Spanish Reflective Report

For the learn something new project, I thought it would be a great opportunity to try to learn Spanish since it has been a language I wanted to learn for years. As a future educator, I want to help as many people as possible, which I can do if I have the skill of speaking Spanish. I am currently fluent in English and Arabic so adding another language would give me the chance to reach a wider group of people. Considering this, the numbers of Latinos in America are growing every year, making it important for me to help people who speak the second most common language in the country. Throughout this process, I was able to apply course material, helping me realize what works and doesn’t work for me as a learner. The five-week process was different …show more content…
At the beginning I used my five-week guideline as a method of piece-by-piece learning by breaking up what I wanted to learn in each week which was initially supposed to help me master one section and move on to the next until I was able to put all my information together by week five. As my first step, I began researching information about Spanish culture and I also conducted an interview with my friend to learn more about the language. During the second week, I used the method of rehearsal and memorization to learn basic Spanish vocabulary words. I quizzed myself on the words and once I had them memorized I began to add new words to learn. My mom was an example of scaffolding, which helped me learn during this week. In these first two weeks I was intrinsically motivated because I was learning the language only because I wanted to better myself. In week three when I tried learning Spanish words from a book at the library, I wasn’t processing the information resulting in those words going into my short-term memory. While I was happy the first two weeks, in week three I began to feel lazy and uninterested. The purpose to learn the language soon became only so I could successfully do this project making me extrinsically motivated. That motivation began to disappear by week four when I decided to use the method of punishment, which was unsuccessful. I began feeling secondary emotions such as guilt since I was not going through with my goal of learning, feeling like it was too late to improve. By week five I realized that the Spanish terms I had previously learned in high school went to my long term memories, but some of the new words that I learned during week two went to my short term memory making it difficult to recall that information. There was a proactive interference between the new and old words I learned because I would use mix up the definitions between the