Looking at the video presentation at the beginning of the semester, I am fairly pleased with my progress on my learning plan. I have learnt and completed more than I have expected, and went beyond my plans. My Learning Plan included the most basic conversations and vocab learnings as well as improving pronunciation, but I have also learnt a lot more about the Korean Culture and History through my conversation with my Language partner and my own research in completing cultural posts and discussion posts.
Studying about the language structure definitely helped me understand my target language more, because it made me more aware of the differences between the grammatical structure and the pronunciation. Learning about the phonology of different language also helped me identify clearly, the differences in the production of sounds in different languages, and helped me practice those different sounds.
Through learning more about the history of languages, I became more intrigued about the culture and this process have changed my views and misconceptions of the region. I have always thought that Korea was part of the Chinese territory during the Tang Dynasty and therefore was greatly influenced by the Chinese Culture and language. However, this was in fact incorrect, the Korean Peninsula was never geographically taken by the Mongolians or the Han Chinese, but was ruled by commandries during the Han Dynasty, and remained a close trading partner throughout later dynasties. This course has pushed me to learn more about areas of History that I didn’t know about as much and corrected my misconceptions.
Communicative Competence is “the competence that enables us to convey and interpret messages and to negotiate meanings interpersonally with specific context.” From my reading of H.D. Brown’s work, I think that my main focus in my study of Korean would be Sociolinguistic Competence. My understanding of this term is to understand the language not only in the context of the information, but to be more aware of the larger social and culture background, and being more informed of the big “C”. This can prevent misinformation and misunderstanding between language learners and the native speakers, and also allow better communication and learning.
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