Motivation: Current status

Motivation:  At this time at the end of Week 8, I am struggling with my motivation to put in the language-learning time that I need to reach my final goals.  The process of writing a term paper based on this learning experience is strongly competing for my time and mental activity.  I feel very conflicted about this because I want to prove to myself that I do have the ability to be a self-directed learner and be accountable to my self-made goals.  I also found that my research into the Zapotec people and language is a separate project in its own.  Unfortunately, this side project may have to be put on the backburner for now.  I am also highly distracted mentally by an upcoming trip to Asia.  I want to learn a little Japanese and Korean to be able to handle very basic interactions and travel needs.  I don’t even know how to ask for the restroom in these languages.  This could be an embarrassing problem.  I just began using the Pimsleur Quick & Simple Korean, but it takes time! (And by the way, it’s not quick or simple.  I have to listen to the lessons over and over again because I guess I’m not a “good language learner.”  I am being a little sarcastic.)  I will also mention that I have continued with my once a week Hebrew lesson during this entire ‘odyssey.’  I plan to create an ISP for Hebrew learning in the near future.  Over the past several weeks, I noticed an increase in my motivation and efforts in learning Hebrew.  I believe that my mind has been more receptive to all language learning since I began using an ISP and increasing my awareness of the learning process.  I was also inspired to develop more discipline in prioritizing Hebrew study time.  Nonetheless, this week, I have lost my motivation for anything that I don’t need to do right now; and unfortunately, that includes Hebrew.  I cannot justify the time.  I almost resent my personal obligation towards it at the moment.  I will continue my lessons for the next couple of weeks for maintenance, but will reserve all my study time for Isthmus Zapotec, Korean, and Japanese.  (Good thing I decided against including China into this trip as well!) 

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.           

Time commitment

Checking in with my ISP and time commitment: My Midterm Progress Report http://jessicabruin.blogspot.com/2013/05/midterm-progress-report.html assessed my progress towards meeting my objectives, but did not reveal whether or not I was following through in other areas of my ISP.  The most important element of this ISP is my time commitment.  The best plan in the world is useless without taking action, and action must occur repeatedly for any progress to be made.  Week 1 ISP blog, Time:  Minimum 10 hours/week of study and research that meets objectives; not including additional course readings and time spent journaling.  I had to decide how much time was minimally needed to make reasonable progress towards meeting my objectives.  I initially thought that a minimum of 20 hours would be needed, but after factoring in the time required for other study activities and life, I felt that I needed to be more reasonable with myself.  Even though I reduced this ideal by half, in the first few weeks of study, I found this ‘reasonable’ time commitment to be challenging.  It was not until Week 4 that I felt comfortable with my new learning routine.  In addition, I narrowed the activities of the minimum ten-hour requirement to language learning activities only.  Once I began my studies, I felt that the most important tasks were those spent in actual language learning, and that I needed to be very disciplined about dedicating time and effort towards these activities.  These activities are also the most difficult and tedious, being the most likely to be procrastinated or put at the bottom of the project to-do list.  (Watching You Tube videos about Juchitán culture is much more fun!)  I did not make a minimum time requirement for the other activities involved in this project because I was not worried about doing enough of other things.  I also knew that the language-learning time requirement would prompt other learning activities.

Time management: The most difficult aspect of this endeavor towards self-directed language learning was making the time commitment.  I recall complaining a lot during the first three weeks of this project about feeling pulled from my studies by family and other personal obligations.  One could ask then, how have I gotten this far through college if I have been so conflicted with home life and college life?  The consequences of not succeeding with traditional college coursework make tuning out the rest of the world much easier to do.  I will admit that this project is unique because I am accountable only to myself.  There is no Isthmus Zapotec homework due in class each week (aside from a weekly blog report), there are no IZ quizzes, midterm, or final exam.  I will not receive a poor grade because I did not meet my ISP objectives.  I do not even have other classmates learning this language to compete with or be motivated to keep up with.  Perhaps worst of all, I have selected a language that has virtually no native speakers in California.  I cannot really use this language with anyone at this time in my life.  So how can I be disciplined enough to make difficult personal sacrifices to prioritize the time to learn Isthmus Zapotec?  I had to create a system for personal accountability that would give me discipline, thus maintaining my motivation to learn.  I trained myself to keep a log of the time I spend learning.  This habit began to develop in Week 2 when I took my first steps towards language learning.  I knew that I was going to be blogging about my progress, so I began to write down every learning activity I engaged in.  On my second language-learning day, I thought it would be a good idea to include the time of these activities; not just how much time, but the hour of day. This was important to me because I was trying to decide what time of day was the best for me to study.  I also began to jot down in my notebook the time I did other activities because I was concerned about how I spent my non-study time.  By Week 3, I decided I needed an additional way to track my study time because the pages of my notebook were filled with note-taking and language learning and was not an easy way to see how well I was meeting my time commitment.  I purchased a weekly planner to summarize my learning activities and keep track of my weekly time investment.  Once or twice a week, I transfer salient information from my notebook into my planner.  To help motivate me to keep my planner updated, I told myself that this is part of the learning process and that it ‘counts’ towards time spent on the project.  I have two weekly tallies; the first is of the total time spent on the project, which includes research and cultural learning.  I then add up the time spent on just language-learning activities, such as learning grammar and vocabulary or memorizing a poem.  I receive motivating feedback from easily observing this data in my planner.  This planner has become my strongest study-time motivator.  All of my good intentions and language-learning desires can fade with fatigue, family emergencies, or an invitation to a special event.  But as each day comes to a close, I visualize updating my planner and if I will have anything to record for the day.  If I have not, I do not give myself permission to go to bed until I have done some language learning.  As much as I dislike staying up late, I have fallen into the habit of working at late hours because I have no distractions.       

Study-time totals:  The log of my study time is not always one-hundred-percent accurate, but is always a good estimate of the time I have invested in learning activities.  I have generally underestimated the time whenever in doubt.  Noting my minimum effort tells me much more than creating a wishful effort.  Here are my tallies:  Week 2, time working on whole project 17 hours/actual language learning 3-4 hours; Week 3, 42(crazy amount of time spent transcribing interview)/10+ hours; Week 4, 26.5/12 hours; Week 5, 25/16 hours; Week 6, 18/9 hours; Week 7 28/10 hours; Week 8, 42/8.75 hours (increased hours for research).       

Response to previous post: No formal 'you'

No formal ‘you’ after all:  Since Villalteco Zapotec has a formal ‘you’ (the usted in Spanish), I suspected that Isthmus Zapotec did, as well.  It does not.  I just read in Gramática Popular del Zapoteco del Istmo (Pickett & Black, 2001), “No hay diferencia entre usted y tú” (p. 28, http://www-01.sil.org/mexico/zapoteca/istmo/G023b-GramaticaZapIstmo-zai.pdf). The singular 'you' in IZ is lii.

Week 8 Zapotec Interviews

Interview with other Zapotec native speakers:  Yesterday, I had the opportunity to interview three more Oaxacan native-Zapotec speakers.  My first interview in April was with three high school students http://jessicabruin.blogspot.com/2013/04/week-3-interview.html.  Although I used the same interview questions for all, the responses were different.  I believe this to be so because of the age difference.  The interview yesterday was with adults; one man and woman over fifty years and one woman between twenty and thirty years.  These adults are students at an ESL/Literacy school in the Pico Union area of Los Angleles.  Like the students in the previous interview, these students only identify their language as “zapoteco.”  They did not distinguish the linguistic region.  Unfortunately, I neglected to bring along my maps, so I was not able to have them show me where in Oaxaca they are from, which would enable me to identify their language variety.  I will add to this blog when I locate their hometowns and language region.  At this time, I believe these students speak Valley Zapotec.  Each of them said that their language was a little different from the other, but were mutually intelligible; therefore, they each potentially speak a different dialect of Valley Zapotec.  I was very excited, though, because they were able to note similarities between their language and Isthmus Zapotec.  For instance, nis and nisa ‘water’ are almost the same.  The male student noted that when nis is used in a sentence, it does become nisa, but alone it is just nis.  Tree in the students’ language is yag and in IZ is yaga.  Yo’do their language is ‘church’ and in IZ is yu’du, and ‘mass’ is misa and mixa’ in IZ. 

Zapotec pragmatics:  There were pronoun similarities as well.  I learned that there is a formal “you” (le) like in Spanish.  I suspect that this would be true for Isthmus Zapotec as well.  I have not yet seen this distinction in my grammar resources.  The formal “you” is used when speaking with one’s boss or important people.  I asked about nonverbal gestures.  Are there any gestures that are unique to Zapotec?  After running through a few gesture scenarios, the answer was “no.”  Mexican Spanish and Zapotec speakers use the same body language, according to my sources.  I will continue this blog entry a little later, as I have more to share.  

Wrong about interviewees' language region:  After researching the towns of the interviewees, I discovered that they are all from the Sierra Norte region of Oaxaca.  (Please view the maps from http://jessicabruin.blogspot.com/2013/04/map-of-oaxaca-mexico.html).  Their towns are located in the Villa Alta District, which on the language map http://jessicabruin.blogspot.com/2013/04/language-maps.html is the region of Villalteco Zapotec language.  These interviewees do not speak Valley Zapotec, as did the high school interviewees in my first interview.  However, the students from both interviews have the same word for ‘water,’ nis.  I think that this word has not changed much amongst Zapotec speakers from different regions because it is such a commonly used word. 

Sociolinguistic issues:  Unlike the high school Zapotec speakers, these adults were very concerned about preserving their language.  They all shared about the problem of the younger generation not being able to speak to the older generation.  A great concern is of the young people who live in the United States that are unable to speak to their grandparents when they visit the family in Oaxaca.  The older woman I interviewed said that she is trying to teach her grandson Zapotec.  He can understand her, but does not yet speak back to his grandmother in Zapotec.  The young woman has a five-year old daughter who is learning to speak Zapotec.  It is very important to this young mother that her daughter speaks the language so she can communicate with relatives.  The male interviewee is currently working with an organization that is promoting a unified writing system for their language.  He says that many Zapotec speakers believe that putting their language in writing will preserve the language for the future.  This interviewee expressed his concern about the language being lost altogether.  I would like to learn more about how and why the Isthmus Zapotec language is prolifically written, and the other Zapotec languages are not.  Is Isthmus Zapotec viewed as a literate model for other Zapotec languages?

Still looking for a native IZ speaker:  The interviewees told me that they did not know of any Isthmus Zapotec speakers in Los Angeles.  However, the male interviewee said that there is a gringo who speaks IZ that had spent some time in his village documenting his language.  The interviewee said that his organization is trying to locate this man, who supposedly is in Los Angeles now.  They want to recruit the gringo’s help with their writing system.  Anyways, the interviewee said he will let me know if he is able to contact the man. 

 

Week 8 Completed Memrise Course!

Week 8

Word of the Week:  ñee bere huiini ‘little chicken foot’

(This is the name of a flower that doesn’t look much like a chicken foot to me; it is a cute name, though.  This vocabulary came from my last lesson on Memrise, but I already knew the literal translation.  I have learned these three words from different sources.)

Completed Memrise:  I completed the Memrise course last night!!!  http://www.memrise.com/course/46103/juchitan-zapotec-2/.  The last week of working with this course had become much more difficult.  It’s not just from Spanish to IZ anymore, but from one IZ aspect to another: habitual→completive.  I spent some time working with the verb conjugations on paper, looking for spelling patterns and learning the possible variations and exceptions.  This helped me select the correct answers on Memrise, but I cannot think fast enough yet to note the correct conjugation and think of the meaning of the verb simultaneously.   I will need to spend more time learning these words either through reviewing or “watering” the vocabulary on Memrise and/or working on memorization in my notebook.  The course ended with a lesson on plants.  I suspect that the course designer intentionally ended the program this way to complete the metaphor of “planting.”  This was a refreshing way to finish the course.  These IZ words were not translated into Spanish, but rather accompanied by just a picture.  This made learning these botanical terms easy and fun.  I will continue to review what I have learned and burn into memory my 241 new vocabulary words.  I will also continue to listen to the songs and poems on the course site.    

Week 7 Grammar

Grammar:  Grammar is a wonderful thing.  Without it, human speech would be incomprehensible.  Language learners often want to begin learning the grammar of their target language right away (Griffiths, 2008).  Knowing the rules of the language allows learners to know when they make mistakes and how to correct them.  For me, learning the rules or principles of Isthmus Zapotec provides me with a map or key to the language. 

Most important for me: The most important grammatical feature I needed to understand when beginning to learn this language was that many IZ words (and sometimes whole sentences) are clusters of affixes.  Without knowing this, it can be nearly impossible to look a word up in the dictionary.  Learning the common prefixes, infixes, and suffixes of IZ gave me the ability to decipher the meaning of new words (Leaver et al, 2005).  It is especially important to recognize a prefix and infix in order to look past them to find the root word.  Often times the spelling of the root word is affected by the prefix, so being aware of these changes allows for better troubleshooting skills when trying to find the meaning of a new word.  For instance, many IZ words begin with an ‘x’ followed by another consonant (Britton, 2003).  To a native English speaker, this looks intimidatingly foreign; but often times, it just means ‘of’ or the equivalent of the English possessive ‘s: xpere Juan ‘John’s chicken.’  The IZ word for ‘chicken’ is actually bere not pere, but like I mentioned, prefixes can change the spelling of the root. When an x is added to b at the beginning of a word, the b becomes a p forming xp.  This is crucial to know because even if I recognized the possessive prefix but did not know the spelling rule, I would never find the meaning of pere.  However (to make sure), I was just able to find the meaning of bere in my dictionary.  

Pronunciation is grammar, too:  If we use Purpura’s (2004, cited in Griffiths, 2008) definition, grammar includes “everything speakers know about their language,” which includes “the system of meanings (semantics)” (p. 174).  Pronunciation affects meaning; therefore, how we say something can be grammatical or not.  A word pronounced incorrectly can be meaningless to a native speaker.  Tone and stress can also affect word meaning.  I was worried when I read in Leaver et al (2005) that intonation (rising and falling pattern of speech) is the most important aspect of spoken language to master, “improper intonation is far more debilitating than mispronunciation of individual sounds,” and “Even good sounds, with bad intonation, can be so irritating or confusing to a native speaker that the conversation will be impaired” (p. 163).  Intonation is what gives speakers a heavy accent.  Intonation also carries pragmatic meaning, expressing a speaker’s attitude or emotion.  Furthermore, it can indicate the difference between a question or a statement.  Knowing how to manipulate intonation to convey one’s intended meaning is crucial.  The intonation of Isthmus Zapotec is so different from English that it is one of my greatest challenges in learning the language.  For this, the Memrise native speaker audio and Podcast IZ poetry recordings are invaluable to my language learning.

Finally, using my best grammar resource:  The topic of ‘grammar’ this week is timely.  I had made it a goal of mine this week to look at Black and Pickett’s (2001) complete, electronic IZ grammar book, Gramatica Popular Del Zapotec Del Istmo.  At the beginning of this language-learning odyssey, I was certain that this found treasure would be my primary source for grammatical instruction.  Instead, I primarily referenced my Zapotec/English dictionary by Britton (2003) for its convenient introductory to IZ grammar, and a little later relied on the Memrise Juchitán Zapotec course for grammar learning.  In the back of my mind, however, I have been thinking about what I am probably missing by not looking at Black and Pickett’s book.  Needless to say, I have been very aware of the reason for my aversion.  I need this resource on paper for my idiosyncratic language-learning style, but it is 135 pages long, and I did not want to print that many pages.  Well—today, I broke down and printed the whole book and placed it in a binder.  I feel happy and almost relieved now that I can reference this material how ever and where ever I want.  It will be interesting to see how this resource influences my language learning from here on out.  I now have an investment in paper and ink, so I better make it worth it!