Reflections

I think I've learned something about language teaching. I'd like to continue my studies. I'm considering buying the book my university uses to teach Arabic.  My only concern is that I get an audiovisual component.

I realized that my own students in 7 weeks are finally able to express themselves. They can tell me what they like and don't like using basic language and what they did/are going to do. That's huge progress. That's also when language is fun.

For me, I'd like to be able to express myself more in Arabic. Finally, I've got demonstrative pronouns and some adjectives and nouns, and I can put them together. That is VERY SATISFYING. It is very frustrating to have nothing but words. I wish we'd spent more time with some more practical terms or using the nouns in phrases.

Lessons Learned: Any time I give students vocab, I need to give them a phrase or a dialogue they can use it with. Even "This is a dog." "I want a banana." It is way more interesting than just drilling nouns.

Learning a language is frustrating until you can do something with it.

I try to focus on really practical vocab.

I just learned at a conference that words shouldn't be taught in groups, eg. body parts, all together. I need to see that research so I know whether or not to believe it. They say it makes it confusing for the reader to distinguish between the words on a list.