Due by 5pm on Sunday, March 8: Discussion Post #7 on the Ning
Go back and watch the recording of your presentation of your learning plan on the class PanOpto collection on Blackboard. Comment briefly on how things are going. What has changed? How have you incorporated materials and insights from class into your efforts? Have discussions regarding language structures and learning strategies helped you to understand the target language and culture? If so, how?
Reflect on your language learning so far. How would you describe the relationship between language and culture? What do you need to do to improve your communicative competence? Based on the readings by H.D. Brown, what kinds of competence are emphasized in your plan?
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Going back and watching myself talk about my expectations for the semester almost felt like watching a flashback and it was so cool to be able to see what I wanted to do compared to how the semester has actually gone. I wish I could do something like this for all of my classes. Overall, I think my Korean learning is going pretty well. In my video, I talked about how I was pretty equally an auditory and a visual learner. I think that insight from the learning style quiz we took at the beginning of the semester has actually been helpful since I use Quizlet and the internet a lot to read about Korean and flashcards to help me learn Hangul, but I also watch a lot of youtube videos, recordings, and my language partner Jannette for my auditory learning.
The first goal that I outlined in my presentation was to learn Hangul. This is definitely where I started in my individual learning and I actually spent a little more time on it than I was expecting because of some more complex elements like the layered vowels that I didn’t know about before starting. I will continue to refine my Hangul skills throughout the semester and often in our lessons we review by trying to sound out written words. In the next part of my presentation, I talked about how I wanted to focus on speaking and listening over reading and writing. In hindsight, I think this was a logical goal but with Korean, once you learn Hangul you can pretty much sound out or “read” most words so that was different than I had expected but also helpful because of the systematic nature of Hangul. I also mentioned how I wanted to try and learn some grammar on my own which I have been able to do thankfully due to the ample amount of website and online resources that cover Korean grammar. More recently Jannette started bringing a Korean book to our classes where she also teaches us grammar like topic particles and the formal vs. informal speech levels.
In my first meeting with Jannette, we agreed to incorporate some of the fun elements I discussed in my presentation into our semester. Pri, Jannette, and I all talked about watching a Korean show or movie together and eating Korean food together. I am happy to report that our little group actually ordered Bonchon Korean-style fried chicken together and watched a popular movie called 200 Pounds Beauty together. This has been one of the highlights of my SDLC learning activities as we were able to combine culture with a listening activity and I actually could pick up on some of the words from the movie. I have not yet read a children’s book in Korean but I am hoping to work toward that goal still.
My general goal for the semester was to get to a level where I could hold a very basic conversation in Korean. This goal turned out to be a little more ambitious than I had expected but with Jannette’s help, I am slowly getting closer and closer to this. Certain aspects of speaking like conjugating in Korean turned out to be much more difficult and complicated than I had previously imagined so that was definitely a little speed bump in my learning plan. Overall though, I have learned Hangul (a continuous process), learned how to introduce myself, common greetings (hello, thank you, goodbye,...), forming the different speech levels, and some basic grammar (like topic particles). One of the main changes so far has been the shift from speaking to more grammar-based lessons. This is because grammar is so essential to learning a language and Korean grammar is very important to learn before I start trying to speak or build sentences especially with topics like topic particles that I had no prior knowledge of before.
I also remember the week before we had our exam on phonetics, in our small group class Jannette actually gave us some pieces of paper that had Korean phonetics on it and showed us where the sounds of Korean were actually produced. I thought this overlap between my individual lessons and class was really cool and also really helpful since I got to learn about the phonetics of GAE and Korean simultaneously. Learning about language structure and common elements of all languages in our 105 class was helpful because then I could see what kinds of elements I should be learning and searching for to better my Korean.
One of the aspects I’m most appreciative of is learning about Korean culture from Jannette. At the end of our class meetings we dedicate at least 10 minutes or longer to just talking about culture. Pri and I typically ask Jannette questions or we talk about some good Korean dishes or shows. I recently have been asking Jannette more about the social system and how serious showing respect to your elders really is. Jannette has also pointed out some cool loan words from English in Korean like the word coffee which is keopi (커피) in Korean and sounds very similar to “coffee” in English.
Reflecting on what I have learned about Korean culture and the grammar of the honorifics system, I believe there is a very strong link between language and culture especially with respect to formality. Jannette and the other resources I have used make it very clear that there are many levels of politeness of speech in Korean and culturally respecting your elders is very important too. This link between respect for the people older than yourself and using more formal speech can be seen all throughout the Korean language in the honorifics system. This aspect of Korean culture and language is an example of sociolinguistic competence as mentioned in H.D. Brown’s readings. Since our classes have shifted to focus more on grammar I am also emphasizing grammatical competence in my plan like when I learned about Korean phonetics and the sentence order in Korean (Subject-Object-Verb). I am not yet at a point where I feel comfortable focusing on discourse competence or strategic competence. In order to improve my communicative competence, I will really need to solidify my grasp on Hangul and pronunciation. I will also need to start to build up my vocabulary and learn how to build basic sentences or questions so that I may be able to communicate on a basic level. There are so many intricacies to the Korean language and learning about the culture is fascinating so I am very excited to continue with my learning for the rest of the semester!
Korean has been going well now. In my learning plan, I focused on Interpersonal Communication and Interpretive Listening primarily. Initially I was definitely very intimated by the Korean alphabet, Hangul. I have completed my goal of learning Hangul and I have learned a lot of common phrases for hello, goodbye, thank you, my name is, etc. There’s always this excitement in me every time I read sentences or words written in Hangul. My language partner and I have also worked on formal/informal within these common sayings which has been nice to slowly have it introduced in instead of later all at once. However, as we started touching on different grammar pieces that were needed to create sentences, I realized that my initial goal of focusing more on speaking than writing is a little hard. I think grammar is important because you can’t really form sentences properly if you don’t know how the sentence is created. I also want to make sure I am learning the basics of grammar so I form a foundation that is using correct Korean. This has made me want to actually focus more on grammar even though I initially thought I didn’t want to do grammar as much. However, I want to do this to the extent where I will be able to form basic sentences not for complicated sentence structures so I can still focus on speaking.
One the biggest takeaways from class has been about phonology/ phonetics which I had no idea about before. Learning about the IPA, the points of articulation, primary manners, and secondary manners have all been very helpful for Korean. Several English constants sounds do not exist in Korean but others do exist( /θ/ and /ð/ sounds in words such as then, thirteen and clothes don’t exist in Korean). Also, the /v/ sound is produced as a /b/, and the /f/ sound leads to phone being pronounced pone. Phonology/ phonetics was also very helpful in learning how to pronounce some of the new sounds because I was having a hard time with some of the consonants like ㄱ because it is a g/k sound. Some words had a more of a g sound while others had more of a k sound so I was so confused. So ㄱ can be pronounced as a voiced sound like the English g or voiceless like the English k. However, to know how to pronounce it is dependent on knowing the difference between an initial, a medial, and a final consonant. Also a special letter in Korean is the ieung, ㅇ. This is a very odd letter because sometimes it makes a sound but sometimes it doesn’t. This all depends on whether it is in the initial, middle, or final position.
Learning about the history of Korean has also been important. Korean is a language that had a lot of borrowings from the English language such as such as 버스 (bus), 택시 (taxi), and 커피숍 (coffee shop). Learning conjugates will be very helpful in building vocabulary. I have noticed because of these cognates, when I am reading hangul, I will pronounce the word and be able to guess what is means because it is a cognate. Further it since Korean was created by King Sejong to make it easier for the people, the shapes of Hangul are based on the shapes of the parts of the body used to speak which is very helpful. For example. “ㄱ” is the shape of the tongue's root blocking the throat.
From H.D. Brown’s reading, I focused on pragmatic competence where I was focused on sociolinguistic competence since Korean has a heavy importance on politeness, formality, and culturally related aspects of the language. What wasn’t emphasized on my plan but I am finding to be something I want to focus on is Organizational competence focused in on grammatical competence. Sentence-grammar semantics and phonology has been very important in my learning experience. Language and culture are very important in the Korean language. Learning about Hofstede Dimensions of Culture showed that Korean is a collectivist culture so family and community is important. Hierarchy is important within even a family; so children are taught to respect their elders and express their opinions in a polite manner. This is seen heavily in the language where the formal and informal honorifics are immensely important in the language. Further, I learned that Korea is more monochronic so time is a commodity. I also learned that eye contact and smiling are gestures of welcoming and friendship similar to other cultures. There are so many things to do with culture that shape the language so it is very hard to separate the two for Korean.
As a whole, my American-Sign language journey is going extremely well! I am really proud of what I have accomplished thus far both through Reba’s instruction as well as individual instruction. I have gained the ability to describe objects and places, discuss family dynamics, describe future plans, and more. However, I have not been able to follow my language plan to the exact degree that I had originally hoped for. Much of the information I have been learning is via a dictionary/practice book titled “Signing Naturally" by Cheri Smith, Ella Mae Lentz, and Ken Mikos. The book itself is one of the best sign books I have ever come across. However, the terminology being covered is that of a standard language curriculum following emotions, relationships, countries, and etc. In the future, I would hope for an increase in medical terminology exposure, however, I must understand the basics of the language and strengthen my foundation until I am able to discuss complex issues such as pain location and the type and preceding events.
Unfortunately, I am having a lot of difficulties connecting what I have learned from the 105 SDLP information to my own language journey. I think a lot of the issues lie in the fact that my particular language does not utilize sounds and for the past several weeks, what has been discussed in class is phonetics, phenology, and language families. American Sign language, is that of a deaf language, has neither phonetics or phenology, and simply is not part of a particular language family. Regardless, learning about the phonetic alphabet, obstructions, and phenology was all interesting as I was able to apply some information understanding towards that of Mandrin.