Refer to the diagram on page 9 in Aitchison’s linguistics. How do you combine different disciplinary perspectives to formulate a more holistic understanding of your target language? Do you give preference to one disciplinary approach over the others? How will your knowledge of language structures and disciplinary methodologies inform the trajectory of your learning plan?
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Although I have a good grasp of the phonology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics in the Korean language, I tend to struggle a lot with vocabulary and pragmatics aspects of Korean. I often find myself saying what I want to say in English because my mind completely blanks out on the Korean word for it. Also, I haven't used Korean informally/casually in over 10 years because my only usage of Korean was for my family, to whom I would speak formally. To formulate a more holistic understanding of Korean, I am trying to further my pool of vocabulary and learn how to speak more informally. I definitely prefer syntax and vocabulary over trying to learn pragmatics. For me, I prefer learning disciplinary approaches separately, where I would learn each level of diagram one at a time. Usually, I'm not capable of multi-tasking and trying to focus on multiple things, which applies to the multiple disciplinary approaches. My understanding of language structures and disciplinary methodologies has helped me sort out what I need to focus on to build a strong foundation of my understanding of Korean. The readings and the diagram has helped me realize what is important for me like pragmatics so that I can understand more complex subjects.
There can be different combinations of the levels and different rearrangements of the "design features" of human language to form a specific and tailored discipline. To get a more holistic understanding of Korean, I think the given discipline perspective fits well with my learning plan and experience. I have a pretty firm grasp on the phonetics and phonology due to living with Korean parents and living in a Korean community. But the syntax, semantics and pragmatics I am less familiar with them. Which goes in line with the leveled learning and the Aitchinson's linguistics diagram as well. So my next few levels I master will be the next three hand in hand with each other and also inter-relationally with the different levels. I prefer the combination of disciplinary approaches as seeing the different rings of the diagram of the Aitchinson's diagram as "levels" from the D. Crystal's readings. Seeing those as both levels helps focus on selective learning (which explanation and rationale I liked fr a disciplinary learning). This knowledge of language structures and different methodologies for the disciplined learning of language has helped me understand where in language learning I really should focus on and how to partition my learning plan and my language learning in general, as in a bigger picture and scope of what I need to do and should focus on. I should focus on not just vocabulary building and verb conjugations, but the grammar and syntax as well. Learning the language pattern and breaking that down will be just as important as learning new words to convey meaning. The "meaning" needs structure to take on true meaning. After this reading. I will proceed to add my learning plan, learning sentence structure and different forms of it (syntax).