This week, I continued working with my flashcards, again, making sure that the amount of time I spent creating them was half (or under) the amount of time I spent studying them. I'd like to think this system holds me to account, so I'm not just creating flashcards. I'm also using them. This week, I spent an average of twenty minutes, creating flashcards (for both my individual use and for my language-learning website), and about forty minutes, studying them, per day.
Pertinent to my language-learning website, and as I mentioned in my last blog post, I'm interested in making my website more interactive, so I've been experimenting with embedding my flashcards into my website. It looks great, and, actually, it's more interactive than I ever imagined possible, insofar as it allows visitors to my site to chose their study mode from the following options: Match, Learn, Test, Flashcards, and Spell. I'm delighted by these possibilities, but there are still some kinks that need to be worked out on my end. For instance, as mentioned previously, I am trying to arrange my flashcards, so there is Kinyarwanda on one side and only a picture of the term on the other. This works very well for me, particularly as I have learned to associate certain images with certain terms; however, for my website visitors, these associations might not be as clear, even for something as simple as "Fruit," which is the first topic I'm experimenting with embedded flashcards.
Within the topic, "Fruit," there are a few words to describe "banana," for example, and without an English translation, I'm not sure how to make clear these finer nuances. Of course, the solution could be just to describe the word in English, along with the image, and that's fine, but I wonder if I should include more context details within the page itself instead. Currently, the page dedicated to Fruit only has the embedded flashcards; however, if I list the terms, perhaps that would help. On the other hand though, that seems awfully repetitive. If anyone has advice for me on that front, I would sincerely appreciate it. For your reference, here is the page in question:
https://sites.google.com/a/wisc.edu/learning-kinyarwanda/lessons-in-kinyarwanda/6-food-fruit
These flashcards, and the interactive possibilities they offer, have also provided me an opportunity to speak and publicly, at that! Indeed, the "Spell" function requires that the flashcard creator upload an audio recording of the term and/or phrase being studied, so that the studier may, in turn, attempt to spell what they hear. Even though it's a little thing, and it should, in no way, replace conversation, I think I'd like to try including an audio file in my conversation. One of my classmates, K, is including audio in her language-learning blog, and though I am still a little anxious about it, she's providing me the courage to try something like that again. Perhaps a purely audio recording, without a visual component, will relax me a little. Regardless, it's a start, or at least a re-start for me.
In addition to flashcard work and website progress, I have continued watching genocide testimony video, again, for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes per day. And I have begun trying to parse a document from the Genocide Archive of Rwanda's website, which I've been trying to dedicate twenty minutes to per day.
Finally, I also met with some fellow language learners this week, and one of them, L, mentioned the possibility of presenting at Africa Day about teaching oneself a language independently through pop culture. So, that's something to look forward to and possibly something to think about in relation to how I am learning my target language.
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