PE Reflection & New Goal

To start off with, here are my goals from the first half of the semester:


Goals:

• To continue to improve my ability to first recognize, and second accurately imitate/reproduce the pitch patterns of spoken Japanese
• To continue to improve my ability to speak at a more rapid pace
• To improve my ability to both listen to and comprehend longer phrases and sentences, and be able to reproduce them without becoming sloppy with regards to pitch or pronunciation

As for the first bullet point, I think I actually made some significant improvement. Throughout the first semester, I struggled not only producing pitch patterns, but also recognizing them. Of course, producing them accurately is basically impossible if you struggle to recognize them in the first place. So, in order to get a solid foundation under me, I made it a point to do every optional listening exercise and I actually saw tangible improvement over the course of the semester. Of course, the second part of this bullet is accurately producing them and I still have a long ways to go (more on that later). The second and third bullet points were helped by the increasing speed/complexity of the Nakama dialogues (roughly, some were easier than others). I can certainly speak faster than at the beginning of the semester, but, again, I still have much work to do.

Now for my new goals. I am keeping them simple and to the point because I know where I definitely need to improve:

• Pitch: learn pitch patterns with vocab words right off the bat
• Speed: be able to speak faster with fewer あのうs, etc.

As for the activities through which I envision accomplishing these goals:

• Listen to online vocabulary at HRC and memorize the way each of these sounds as well as the way they look on paper. I think this will be tremendously helpful in reproduction if I have a good handle on how they should sound immediately upon learning them
• Continue to choose shadowing models that force me to speak quicker and say longer sentences
• Lastly, I know what an incredible opportunity I have with the week I am spending in Japan, so I really want to take full advantage of it, not only from a cultural standpoint but from an educational standpoint as well. Of course, it is only a week so I'm not expecting any revolutionary changes, but if I speak as often as possible and really embrace to the opportunity I don't see any reason why I shouldn't be able to take a few steps forward with my speaking abilities by the time I return.