Hello, everyone and welcome back to my blog! Though it has been a while since I last posted on here, I am excited to talk about a topic that I hold very dear to my heart: practicing multilingual worship to grow in my faith as a Catholic. No matter what your religious background is, I highly encourage you to read this post in its entirety, as it may benefit you, or someone you know.
For those of you who know me, I am very involved in our Christian and Catholic groups on campus. In fact, I am currently a Worship Team leader for our Intervarsity chapter on campus. So far, our worship team has sung songs in Spanish, French, Italian, German, and many different African dialects, but I hope to make our space even more diverse and inclusive during my last semester at Dickinson.
I have found that my faith has been spiritually, physically, and emotionally healing over the years, especially this past year, as I have been suffering from chronic migraines. That being said, I found worship music and specifically contemporary Christian songs to be my saving grace.
While I was abroad, I lost one of my grandfathers in Italy and had to pray for over a month for my health to get better in Cameroon. Though both of these instances were very emotionally draining, music healed me. It gave me hope that someday I would be cured and that I would feel better.
Given that languages are one of the most important parts of my life, I find international Christian music to be even more empowering. Not only am I increasing my vocabulary, but I am also working on my pronunciation, cadence, and tone. As I am sure most of you have noticed, learning a language is hard, but singing an entire song in a language that is not your first language is even harder, but even so, if you push through the highs and the lows throughout your language-learning process, you will persevere. You can even learn how to change your voice and the rhythm of a song when you become fluent in a language. That is one of the most rewarding parts of the process for me.
A lot of you have asked me what means the most to me and that is hands down my faith, so if you are currently on a faith journey, feel free to join me in this journey together. You may just be in the process of understanding what Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, or another religion means to you and to your identity, or you may be comfortable with that part of who you are. No matter where you find yourself, I highly encourage you to start incorporating worship music into your life.
You may be asking yourself, "That's great, Laura, but exactly how can I do that?"The easiest way to do so is by typing up "([INSERT RELIGION] worship songs" in your target language. Start listening to some songs that pop up. They will most likely be some of the most recent, or popular worship songs for your particular religion and once you start feeling comfortable with some of the songs that you listen to, make it a goal to learn a song by heart.
Start off by looking up unknown words to slowly build your vocabulary. Practice it consistently and take it as slowly as you need to. It may take you a day, or three months to fully memorize a song, but the point is to never give up. Who knows? Maybe you will even develop a closer relationship with God, or with a higher being in the process.
As a bonus, I am sharing the link to my favorite Italian worship song that I sang while I studied abroad in Bologna, Italy in Fall 2017 (SEE ABOVE).
Before
getting into the rest of this post, I wanted to wish everyone a happy new year,
un feliz año nuevo, une bonne année, ein glückliches neues Jahr, un felice anno
nuovo, С новым годом! I was recently talking to my parents and told them how
amazed I was by how quickly 2017 flew by for me after being away from the
states for over 6 months, but am hoping that this year provides even more
opportunities for language-learning and for dedicating more time to this blog.
Despite having an unsteady posting schedule last year, I am determined to
create more content for you this year.
I also
wanted to thank each and every one of you who has taken a few spare moments out
of your day to read my posts. We are slowly approaching 2 years on this blog,
which is very exciting! Before getting ahead of myself, I will be spending 5
months abroad this semester and am told that I will rarely have access to wifi,
but do not hesitate. As soon as I get back, I will make up for lost time and
content and will write entire posts about all 3 of my study-abroad language
immersion experiences.
I love starting off the
new year by starting on a clean slate. As a language guru, I love getting
inspired by videos made by language-learners who have similar ambitions to mine.
As few days ago, I stumbled across a video, “Plan with me: Language Goals &
2018 Bujo”, made by one of my favorite
YouTubers, Lindie Botes. In this video, she takes out her agenda and walks you
through how you can set meaningful and realistic goals for the new year, most
of them being language-related. What I like most about her approach is that it
is feasible and very rewarding if you stick to it. She gives you practical tips
on how you can track your progress the old-fashioned way, using a notebook and
colorful pens to jot down your goals. If you would like to know what it is that
she does to keep up with other 10 languages amidst a full-time job and
schedule, feel free to watch it by clicking on the video that I have attached
to this post! Below are my language-learning goals for 2018:
Spanish: As a native Spanish-speaker, I will admit
that I have not had much time to listen to any audio or spoken Spanish aside
from hundreds of calls with my family. I would like to change that this year, as I have found that a big part of my identity has been lost ever since
college (due to there being very few Hispanic students there in general).
·Read as many books and novels in Spanish as
I can-I already have a couple dozen books that have been purchased within
the past year in Barcelona and books that I bought in Colombia years ago
waiting to be read.
·Watch movies and YouTube videos from
many countries throughout Latin-America, including Colombia.
·Write diary entries in Spanish.
·Try to reach out to other native Spanish
speakers on campus to make more meaningful friendships.
French: Status-Fluent; Hope to achieve:Native-like proficiency
Given that I will be studying abroad in a country whose official language is French, this list will not be as long as the other ones.
·Listen to as much audio content (i.e.
podcasts, videos, movies, and music) as I can to complement what I study
in my courses and my conversations with my host family while I am studying
abroad.
·Journal about my experience abroad
in French starting on the first day.
·Write down new words, sentences, and phrases
that I learn in a notebook dedicated to French.
German:Status-Upper intermediate; Hope to achieve:C1 level (European framework of
reference)
Given that I have not taken a German course since my senior year
of high-school, I have lost a lot of vocabulary that I would like to relearn. I
hope to do the following to reach my goals:
·Take German both semesters of my senior year
to review advanced grammar and vocabulary, reading, writing, and speaking with
other classmates who want to do the same.
·Go through at least one, or two of my German
workbooks that have been laying on my shelf for a while to work on all areas
of the language.
·Fill up more of my German notebook
with what I learn from my workbooks, what I learn in my courses, and any other
additional materials I use (i.e. free online sources, such as YouTube).
·Memorize a few songs in German.
Italian:Status-Fluent;Hope to achieve-Native-like proficiency
Given that I studied abroad in Italy for 4 months, I am
finally fluent in the language; however, believe that in order to fully master
a language, you have to sound and feel as native-like as possible, which is always
my ultimate goal with every language endeavor I take on.
·Video call my Italian friends as
often as possible and, whenever that is not possible, message them to ask them
questions about how to say certain sentences correctly.
·Fill up an entire notebook of new Italian
words and sentences that I learn during my academic and personal studies.
·Write many journal entries in
Italian after returning from being abroad.
Russian:Status-Intermediate; Hope to achieve-Advanced
This year will be a challenge for Russian since I have not
taken it since last spring semester, but am still determined to get back on
track. Doing so will take an incredible amount of patience and hours of study,
but I have never wanted to improve a language as much as I do Russian.
·Use “Dots” application every single week,
and, whenever possible, every single day to increase my vocabulary through
spaced repetition.
·Use two, or three of my workbooks to work on
all areas of the language, including grammar and vocabulary.
·Watch many Russian films with either
Russian subtitles, or no subtitles at all and write down new words and
sentences.
·Listen to more Russian music and watch more
YouTubers talk about their lives, lifestyle, traveling, and languages
to acquire those sets of vocabulary.
For now, I believe that is it! Just to clarify about my
upcoming language-learning endeavors, I am hoping to focus on these 6 for now,
as I am not fluent in all of them quite yet. Once I am, I will feel more comfortable
taking on new languages.
What are your language-learning goals and how do you
hope to achieve them? Hopefully my goals will give you some inspiration to write down your goals to track your progress as the months go by in 2018.
Good luck, buena suerte, bonne chance, viel Glück, in bocca al lupo, удачи with
your language studies!
