hey! :) 4. 7. 9. 11.
ahh thank u!
4. Are there any minority / extinct languages you are interested in?
Absolutely! I hope to work primarily on revival of Ladino after I graduate (or during school) and maybe also Italkian. I dabbled around in Cree a bit, though it was hard to do since there were few resources that were again divided among the many dialects. But I’d definitely love to try and learn it again in uni!
7. Is second language a mandatory subject in your country and how many hours per day do children learn it?
Yes! You must have 2 credits which is 2 years of foreign language to graduate, and it’s done for an hour a day, so it’s not much though.
9. How many languages are you learning at the moment {self-study counts} ?
3 sort of! I’m already semi-fluent or fluent in Spanish though of course I’m always learning it and am still taking courses for it and planning to continue to do so. Also I’m self-studying Italian, though I plan to take courses for it in uni. And Ladino is the sort of language. As I’m already close to fluent in Spanish, I already know almost all of the grammar of it and a large majority of the vocabulary, though I’m still learning more vocabulary and grammar currently!
11. Do you prefer attending courses / classes or learning on your own? Why?
Hmm this depends very much. I gotta say attending courses, just because I need people to force me to do things. However, my beginning Spanish education in middle school and junior high school was awful, made me hate Spanish, and hate languages for a while. It’s better now in senior high (though the AP is terrible! all we do is busy work and practice for the AP test, I haven’t learned a single new thing this year!).
Learning alone though, I think that just enjoying things you normally would in your first language in your target language is a great way to learn. Though I already knew a lot of Spanish before starting, I watched a lot of Spanish dubbed TV this summer and went from being mediocre at Spanish to being the best non-native speaker in my class.
I don’t like in school many different things. I think that speaking tests are absolutely ridiculous, as I’ve become really good at speaking but always get awful grades on those because it’s so unrealistic and it’s so much pressure. For speaking, fun presentations are better, especially in small classes like we had last year. And I probably build most of my speaking skills from Spanish media and from having conversations in class with my classmates and the teacher over absolutely anything, improving the American school system to Harambe (it happened. he’s our class mascot now and the verb ‘harambar’ ended up being created). Those videos and audios of really boring news stuff like the economy and health are awful. No one wants to subject themselves to that. Especially when all of it is super dated and from the 80s and 90s.
Anyways, that ended up being super long but thanks for asking!