This semester has been full of new and interesting experiences thanks to SDLC 105 and 110 courses. At first, when I was about to plan the goal of the classes, I was a bit lost since I wanted to learn the Korean language while I am already a native speaker of the Korean language. This was because I wanted to perform better as a Korean tutor (or language partner in SDLC classes) in the future, which I assumed would require me a deeper understanding of the language. The only language I learned in my life besides Korean is English, and still, I started this when I was young, as opposed to most language learners who start learning in their later life. Therefore, I decided to re-learn the Korean language from a foreign language speaker’s perspective.
Among many things, I realized, the biggest change in my thought was that language is an ever-changing system closely influenced by near cultures. Therefore, learning a language is not and could not be just learning a language alone but learning culture. In this sense, I was truly thankful that I could communicate with other classmates in class so that I can learn more about my culture. Before the SDLC course, my cultural awareness was not so excellent that I could not easily distinguish aspects of Korean culture from others, especially American cultures. Conversations that I had with my language partner, Rachel, were also helpful as she deeply understands both Korean and American cultures.
I also loved that the SDLC course required me to explore cultural experiences since many entertaining and insightful conversations ensued from our creative cultural experiences. One of the interesting ways to experience a new culture is to learn how to cook food from the culture. I consider, especially in Korean culture, cuisine to be a big part of people’s life as much as Koreans always ask “Have you eaten?” to ask “How are you?” as in English-spoken cultures.
Among all the interesting readings and learning activities, I want to learn more about linguistic neuroscience and morphology as they are applied to artificial intelligence. There was a time I made a analyzing tool for English text (i.e. novel) which can make a list of vocabulary in the order in which words appear most frequently so that one can know which vocabulary to memorize first. This required me to learn morphology to the extent that I know lemmatization and stemming. If I go further to deal with AI development, which has been my interest, I will definitely need to understand the morphology and neuroscience of language.
Finally, SDLC courses this semester have been entertaining and educational at the same time. Not only did I gain academic knowledge but also made good friends and professor. Although language learning had made me feel only frustrated and overwhelmed as if it is my ever-lasting assignment, I started to feel attractive aspects of language learning. I want to share this with others as well, which makes me look forward to future SDLC experiences since I hope to work as a language partner.
Replies
Your journey through the SDLC courses sounds incredibly enriching! It's impressive how you've approached learning Korean from a different perspective and how it's expanded your cultural awareness. Keep embracing those new experiences and insights—they'll surely serve you well as a language partner in the future!