For these two week of SDLAP 112 lecture, I met with my language partner Somyung and Joon over Zoom last week and this week. We started off our lesson by talking about how our weeks were in Korean. This was in an effort to start practicing one of our goals for this semester which is to speak in only Korean to help retain the language and keep practicing our skills. We also started off last week by watching a few video clips from the show 슈퍼맨이 돌아왔다 which translates literally to “The Return of Superman” and is also known as “Superman is Back.” It was a nice way to start to watch a little bit of 예능, a korean variety show, and see Korean used in a normal setting talking about day-to-day life in a parent and child relationship and to be able to continue interpreting Korean so my skills could improve. Right after that, we also started reading articles in our lessons to improve our literacy skills and practice Korean comprehension.
Last week, I read an article about BTS. It was found at this link https://www.hankyung.com/international/article/201906028726Y. Basically, this article was talking about BTS’ impact, how big they have become in relation to other pop acts over the past couple of decades. The goal of reading this article that was in all Korean was to test my comprehension. Some phrases I translated include this one “CNN은 '어떻게 BTS가 미국을 무너뜨렸나'라는 장문의 톱 기사에서 1960년대를 뒤흔든 엄청난 비틀스 열풍 또는 팬을 뜻하는 '비틀마니아'(Beatlemania)에 빗대 BTS 열풍을 주목했다.” This phrase translates to how did BTS take over the world and America is comparable to how the Beatles did the same with “Beatlemania” in the 1960s. Afterwards, I learned about 사물놀이 which is (sameulnuri in English). It is a genre of music with four instruments which are 꽹과리 (Kkwaenggwari) a small gong, 징 (Jing) a larger gong, 장구) an hourglass-shaped drum, and 북 (Buk) a barrel drum that is comparable to that of a bass drum. I learned about the history and how it originated from Pung mulnori (풍물놀이), which featured wind instruments and meant "playing Korean traditional percussion instruments". It was also a Korean folk genre comprising music, acrobatics, folk dance, and ritual which got its roots from rural areas in Korea and during the Imperial period/rule by Japan.
This week, we talked and read two articles about weather and COVID-19. The goal of reading these articles was the same as last week to boost comprehension and to improve literacy as well and speed of reading/understanding. The weather article introduced lots of new vocabulary words such as 산지- mountainous area, 전망-view, 예상강수량- expected rainfall, 제외-exception, 남부지방-southern region, 예상적설량- expected snowfall, 최저기온-lowest temperature, 최고기온-highest temperature, (대기)질-air quality, 원활하다 -smooth, 확산-diffusion, 강수-rainfall, 영향-effect, 청정하다-clean, 각별하다-particular, and 유의-caution as it talked about rainfall in each region and what was expected in the next few days. The other article about COVID-19 also talked a lot about how personal protective equipment and cleaning supplies being bought at much higher rates as the government was encouraging it to flatten the curve for COVID-19. Some new vocabulary words that were introduced were 페렴- pneumonia, 확산- diffusion, 증가- increase, 매출- revenue, 분석- analyze, 급증- sudden increase, 대비- prepare, 신장하다- to extend, 귀성- Going home for the holidays, 격상- Elevated, 신장률- Rate of growth, 품절- sold out/out of stock, and 경미- Minor.
All in all, I was very satisfied with both lessons as they helped with my comprehension, see my level of literacy and where I need to practice more, and helped me grow as a Korean speaker.
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