Week 4 of Lauren’s project: Chat in Esperanto
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Time for another weekly project update! We have been really busy this week since getting to Amsterdam (fun things coming on the blog very soon!) so we focused the video on a chat with Lauren.
Since the first conversations we tend to have with new people we meet tend to be predictable, I told Lauren some example questions I'd like to ask her and she prepared her answers in advance. This kind of conversation may be the kind she may have on meeting someone and using the language for the first time, so it's really helpful to know what she wants to say in advance.
Even spontaneous conversations can follow similar patterns, and as beginner learners we can take advantage of that!
As well as a general update, it's also a chance for you all to get to know Lauren a little better 🙂 Speaking of which, here are her thoughts on how she's doing!
For this week's video, I wanted to test myself out on having a full, continuous conversation, with no help from a dictionary. Since my goal is to have casual conversations with other Esperanto speakers in Berlin, Benny decided to “interview me” with a few commonly-asked questions for practice.
Benny gave me a list of the questions he would ask (in English), and gave me some time to prepare by studying the vocabulary I would need to answer his questions. Our conversation in this video consists of Benny asking me his pre-made questions, which were written down on the computer in front of us, and me answering him entirely from memory, with no cheat sheets allowed 🙂
I tried to push myself to go just a little bit more in-depth with my answers, rather than giving simply one-line responses, because I know that I won't be able to only provide one line responses when I get asked questions at the Polyglot gathering in Berlin!
After watching my results, here are my goals moving forward:
(1) To improve my conversational vocabulary, and
(2) To improve the speed and flow of my responses and reduce hesitation
–both of which are what I need to get from where I am now to a conversational level.
Here is a detailed list of all the resources I've used so far to reach this stage:
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