Metacognitive Knowledge and Tasks

Taking a metacognitive look back at a previous entry (http://learningyaqui.blogspot.com/2010/05/lesson-5.html ), I will analyze and evaluate the strategies I used, the tasks I engaged in, and my own learning. As researchers note, good language learners are reflective about their learning and are able to think about, analyze, and evaluate the learning processes as well as the actual language learning.

Evaluate Strategies

In Lesson #5, I took the "hypothesis testing" approach to learning, or rather, figuring out, a language. I believe this strategy worked has advantages and disadvantages; the former being a positive way to learn about and test my knowledge of Yaqui, and being able to look at entire sentences, albeit complex ones, in the target language. However, the main disadvantage is that my low proficiency limits my hypothesis testing to simply "identifying" new words and parts of speech- in contrast to creating my own sentences and testing their grammaticality.


Task Analysis

The task was to determine new words using (i.e. reading) a Yaqui text and its Spanish or English equivalent. Wenden's three parts to task analysis are as follows:

Purpose
The purpose of the task was to expand my vocabulary, learn words that were not offered in vocabulary lists, and to possibly learn more about parts of speech/word order.

Classification
Reading skills: understanding word order, looking for reoccurring words/phrases

Genre: Suggestions for leaving feedback- lists

Language: informal (website commentary), language in general is complex (case system, morphological inflection)

Vocabulary: words and phrases related to websites, feedback, topics

Background knowledge: I know about the process of leaving comments on websites, I know about which topics the website covers. Other language knowledge (Spanish).

Feelings about task: In the Yaqui language, the task isn't really relevant, but nonetheless interesting for the purposes of the website and seeing if native speakers respond in Yaqui.

Demand

Which strategies and/or actions do I use:

Hypothesis testing for reoccurring word meaning

Guessing at unknown words/word order

Use of Spanish/English knowledge to determine transferred words- esp. related to technology ("website" "webblog")

Consider word order (verb final) to recognize verbs


Assess Learning

Though some of my hypotheses about the language were wrong, I believe that still contributes to my learning. While I did not learn a long list of vocabulary words in this task, I did learn more about the language (subject pronouns, informal greetings, more influences form Spanish/English) than I had previously. I goal was not to make all correct hypotheses but rather to make hypotheses that seemed logical and then test them for accuracy. Fortunately, I was able to test mine and pinpointed the ones that were inconsistent with the target language. So, though I did not learn a lot, what I did learn was valuable (especially the lesson of hypothesis TESTING and not just assuming my interpretations are correct)!