Annie Hankin

"I like how you really honed in on your goal of improving casualness and locality in your Malay abilities. I admire how you also incorprated your new skills into various settings other than the cooking situations. It shows that you are really…"

"It's good to see that you have maintained your study strategies and applied them to improve your casual Malay. I too have stuck with my strategies while revising my goals. Like working in my language book, attending the online lessons, and utilizing…"

"It sounds like you had a lot of goal revisions with acquiring a more casual level of Malay in February. I like that you challenged yourself while still being able to have fun and experience the culture in the most accessible way depsite being on the…"

If I got a research grant to study Chinese, I’d focus on how tones actually affect understanding in real spoken conversation. When learning, tones feel like everything, but I wonder if native speakers rely more on context than perfect pronunciation, especially since all of the tones sound so similar. I’m curious about this as one of my friends who is teaching me Mandarin doesn't use tones at all, despite growing up in China. He says that they aren't needed to be understood. To start, I’d record conversations between native speakers and also between native speakers and learners. Then I’d look at moments where tones are used incorrectly and see if communication still works. I’d want to know when tone mistakes actually cause confusion vs when people just figure it out anyway. The structural components from class would be the main part of the study. For phonology, I’d focus on tones and pronunciation. For syntax, I’d look at how simple sentence structure might help make up for tone…

Over the past two weeks, my language learning has shifted from the memorization of isolated vocabulary toward the structural "glue" that gives the Korean language its unique narrative flow. My primary tasks involved a deep dive into sentence-final endings and the various connecting components that link clauses, alongside a necessary review of complex pronunciation rules. My objective was to move beyond simple, declarative sentences to create more sophisticated thoughts that reflect a natural speaking rhythm. To achieve this, I utilized a combination of grammar-focused drills and the shadowing technique, using digital resources to visualize how "조사 josa" (particles) and "어미 eomi" (endings) function as the architecture of a sentence.Through this process, I have found that while my understanding of the mechanical rules for connecting components—such as the difference between "and" (-고) and "but" (-지만)—has improved significantly, applying them in real-time remains a challenge. During…

Annie Hankin

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Discussion #10

Language learning #3

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Discussion #10

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