Assessment

Assessment:  Although I do not assess myself formally, I have been able to measure my progress in a variety of ways.  The online course Memrise was a good way of assessing what I was learning in the program because it quizzed me on the material I was learning.  Even though I have completed the course, I still attempt to visit the site regularly to “water my plants” (the metaphor used for the daily vocabulary quizzes that ensure retention of the material).  I receive an email message from Memrise everyday that reminds me to do this.  Another way of assessing my progress was through my memorized IZ poetry.  I periodically record myself reciting or reading the poems to see if my pronunciation and speed has improved.  I listen to older recordings of myself for comparison.  It is gratifying to hear the difference and improvement.  Perhaps the best way to assess my progress is through reading.  Although I have plenty of poetry sources to read, I thought it would be a good idea to try to read from a more traditional literary format.  Poetry is a creative use of language and sometimes breaks the ‘rules.’  I have begun trying to read from an IZ book that I recently purchased at the Léa L.A. book fair last week.  It is a version by Natalia Toledo of the classic tale called Didxaguca’ sti’ Lexu ne Gueu’ ‘Story of the Rabbit and the Coyote.’  I am not sure that I know enough words to say that I am actually reading yet.  I wrote down the words of the first paragraph in two columns, a column of the words I understood and a column of words I did not know or was unsure of.  I counted the words in each list and found that I only knew fifty percent of the words in the paragraph.  That sounds like a lot, but most of these words were pronouns, articles, conjunctions, and prepositions.  I understood only a handful of content words.  I was excited to be able to almost read a whole sentence at first glance, “Yanna xti’ ca diidxa jma sicarú…” My translation is ‘Now your most beautiful words…”  I placed most of the verbs in the ‘unknown’ column because I did not know the root words.  I could identify the aspect and pronoun/subject suffix at the end of the verbs, but this is not enough.  Like the poetry I have been reading, the Spanish translation of the book is not literal; therefore, I cannot rely on it completely for determining the IZ meaning.  Nevertheless, this assessment has shown me that I need a lot more vocabulary as well as grammar knowledge to read.  I have less than two weeks to reach a beginning level in reading.  I am concerned about reaching this goal.