One of the main beginner pieces I learned was that Korean has the Subject-Object-Verb structure for a sentence. Although I am still on the beginner parts of learning Korean and have not done too much work with sentences, I know that this may cause me some difficulty. I have decided to change my way of thinking though so instead of trying to translate a sentence into English and get confused with the sentence structure, I am going to try to read it as it is and understand it in Korean. Because of the difference in sentence structure, I know that this may effect my way of understanding what I am reading or saying. When looking at the diagram on page 9, I know it is important to combine these different parts so that I fully understand the language. Right now I am more focused on phonetics because I am working with Emily to truly memorize the sounds that each letter of the Hangeul alphabet make. Even though I am learning these sounds, that does not mean that I understand what I am reading. Yes, I can sound out simple words, but they have no meaning to me yet. From there I will then start to focus on syntax which has to do more with SOV and I will learn how to properly form a sentence. Although technically semantics comes next, I think that it should be interlaced throughout the whole process. Even if I understand that the order needs to be SOV, I won’t know which words go where if I do not know their meaning. It all comes together which is why each aspect is so important to practice and build on.
Although psycholinguistics is one of the more interesting disciplines, I feel like I will get more out of it if I expand my research and study through sociolinguistics and applied linguistics. For sociolinguistics I will be able to see how the language is used in their society and how that may differ from how we use it. I can look into formal and informal or slang words that may be common. Regarding applied linguistics I can research this because it is about how to learn a language which is what I am doing. I want to do more research into both of these. These will help me to connect the language that I am learning to different practices and the culture of Korea. Because applied linguistics focuses on language learning problems I can incorporate this into my language learning processes to see what has worked for some and what has not worked for other when trying to learn a language. Both of these disciplines will really help me to further develop my language learning skills.
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