the person and number of the Subject as well as for the tense. Subject and Tense are indicated by the type of the suffix which appears on the verb root. Verb roots are formed by deleting the suffix -dan from an infinitive.
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Persian is an SOV language which is very helpful for beginner learners because when we try to translate a sentence in English into Persian, we tend to want to translate in an order of SOV. For example: The boy went to school. We would first think, how do we translate ‘boy’ into Farsi? There are many more nouns (which serve as objects) then there are verbs, so we would think first of how to translate the object ‘school.’ As a beginner, we would probably first learn some basic verbs which we will use over and over again, but learn many more nouns to use as subjects and objects. The order of SOV is therefore easy for beginners to translate to and learn.
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In addition to completing all assigned tasks in Blackboard (2 hours), this past week I have also continued to work on learning the alphabet and numbers (2 hours). I have also perused through some online resources on Diigo concerning Farsi and Iranian culture, and bookmarked a few things myself (2 hours). I examined some of the resources in the language studio and decided against purchasing a grammar-based Farsi book(1.5 hours). I thought this would be too complex to learn as an autonomous beginner learner. I want to focus on speaking and understanding spoken Farsi anyway, so I researched some resources on Amazon.com (1 hour). I discovered an audio CD as well as a phrasebook which I plan on using to help me learn Farsi. I spent two hours with Mona going over the rest of the alphabet, and my plan for this week is to continue to practice the alphabet, learn some common phrases, and explore my newly obtained resouces.
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Culture is anything and everything that makes up a group of people. It is the characteristics they share which make them unique, or set them apart from other groups of people. These characteristics include, but are not limited to, type of music, food, language, customs, clothing, behavior, principles, morals, social norms, beliefs (religious or otherwise), values, interests, and activities. Cultures can apply to different countries, continents, states, cities, races, religions, ethnic groups, or even corporations, work environments, schools, teams, clubs, families, or basically any way that people are organized or relate to one another. Cultures are multi-dimensional and vary greatly. Some are static, while others evolve over time.Language can comprise a small part of a larger culture, or can be defined as a culture by itself. Characteristics of a culture can be seen in the way a language is spoken or written. For example, a strict culture may enforce strict rules in variances between who is doing the speaking and who is being spoken to, while a more relaxed culture will make less of a distinction. A more ‘simple’ culture may not have many vocabulary words for similar or the same things, while a more ‘advanced’ culture may have many words for essentially the same thing, or different words for slight differences in meaning. A culture which is a result of the mixing of many other cultures may have a language which borrows words from many other languages or has words with roots from other languages. Languages naturally embody the culture of the people who have created them over time.The language of Farsi is based on the very poetic culture of Iran. Writing is more poetic than informative at times. Speaking and writing are different. Speaking is more casual and less ‘poetic’, unless it is formal, in which case it would resemble more the poetic writing style. People try to write as if they are citing famous poetry. This will be a very interesting thing to observe as I learn Farsi.
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Language Universals are a useful concept for language learners. It is important to step back and think about what we are learning structurally and contextually. It is interesting that languages can be very similar in their structure, and that if we learn a language structurally, as opposed to being caught up in the different alphabets and vocabulary, we can gain a broader, deeper understanding of the language. The concept does not seem vague or unscientific, in fact, it is very specific and even a little complicated to think in universal terms!
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I was introduced to the basics of the persian alphabet and numbers 1-10. We did not have goals from last week, but the work I did was part of the goals for the coming week. It is a part of the plan for the semester. I learned how to read, write, and speak the first 5 letters of the Persian alphabet. I used a resource I found online that had the Persian alphabet and numbers, which was very helpful and which I will have to refer to. I learned a little bit about the current political/cultural environment in Iran. My activities did not generate any questions, other than how I will manage to learn this new alphabet, as it is the very beginning of my learning.
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I enjoy learning languages. I find it to be interesting and exciting to be able to speak in another language. I think understanding a people's language helps to better understand the people themselves and their culture. I like organization and structure, like following chapters in a textbook and filling out workbooks to practice what I've learned. I also like reviewing the same material in class to have an opportunity to show off what I have learned, reinforce it, and ask any questions I may have. I look forward to quizzes and tests when I am confident that I fully understand what I am being tested on. I also think it is very helpful to practice outloud and converse with people, or practice to express what I want to say verbally. I think it is much more difficult to say something outloud than to write it down on a piece of paper. I am mostly a factual learner, but also a little insightful and rational. I excel at memorizing things and understanding things at my own pace by learning from a book then applying using many examples with explained solutions. I am very organized, detailed, and want to know exactly what to expect. I am also very thorough when I need to be. I generally appreciate efficiency and competence, things that are rational and logical, and intelligent. I like to think about what I am about to learn a little before actually learning it so I have some type of mental framework for learning. I'd rather understand the big picture first before I get into the details.
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Watching the video again, I feel like I did a little better than I initially thought, but that's not saying much. I noticed several words that I butchered pretty badly, so I'm sure there were many more I didn't notice. I think I attribute that mostly to nerves, since I feel like if I focus enough I can say most things more or less correctly (minus a few specific sounds that I know I can't usually make well). I'm sure I have a terrible accent, but in the video there are definitely some words that I just flat out say wrong, as opposed to just with an accent. The main problem that I noticed both during the conversation and after was with grammar and specifically with syntax. I think this comes mostly from the fact that I would start to say something and then realize mid sentence that there was something else I wanted to add so I would have to thrown it in at the wrong place. If I have time to think through a whole sentence I'm pretty comfortable figuring out how it should be said, but when talking to someone you usually think on the fly so you don't necessarily know everything you are going to say before you start talking. I think this is one of the reasons my monologue is so slow and disjointed. I had noticed how many mistakes I had been making in the conversation so I tried to slow down and be more careful. I think it worked for the most part (along with the fact that it was rehearsed), but it made my delivery really awkward. This was made worse by the fact that there wasn't a clear progression to some of what I said. There were a few things I had wanted to say but forgot and then said later when I remembered, so there are some sentences that are out of place and don't seem to fit into any sort of logical train of thought. I tried to work in a couple less common tenses (like past imperfect) and I think I used them correctly for the most part, but I also wouldn't necessarily know if I didn't. Overall, I think I could have done a little better but I'm not surprised that I'm not at the level where I can really carry out a full conversation effectively yet.
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I was pleased with my performance, in the sense that I could understand and participate in a non-rehearsed conversation. There were certainly things that I wish I had done differently, such as say that I studied physics instead of eating them--but overall I was pleased. Regarding my monologue, looking back I wish that I had made it longer and incorporated more of the things that I had learned over the semester, but my nerves got the better of me, and I kept to a short script. The evaluation proved that I can both memorize necessary phrases, as well as use them in conversation, a good way to end the semester.
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Self EvaluationOverall, I was personally impressed with my speaking ability during the taped group conversation. There were certainly times when the conversation broke down, but overall I felt that it was a positive experience. I felt that I did my part to keep the conversation flowing when there might have been pauses trying to keep my other partners engaged. I was also proud that I understand everything that was being discussed even if a question was not being directed at me. Also, there were times when other members of the group did not ask a question properly and I was able to understand what they were saying and properly ask the question so the other group member could understand. There were times when the conversation broke down and that tended to happen after we had exhausted the basic topics of names, where we are from, our family, what day and time it was, and what classes we were taking. The part that I recall breaking down occurred at the end when we were trying to ask each other what we did last night, because one person in our group did not understand or remember the question.The difficult thing about the group conversation was that I feel like we were all nervous about being taped and thus the conversation did not flow as smoothly as it did earlier in the language lab when we were talking amongst ourselves. Also, it was difficult having three people and figuring out how to ask questions of everyone and be inclusive and who should be speaking or initiating questions. There were definitely times when we did not use proper grammar, but for the most part I felt that we were all able to get our point across. On a positive note, we were able to show what we had learned over the semester and I thought we did do a good job of making sure that everyone spoke and answered questions.In terms of my own monologue, after reviewing the tape I realize that there were lots of pauses between thoughts that I need to work on. It was not as smoothly flowing as I would have liked, but I was impressed that I could speak that long without really using my notes. I thought I conveyed a lot of ideas about who I was, my family, and what I had done that day demonstrating my ability to construct sentences and use both the present and past tenses. I also thought my pronunciation of many letters was very good, although there are definitely sounds that I still need to work on such as the kh sound. The only thing I think I would have changed would maybe be the order of my thoughts, such as injecting what I was wearing earlier in the conversation rather than at the end. Still, I was pleased with the way that yesterday went and I am proud that I accomplished as much as I did.
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Note: For a longer version see the e-mail I sent with my cultural project.After reviewing the videotype of my monologue with Chelsea, several thoughts pop up. First off, overall, I am fairly satisfied with how I sounded and with what I was able to say. I chose to speak in Farsi, rather than Dari, because I am still more comfortable with it. I felt as if I sounded somewhat fluent, but at the same time I am disappointed in how much I was able to say, and how quickly I could say things without having to think about them.One of my strengths is that I feel comfortable speaking the language, and do not get embarrassed if I mess up or forget something. This was key in learning Swahili, and I think will be helpful as I continue my pursuit of learning Farsi. I also thought this was reflected on the video, as I looked pretty comfortable and confidant.So, overall, I am happy with the way I sound, but would have liked to say more on a larger variety of topics in this video. Please see my longer self-evaluation for my thoughts on the course overall. ThanksWill
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When I first began to study Farsi at the beginning of the semester, I was unsure of how successful I would be in learning the language. Most of my language instruction has been through formal classes or by living in a country where I was forced to use the language to communicate. Neither would be true with my study of Farsi and I worried that I would not get as much out of the language as a result. When we had to make goals for our first week, I made mine much too ambitious. I had always heard that Farsi and Arabic were extremely similar and since I had taken Arabic I thought Farsi would come easy. I was mistaken. While the alphabet is similar there were new letters for me to learn and I still had trouble pronouncing some of the sounds from Arabic that were in Farsi too, like the ain and ghain. Even after a semester, my pronunciation of these sounds is still shaky. The first several weeks were trial and error, because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to learn, how much I could actually learn and what was the best way for me to learn.I think that for the most part I was overzealous in my goals each week, which allowed me to learn some things extremely well and others not as much. I was able to master all of my long term/semester goals of being able to introduce myself, say goodbye, communicate basic information, describe objects and order food. I also learned other things such as days of the week, telling time, some articles of clothing, household objects and classes. However, there were other pieces of information that I cannot communicate as clearly as I would have liked, such as weather and directions. There was so much information I wanted to learn because I was enthusiastic about learning Farsi. About halfway through the semester, I came to realize that I would learn more by learning less and learning the things I did learn extremely well so that they would stick with me from week to week. This worked well for me along with periodically reviewing the vocabulary from past weeks. Though I might not have learned as much as I would have wanted, I feel that I was more realistic in my learning approach and by learning less vocabulary I was able to spend more time making sure that I knew well the vocabulary I did learn.Part of learning Farsi was also figuring out the best ways for me to learn the language. At first I worked with a variety of materials trying to figure out which I liked best including, Rosetta Stone, BIKI, and several Farsi textbooks. I soon realized that Rosetta Stone was not helpful for me because when it would tell me words I wasn’t always sure of the meanings. Also, it was difficult for me to hear the word, write it down so that I could remember it and then do the project asked by the program. I also found that some textbooks were more helpful than others and decided to use the “Teach Yourself Modern Persian” book as well as a traveler’s Farsi phrasebook. The phrasebook was extremely helpful because it had a comprehensive dictionary in the back for many of the basic phrases that I wanted. It also gave clear simple explanations of grammar, which was much more helpful than the other books. I also used a variety of websites on the Diigo in addition to watching some movies.The grammar was always difficult for me to learn especially because of the way the sentence was structured with the verb coming at the end. However, after lots of studying and repetition I feel much more comfortable with the grammar. In order to do this, I had to take basic linguistic principles like language families and universals and understand how Farsi fit into or did not fit into those principles. I had to learn how to make a definite and indefinite object, how to conjugate verbs in several tenses, and how to form more complex sentences than just subject, object, verb, with adjectives and multiple subjects and verbs. For me, learning the grammar was interesting because it truly showed me how different the language was from Arabic in terms of structure and not just vocabulary. However, I feel that I was able to master many of the specifics of Farsi.I began learning through writing down lists of vocabulary and then transferring them to flash cards so that I could study. I also made a sort of cheat sheet of basic Farsi phrases and grammar that I could bring with me and anytime I couldn’t remember something or was confused about the way a sentenced was structured, I could look at it. This method of learning coupled with bi-weekly language sessions really helped me achieve my long-term goals. At first when I would be asked questions in drill in Farsi, I would get nervous and freeze up. By the end of the semester I was much more comfortable in answering questions and actually liked speaking in front of the class. It was great to be able to see the change from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester in terms of speaking and also in terms of how much I had learned.The other part about this program that I enjoyed was the fact that I was able to learn so much about another culture, and a culture that because of politics has more or less been closed off to Americans. Through my own readings, conversations with Mona and movies on the Iranian Revolution, the status of women and divorce in Iran, I was able to learn more about Iranian culture. It was interesting to see how Iranian culture was similar to Arab culture in some respects, but also had its own nuances. For example, Mona explained to us how it was common for people’s middle names to come from old Persian heroes’ names. I also really enjoyed learning more about the culture through my own cultural project as well as others. Through them I was able to learn more about certain movements within Iran, typical Iranian food, music and the importance of poetry. My cultural project on Hafiz allowed me to understand why he is such a prominent and beloved poet and how he has affected Iranian culture up until the present day. My favorite part was learning how people used Hafez as a fortuneteller and that there were websites you could go to, to have it done.Looking back on what I have accomplished over this past semester, I am proud of myself. I was not sure how I would fare in a self-directed language course, but I think that fared extremely well. It was nice having the freedom to decide what I wanted to learn, how I would learn it and when I would learn it. From January until now, I believe that I developed my skills as an autonomous learner and was able to draw on past language learning abilities to help me study and learn Farsi. Through this process I was able to learn what worked well for me and what did not in addition to learning about Iranian culture. For me this has been a positive course because it taught me a lot about another language and culture and how I learn best.
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Here's Obama's Noruz message from a while ago along with my attempt to translate it. I wrote down the many, many words I had to look up and circled the ones I couldn't figure out. I feel like the first 1/3 or so of it I could get for the most part, but once I got past that it seemed like I had to look up almost every word unfortunately. This made it a little disappointing, but I'm still pretty happy that in the end I was able to more or less figure most of it out. It's good to know that given a text and the resources I have readily available I can pretty much figure out what something means, considering this is a relatively high level of the language compared with most of what I have dealt with.
This is a description of a picture of my mom and I. I submitted it in an e-mail but am finally posting it.Ism man Will hast. Man az Boston hastam. Man beastoyik sal am. Farsi, Swahili, vav ingliz baladam. Man daneshju hastam. Man coat shalvar pooshidam. Eeshan madare man hast.Ismish Marilyn ast. Madaram baz neshaste ast. Un panjah vav shish sal ash. Ingliz baladad.Artifact 2:This artifact was posted on Taylor Napier-Runnels blog and can be found there.Artifact 3: This artifact is a short description of Kabul.Kabul – Man az Boston hastam. Hala man dar Kabul zindagi mekonam. Man Kabul ra dost doram. Kabul markaz Afghanitan hast wa buzurghtareen shahar dar Afghanistan hast. Dar Kabul mardam Dari sohbat mekonand. Kabul koh hai ziad darad. Hundu Kush yaki az koh hai mashHoor Kabul hast. Darya-i-Kabul ziba hast.
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When I first came into this course I was extremely ambitious in what I thought I was going to learn. Even when I revised my semester goals I was probably too ambitious. Each week I decided that I was going to push myself to learn as much as I could, particularly in the way of vocabulary. However, the problem that I realized towards the end of the semester is some of the information that I did not study as much or use on a regular basis was not really retained. Examples of this include, weather, directions and even some locations. I also did not realize that I would struggle as much with the grammar as I did, but finally at the end of the semester I feel like I have a basic grasp of sentence structure and how to express my thoughts in simplistic ways. There are still areas that are difficult for me including the present tense and the use of the word ra, which I think is used when something that could be a subject is used as an object. Below are the semester objectives that I set out for myself and I think that because these are topics that I used on a consistent basis I learned them much better than other things.My semester/long term goals are as follows:To be able to identify letters of the alphabet when written, and simple commonly used wordsTo be able to greet others and say goodbyeTo be able to introduce myself, express basic information about myself (name, age, where I am from, how I am doing, details about my family, occupation) and ask others the sameBe able to describe objects using their position, color and the number of itemsRead and order from a menuBe able to describe my daily routine in simple termsBe able to communicate basic information to a customs officerI definitely can identify letters of the alphabet when written as well as simple commonly used words. Most words I can sound out even if I don't know its meaning and the only part I get tripped up by is not knowing where the vowels go since they aren't written out. Still, I feel confident that I have succeeded in this goal. I also feel that I am able to greet and say good bye to others in a variety of ways and at a variety of levels (formal vs. informal). These expressions are probably some of my favorite and I use them quite frequently. Being able to introduce myself is something I am confident in my ability to do. The only thing I would worry about is sometimes I get confused by family members (aunts, uncles and cousins) when I am speaking and listening. I also feel confident in my ability to describe objects in terms of its color, position and how many. For example I could say there are 3 red shirts next to 4 green apples. In terms of ordering from a menu, I could most likely identify the basic ingredients in a dish, rice, meat, yogurt, bread etc, but I would not be able to know what a dish consisted of based off of its authentic name. While I did learn some food, I would say that I did not learn and exhaustive list of fruits, vegetables etc, but that I know the basics and enough to ensure that I can eat and survive. I also feel confident that I could describe my routine in simple terms because I did an artifact doing essentially that. I do not know if I could necessarily describe it in terms of what I would be doing in the future, but I am extremely confident in my ability to describe my routine in the past tense. I also feel like I would be able to communicate basic information to a customs officer including, age, name, nationality, home address and gender.Overall, I feel like I achieved all of my semester learning goals and feel confident about my progress with them. As always there are areas where I am more comfortable than others, but with more time I feel like I could completely master them all. I think that each week I felt that I needed to add new things to my Farsi arsenal, which did not allow me to learn some things as thoroughly as others, and if I could do it again I would certainly spend more time on certain aspects and limit the amount of vocabulary I was trying to learn. But still, I feel confident about what I know and what I learned.
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