Over this past semester, I have thoroughly enjoyed learning Danish as well as exploring a bit about Denmark’s culture. I have actually gotten into looking at TikToks made by Danish creators and I can usually understand most of what is being said! This surprised me the first time it happened since I guess I hadn’t noticed just how much I had learned.
On Duolingo, I am now diamond league which is the highest league possible for experience points. I also now have a 217-day streak and I have just begun unit 4.
Out of reading, writing, speaking and understanding Danish, I definitely feel that reading is my strongest point and then either writing or understanding is my weakest point. Duolingo has an activity that lets you type out the sentence rather than selecting the words however, it does not come up that often since it is a more challenging activity. As for understanding spoken Danish, there is also an activity where you can listen to a phrase in Danish and then select the words that you are hearing however, I am finding that this activity has not been super helpful in actually understanding what is being said. This activity also has a feature where you can slow down what is being said so that the person who is speaking goes word by word.
I am very proud of the progress that I have made in learning Danish. One day, I hope to travel to Denmark so that I can put my new knowledge of Danish to use.
I also hope that in the future, I am able to incorporate some of the Danish that I have learned into my classroom. One daily activity that I have been thinking about doing once I am teaching is a word of the day. My idea is that, every morning, I would have a word in a language that is not English or French written on the board. I might choose to do words from the same language for a whole week and then change languages for the next week. I feel like this would be a fun way to incorporate languages into the classroom and maybe it will spark a love of languages in some of my students.
