Week 4: Wrapping Up

The End 

    This final week, Chloé and I buckled down and proceeded to thoroughly achieve a comprehensive and cultural understanding of Italian and Dutch. Based on our previous difficulties, such as having trouble reconciling our vocabulary with the many grammatical structures, we were able to find resources tailored specifically to our needs. We had been previously using websites and books without delving heavily into videos, until this final week. By finding certain videos, we were able to understand the logic behind certain grammar rules that we were previously unclear and became much better at using vocabulary with proper grammar.

We were also able to meet in person, which made writing and conversation easier than it was previously, perhaps best demonstrated in us singing songs in Italian and in Dutch. We also spent a lot of time reviewing our previous knowledge by attempting to speak spontaneously and writing down what we learned. This proved to be a great way to retain the previously learned information. At the end of our in-person meeting, we came away more confident and prepared to use our lingual knowledge in the proper context.

  Lastly, as perhaps the culmination of our knowledge in both of these languages, we also recognized a part of how similar Italian and Dutch are. For example, we learned the similarity between past tenses in both languages, where they both have two forms of the past tense, one which describes a continuous past action and the other which describes one that has ended. With the obvious differences, it was fascinating to continue to see how people use similar logic to communicate with each other.

Throughout these four weeks, Chloé and I both feel that we have made a lot of progress and are very happy with how far we have come. We hope to continue learning these languages and others in the future and look forward to doing so. We would whole-heartedly recommend this project to another senior, while warning them to be prepared for a lot of hard work. Our approval stems from the fact that having an unstructured month is a perfect time to embark on learning a new language as well as the benefit to the student’s understanding of communication between cultures.

We had wanted to do a cooking show and sing, but decided a cooking show wouldn't fit within our timeframe. Therefore, as our last project we only sang. Our singing will be linked below. Barrio by Mahmood for Italian and Make a Man Outta You from Mulan for Dutch.

**Disclaimer**
We do not claim ownership to the music videos. By the time we did Mulan, we had already learned Let It Go in Dutch, but decided we didn't like our proficiency. Therefore we sound pretty tired by the time we get to Mulan. 

Video Links:

Mahmood

Mulan