{"id":3609,"date":"2018-08-18T15:54:43","date_gmt":"2018-08-18T19:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/?p=3609"},"modified":"2018-08-18T15:54:43","modified_gmt":"2018-08-18T19:54:43","slug":"post-program-reflection-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/2018\/08\/18\/post-program-reflection-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Post Program Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I finish the course this week, I am trying to assess how much I have learned and how much I have improved. I realized that even with moving up to the Intermediate course, most everything I did grammar-wise was a review. I didn\u2019t learn any new tenses or structures. At first, this felt disappointing.\u00a0 I obviously wasn\u2019t at the Advanced course level, however, I felt as if by not learning new grammar I had somehow been cheated out of material. However, in conversing with native speakers, I am understanding most of what they say and rather than needing sentences translated to English, I just need them to be said slower.\u00a0 In my responses, I don\u2019t need any more advanced structures to have a conversation understood by both parties.\u00a0 While I am nowhere near fluency yet, I am able to hold conversations for long periods of time. I didn\u2019t miss out by not learning any new grammar.\u00a0 Rather, I cemented the structures I had been taught and can now use them with ease and without mixing up tenses.\u00a0 Before moving on to Intermediate Irish at Notre Dame, this is exactly what I need.<\/p>\n

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The lack of new grammar relates to one of my goals at the beginning of the summer \u201cadvance by the equivalent of one semester at Notre Dame.\u201d Because of the lack of introduction of new grammar structures, I can\u2019t say that I have advanced by the equivalent of one semester.\u00a0 Academically, I would not be able to enter into Intermediate II rather than I.\u00a0 However, I don\u2019t consider this a failure because I am a more well rounded conversationalist and have so far exceeded some of my other goals. One of my other goals was to speak only Irish in my host family\u2019s house, and although conversation in our rooms upstairs was mostly English, I was one of the only people who made an effort to only speak to the bean an t\u00ed in Irish and to initiate conversations with her.\u00a0 (Secretly, I think I was her favorite).\u00a0 I was able to converse without resorting to English most of the time.\u00a0 I also would speak with her mother who was around the house all the time. My final goal was to initiate a conversation with a native speaker and speak only in Irish, and this was accomplished a couple of times in the summer, between speaking to my bean an t\u00ed and her mother and also to the native speakers in pubs.<\/p>\n

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On the right is my bean an ti, Maire, and her mother. I will miss talking to them in Irish each afternoon and evening!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This course has inspired me to start looking into Irish language night courses in Dublin while I am abroad this next semester.\u00a0 Between just my semester at school and the SLA program, I felt like I had lost so much vocabulary and conversation ability.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want that to happen again before my next semester in January. I had always planned on joining an Irish language club to keep up some conversation skills, but I want to take it a little bit further and continue learning.\u00a0 I feel that if I take a class, I can push myself to correct the mistakes I keep making, rather than continuing at my level likely making (and possibly cementing) grammatical mistakes.<\/p>\n

The biggest question I have had to answer about my choice to spend a month doing an SLA is \u201cWhy Irish\u201d (Besides, of course, the questions \u201cIrish is a language?\u201d or \u201cIsn\u2019t that called Gaelic?\u201d). The answer to that question isn\u2019t so much about defending the usefulness of a language that is primarily spoken in rural Ireland and which I likely won\u2019t be directly using in my career.\u00a0 Studying this language was about experiencing the cultural value of a language. Every person I met in Carraroe could speak English.\u00a0 Learning and speaking Irish at home, at church, at the shop, and at the pubs was a conscious choice that they were making.\u00a0 They use the Irish language because it is an important part of their identity and they host students and help them learn Irish because they believe it is an important part of the country\u2019s identity.\u00a0 I have such a greater appreciation for language as more than just a means of communication and rather an expression of identity.<\/p>\n

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Pictured here are all the people in our house. The Bouncing Castles sign was the closest thing we had to an address.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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All of the Notre Dame students in our program<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I finish the course this week, I am trying to assess how much I have learned and how much I have improved. I realized that even with moving up to the Intermediate course, most everything I did grammar-wise was a review. I didn\u2019t learn any new tenses or structures. At first, this felt disappointing.\u00a0 … Continue reading Post Program Reflection<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2999,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290963],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sla-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2999"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3728,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3609\/revisions\/3728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}