Scribd
Upload
61 views2 pages

Speaking Portfolio - Arabic Autumn Semester - Javier Noriega Molina

Javier chose to focus on improving his Arabic pronunciation as an area for independent study since he struggles with certain sounds as a native Spanish speaker and lacked confidence speaking without a working microphone. He planned to spend twenty minutes daily watching Arabic videos on YouTube, listening to music, and using language learning apps and additional resources. While Duolingo was not very helpful, he found helpful pronunciation videos on YouTube and enjoyed listening to a Lebanese band that improved his vocabulary and encouraged speaking practice. Repeating videos by a popular Arabic-learning YouTube couple also helped his pronunciation.

Uploaded by

Javier Noriega Molina
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
61 views2 pages

Speaking Portfolio - Arabic Autumn Semester - Javier Noriega Molina

Javier chose to focus on improving his Arabic pronunciation as an area for independent study since he struggles with certain sounds as a native Spanish speaker and lacked confidence speaking without a working microphone. He planned to spend twenty minutes daily watching Arabic videos on YouTube, listening to music, and using language learning apps and additional resources. While Duolingo was not very helpful, he found helpful pronunciation videos on YouTube and enjoyed listening to a Lebanese band that improved his vocabulary and encouraged speaking practice. Repeating videos by a popular Arabic-learning YouTube couple also helped his pronunciation.

Uploaded by

Javier Noriega Molina
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Speaking Portfolio: Arabic Beginner 1

Javier Noriega Molina

Section 1- Independent Study Report

A) Description of chosen development area

I am an insecure language student and because of that, I consider pronunciation a


crucial part of the learning of a language. In the middle of the term, my microphone
stopped working so I could not really speak during my lessons. This translated into an
extra effort for me to feel more confident when speaking Arabic and I decided that
focusing on this development area would be the right thing to do. On top of this, being
a Spanish native speaker makes me struggle with certain sounds in Arabic.

I am planning to work on pronunciation by:

 Watching Arabic videos on YouTube


 Listening to music in Arabic
 Using language learning apps such as Duolingo
 Using the resources provided in the Additional resources folder

I am planning on spending twenty minutes a day watching Arabic videos on YouTube


and using the resources available on Blackboard. After that, I could do some voice
recognition exercises on Duolingo and listen to some Arabic music.

B) Reflection on learning

As I have already mentioned before, I lack confidence when it comes to speaking


Arabic and that is exactly why I think that by improving my pronunciation, I will feel
more comfortable communicating with others in this beautiful language.

The resources that the teacher provided us with were very helpful. In addition to that, I
found a video on YouTube about how to correctly pronounce the Arabic letters. This
helped me a lot since it was pretty difficult for me to learn the alphabet. To be honest,
there are still certain sounds I am not very confident making, but the YouTube video
includes a very useful drawing of the mouth indicating where the sound should come
from and what the position of the tongue should be. This really helped me.

Listening to music in Arabic really motivated me to keep studying the language.


Hearing the words in a melodic and poetic way made me pay attention to the
pronunciation in a very specific way and encouraged me to expand my vocabulary and
read the lyrics out loud. My favourite band is called Mashrou’ Leila, a Lebanese indie
band.

At the end, I did not really use Duolingo, since I got tired of it pretty fast and there
were not many voice recognition exercises available on the app. Watching video vlogs
on YouTube was also a good idea! One of my flatmates told me that one of her best
friends (both my flatmate and her friend are from Estonia) married an Arabic man and
now they have a very popular YouTube channel and Instagram page. The girl became
fluent in Arabic in just a year and she speaks perfect Arabic with her husband in all
their videos. Their channel is Adam & Lotta (same user for their Instagram page).
Sometimes, I would stop the videos and I would practice repeating the words they had
said.

C) Evidence of completed development area

Alphabet video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPDCCdFR_dI


Lebanese band (my favourite song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=GYaStTK1bQk
Adam & Lotta Youtube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPIfOi1DlNflTmbtvlQNHg
Duolingo app: https://es.duolingo.com

You might also like