오늘 뭐했어?
벌금을 내다: to pay a fine
학교에서 말하기를 제 이력서가 적당하지 않다고 했어요.
검사하다: to check, examine
저번주
저번주 감기에 걸린거 때문에 어제 새벽 세시에 자려고 했는데 목이 아파서 잠이 안 왔어요.

친구를 기차역에 데려다 줄거예요 to drive a friend to the train station

제 친구가 저에게 문자한 이유는 저에게 라이드를 부탁하기 위한건줄 알았어요.
I knew that the reason my friend texted me was to ask for a ride
위하다 in that context emphasizes the purpose of asking, slightly formal

다 합해서 한 120불 정도 들었겟네요
저는 머리를 빨간색으로 염색했어요

사실은 RA미팅은 두시부터 네시까지예요. 중국어 수업하기 때문에 RA미팅에서 좀더 일찍 떠날거예요.

고려하다: to consider

교환학생으로 중국에 가다
교환학생으로 중국에 가면 머리를 blonde색으로 염색하려고 고려하고 있어요

~려고 결정(을)했어요

무엇을 했길래 이렇게 (verb)

그 경험 덕분에 thanks to, positive connotation of because of

예를 들면(어) for example

저는 몰에 가서 몇시간 동안 있을거예요

숙제 다 끝낸 경우에는

아직 무엇을 살지 모르겠어요

전공 major

속해있다 to belong to

부에 속해 있어요

초급, 중급, 고급

아님 : or when asking question

공부를 아주훨씬 일찍 시작할거예요

전공이 두개예요

전공 할라면 수업을 몇개 들어야 돼요?

할라면: if you do something

동기부여: motivation

제가 다음 학기에 한국어 공부를 계속할건지 안 할건지에 대해 너의 생각은 어때요?

대학생활

거시 경제: macroeconomics

밤을 세다: to stay up all night

추수감사절: Thanksgiving

시간이 걸리다 to take up time

화장하는데 얼마나 걸려요?
는데 doesn't mean even though here

무엇을 할 생각이에요?
무엇을 할 예정이에요? What do you plan to do?

평상시에: usually

일주일에 한 번 once a week

Why it’s important: If you want to work in Korea, have to have proper knowledge of the corporate culture you’d be entering and, in my opinion, use this knowledge to evaluate whether you would want to be a part of the Korean workforce or whether you would only want to be there as a tourist because of how strict Korean work culture is in comparison to American work culture. For those who are not learning Korean but want to work abroad, I feel learning about other countries’ work cultures can help highlight how different working in another country would be in general, and can give you insight into what you’d want to research before going abroad.

Caveat that as a foreigner there will be less pressure to fully commit to the norms of Korean culture, but to immerse yourself into the workforce, these norms would be expected of you. Also, my presentation really focuses on the more negative sides of Korean work culture, as that is what is most talked about.

Two main themes of Korean culture that heavily shape the workforce and expectations on employees: Korean obsession with image and hierarchy.

Hierarchy:

Superiors in the company have neat absolute power over lower people in the company. While every culture has these hierarchical structures, it’s much more rigid in Korea. Regarding language, formalities are written into the language, and you have to speak with more formalities added with superiors. Along with this, pronouns are not very common in Korea, and it’s impolite to call a superior by their name. Because of this, it’s much more common to refer to someone by their rank in relation to you, which, while ingrained in the language, also reinforces this hierarchy.

A lot of emphasis is placed on being close with your work group. One way this manifests itself when combined with the rigid hierarchy is that a lot of time is spent reporting to one’s superiors, to the point where a detrimental amount of time is spent simply talking about what you’ve done instead of actually doing work. At the same time, your colleagues become much closer to you than they might in the West, and you’re encouraged to have the mindset that you’re not just working to finish work, but also to help develop your company and therefore the entire country, making you more personally connected to your coworkers and work.

On top of this, a huge part of Korean work culture is eating dinner and drinking together. Often Korean employees are pressured to drink at work gatherings, and because superiors have so much power, it is considered impolite to refuse a drink when offered, even outside of the workplace. So often employees are pressured to drink more than what they’re comfortable with, and will then show up to work hungover.

Image:

A large part of corporate culture in any country is not just being busy, but also looking busy, and this is only magnified in Korea. Korean employees as a whole rank among the longest hours spent at work, but are also among the least productive workers in the OECD, the OECD being a group of developed countries promoting a market economy. It is considered important to work for long hours, often staying until your boss leaves the office. Rather than finishing your work quickly and most productively so as to finish everything before the workday is over, Koreans will often spread their work over the time that they plan to spend overtime in the office.

Along with that, education is seen as the most important aspect of working toward your career, like in many Asian countries. A downside to this is that Koreans often don’t have much work experience before they start their careers, as compared to Western countries that value internships and other experience. The education system is focused on testing rather than practical applications of education. A lot of education combined with mandatory military service for men also means many Koreans, particularly men, enter the workforce a lot later in life. So adapting to the workforce is comparatively more difficult.

A more direct manifestation of image, it is also common in corporate culture for employees to spend a significant amount of time making their presentations look neat rather than more simply presenting data, which can make them less productive.

Something I found interesting was one foreign worker’s description of Korean adults’ viewpoint of learning English. He says, “Most Koreans think that learning English is only useful as a means to communicate with foreign business partners, or for use in business emails. But they overlook the fact that a world of resources and knowledge is available to them via the Internet predominantly in English, and only a fraction of what is out there has been translated thus far into Korean. Foreign workers will always have the advantage of a simple Google search, which can provide hundreds to thousands of alternative information sources to what is available to a Korean limited to searching in Korean on a portal such as Naver.”

Historical aspect: this kind of hard work really helped Korea develop in the past few decades. After the Korean War, in 1960 the country had to work very hard to recover and very quickly developed a globally competitive economy. So it’s that kind of work ethic that helped them develop so rapidly, and is a source of pride for the country. But it just might not be as effective today.

24:50-26:00 http://kshowonline.com/kshow/2495-[engsub]-abnormal-summit-ep.6

35:40-35:50 http://kshowonline.com/kshow/2500-[engsub]-abnormal-summit-ep.11

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/oped/opinions/3698-insider-perspective-seven-reasons-why-korea-has-worst-productivity-oecd

추수감사절에 무엇을 했나요?

choo-soo-kam-sa-jeol-e moo-eos-eul haet-na-yo?

What did you do for Thanksgiving? 

보스턴에 가서 저희 아빠를 방문했어요. 저는 추수감사절 저녁에 제 친구와 친구의 남자친구를 데려와서 다 함께 저녁을 먹었어요.

bo-seu-teon-e ga-seo jeo-heui a-bba-reul bang-moon-haess-eo-yo. jeo-neun choo-soo-kam-sa-jeol jeo-nyeok-e je chin-goo-wa chin-goo-eui nam-ja-chin-goo-reul de-ryeo-wa-seo da ham-gge jeo-nyeok-eul meok-eoss-eo-yo.

I went to Boston and visited my dad. On Thanksgiving evening I picked up my friend and her boyfriend and we all ate dinner together.

정말 친절하네요. 보스턴을 좋아하나요?

jeong-mal chin-jeol-ha-ne-yo. bo-seu-teon joh-a-ha-na-yo?

That's really nice of you. Do you like Boston?

별로 안 좋아해요. 보스턴보다 시카고 더 좋아해요.

byeol-lo an joh-a-hae-yo. bo-seu-teon-bo-da si-ka-go deo joh-a-hae-yo.

I really don't like it. I like Chicago better than Boston.

왜 보스턴을 안 좋아하나요?

wae bo-seu-teon-eul an joh-a-ha-na-yo?

Why don't you like Boston?

재미없거든요.

jae-mi-eob-geo-deun-yo.

It's not very interesting.

그렇군요.

keu-reoh-goon-yo.

Ah, I see.

Korean Artifact 4.m4a

This semester ended up being a test of how well I could learn Korean while having other college classes to worry about, including my Chinese class. In high school when I learned a lot of Korean vocabulary, I had less work and I still learned the most words during breaks from school. So it was hard to put aside time to focus on Korean and learn more on my own. I found it easiest to quickly review the vocabulary I know and to learn a quick lesson or two and then try to incorporate them into my lessons. Because my goal was to add a practical lens to my existing knowledge of Korean, I was really glad I was able to have conversations with Alvin. It was a casual way for me to build my speaking and sentence-forming skills. If I did not know how to say something--for example, if I knew the necessary vocabulary but did not know how to use it to form a cohesive sentence--I could ask him, and we would build the sentence for me to use and then continue the conversation. This way I got to learn not only how to connect verbs and begin forming more complex sentences, but also learned some basic phrases that I had overlooked when learning Korean on my own. Phrases that have to do with numbers, time, and duration of an event have always been hard for me, so we worked on those a lot and now I am a lot better at using those concepts in sentences and recognizing when someone is talking about them. I plan on continuing learning Korean, but I will try harder to learn sentences on my own and then have a concept prepared for my lessons instead of trying to maintain a free-flowing lesson.

I did not find a lot of the readings useful. Having taken a basic psychology class in high school, I already learned stuff like parts of the brain that have to do with learning and processing language. I feel that for a college class, we should be able to learn these concepts a bit more deeply instead of just learning about the existence of areas such as Broca's Area and Wernicke's Area. This does not mean that I want to have hours of reading, but I do feel that our readings could have gone deeper in describing these concepts to reflect college-level learning. I found the reading about bilinguals interesting, and I liked that you chose articles that gave two different viewpoints. I also liked discussing the article in class about the roots of language, and would like to learn more about it, although not necessarily for this class. 

I learned how to read Korean a few years ago while bored on summer vacation. I had been heavily invested in Korean pop culture for about half a year at that point, and decided to start learning the language on a whim so I could better understand songs and TV shows. I literally learned the alphabet in a morning, but it took me much longer to be able to accurately read Korean words because many symbols are very similar to one another. The easiest way for me to practice reading the alphabet was by learning to read my favorite singers' names, since they were already written in romanization and I could just match up the spelling of their name with the corresponding Korean letters. So if they were mentioned on a talk show, I could find their name in the on-screen captions, and if a fan held up a sign with their name during a performance, I could understand it. As I started learning Korean vocabulary, I stopped reading words letter by letter, and learned to better recognize the shape of the word, which improved my reading comprehension speed. In general, as my vocabulary base, knowledge of sentence structure, and knowledge of how Korean sounds "work" increased, I got better and better at reading Korean sentences, and now I can fluidly read Korean, even if I may not understand every word.

Writing Korean was very easy to learn, as the stroke order for Korean letters is very straightforward and logical. This actually helped me in writing Chinese, since the stroke order for Chinese characters follows the same logic--move from top to bottom and from left to right as you write. Since Korean syllables are housed in one "box," it's hard for me to write Korean quickly sometimes, since you have to know how each syllable is written before you start writing it. This is kind of hard to explain, but I'll give an example. Say we have the syllable 가 (ga) and the syllable 갈 (gal). In the latter, in order to accommodate the ㄹ at the bottom, you have to make the ㄱ and ㅏ smaller than in the first syllable. Keeping track of this while writing can be pretty difficult, but since that is the hardest part for me, it's hardly a complaint at all.

The hardest part about culture shock for me was that I only ever experienced it "in the moment": I didn't really have warning that it was going to happen, and for the most part I had to quickly adapt to that particular aspect of the culture at that time. For example, in China, if I wanted to use the only bathroom nearest to my classroom, I had to use a squat toilet. If I wanted to go off campus and get food at a nearby food street, I had to cross six lanes of busy traffic and erratic drivers. In general, if I traveled anywhere off campus, I was pushed into large crowds and had to quickly become part of the crowd so that I would not disrupt anybody or get jostled around myself. I experienced the most culture shock in China, whereas in Korea a combination of my being a tourist and not staying there for very long meant that I was able to get around more easily. With all the aspects of culture shock that can happen in daily life that the video talked about, I cannot imagine being a full-time student at a Chinese university or living in China or Korea, even if I were fluent in the languages. 

Regarding casual speech, while my language skills are not good enough that this became an issue, I saw a lot of foreigners here experience a bit of culture shock when Americans used slang they were not used to. For example, when I hosted a French exchange student in high school, I had to be very careful of how I spoke so that she would understand me. (She also spent an evening learning how American currency worked, as that was an aspect of culture shock for her that she had to confront when buying stuff.) Hanging out with another French exchange student, I asked her if she wanted to stay where we were or "head back" to her host's house. While a phrase like that is very normal in English, she couldn't understand it because it doesn't exactly translate into French, so we had trouble communicating until I realized what the problem was. Experiences like that have made me be more aware of how I speak with people who don't know English so that they experience less culture shock in our conversations, just as I was grateful to people in Asia who spoke to me more simply so that I could better understand them.

헤더는 전공이 뭐예요?

he-deo-neun jeon-gong-i mweo-ye-yo?

Heather, what is your major?

저는 복수 전공이에요. 중국어와 수학경제를 공부해요.

jeo-neun bok-soo jeon-gong-i-e-yo. joong-gook-eo-wa soo-hak-gyeong-je-reul gong-boo-hae-yo.

I'm doing a double major. I'm studying Chinese and Mathematical Economics.

다음 학기에 무슨 수업을 들을 예정이에요?

da-eum hak-ki-e moo-seun soo-eub-eul deul-eul ye-jeong-i-e-yo?

What classes do you plan to take next semester?

중급 거시 경제학, 통계, 언어학, 중국어, 그리고 한국어 공부를 계속할거예요.

joong-geub geo-si gyeong-je-hak, tong-gye, eon-eo-hak, joong-gook-eo, keu-ri-go han-gook-eo gong-boo-reul gye-sok-hal-geo-ye-yo.

Intermediate macroeconomics, statistics, linguistics, Chinese, and I'm going to continue studying Korean.

중국어 수업은 얼마나 자주 해요?

joong-gook-eo soo-eob-eun eol-ma-na ja-joo hae-yo?

How long do you usually have Chinese class?

일주일에 세번, 오십분 씩 해요.

il-joo-il-e se-beon, o-sib-boon ssik hae-yo.

I have it three times a week, fifty minutes each.

중국어 공부를 하는데 시간이 많이 드나요?

joong-gook-eo gong-boo-reul ha-neun-de si-gan-i manh-i deu-na-yo?

Does studying Chinese take up a lot of time.

별로 시간이 안 걸려요.

byeol-lo si-gan-i an geol-ryeo-yo.

It doesn't really take up a lot of time.

Korean Artifact 2.m4a

가을 방학에 무엇을 했나요?

ga-eul bang-hak-e moo-eos-eul haet-na-yo?

What did you do during fall break?

저는 머리를 빨간색으로 염색했어요.

jeo-neun meo-ri-reul bbal-gan-saek-eu-ro yeom-saek-haess-eo-yo.

I dyed my hair red.

어디서 염색했어요?

eo-di-seo yeom-saek-haess-eo-yo?

Where did you dye it?

미용실에서 했어요.

mi-yong-sil-e-seo haess-eo-yo.

I did it at a salon.

미용실이 편의점보다 비싸지 않아요?

mi-yong-sil-i pyeon-e-jeom-bo-da bi-ssa-ji anh-a-yo?

Isn't a salon more expensive than a convenience store?

더 비싸지만 미용실의 질이 좋아서.

deo bi-ssa-ji-man mi-yong-sil-e jil-i joh-a-seo.

It's more expensive, but it's because a salon's quality is good.

또 다른 색으로 염색하고 싶어요?

ddo da-reun saek-eu-ro yeom-saek-ha-go sip-eo-yo?

Do you want to dye your hair any other colors?

저는 내년에 교환학생으로 중국에 가면 머리를 금발로 염색하려고 고려하고 있어요.

jeo-neun nae-nyeon-e gyo-hwan-hak-saeng-eu-ro joong-gook-e ga-myeon meo-ri-reul geum-bal-lo yeom-saek-ha-ryeo-go go-ryeo-ha-go iss-eo-yo.

Next year when I go study abroad in China, I'm considering dyeing my hair blonde.

예쁠 것 같아요.

ye-bbeul geot gat-a-yo.

I think that will be pretty.

Korean%20Artifact%201.m4a

The discussion for this week was more relaxed. I clarified how to put things in time order, since that is something that is harder for me. In this case, I wanted to say I had started doing something three weeks earlier. After that, we started talking about different cultures, with the main question being why I chose to study Korean and Chinese instead of other Asian languages, such as Japanese. I clarified how to say I have/do not have an interest in something, since that is a phrase that I had learned but never used. We then discussed Korean pop culture and what makes it so distinct in English, which broadened my knowledge of Korean cultural norms and expectations. 

I developed my vocabulary related to school more. The topic of this week was classes that I was taking next semester, including the ones that are specifically for my major. I learned how to make the distinction between elementary/intermediate/advanced classes, and the distinction between using the word "or" when asking a question and when making a declarative statement, since Korean uses a different word for each case. I clarified the Korean words I would use for each class that I'm taking. The most useful thing we worked on was when I was talking about being unsure about continuing taking a class. I clarified how to use the structure for saying "whether or not" and then built on that sentence later in the conversation to say, "Regarding ___, what do you think?" 

I find it very interesting how each article defines the benefits of being bilingual, particularly in the context of what makes up intelligence. It doesn't surprise me that bilinguals are better at quickly making distinctions between two different things, given situations during which they'd have to quickly switch between languages. I am surprised at how far that skill can spread and how many things one factor, executive function, can really be useful for. In a way, that can make a bilingual's existing skills sharper, but I agree with the second article that that really is a more abstract property of intelligence. Certainly an article that says bilinguals are smarter are misleading in making their readers initially think that knowing a second language will make you do better in school.

One part of the second article that really interested me was the mention of knowing one language making it easier to learn another language, as this is something I noticed. When I learned French in middle and high school, not only was I building up my French vocabulary, but I was also learning how to learn a language in general. And while I very seldom use French, this skill alone has helped me a lot in learning languages that are much less related to English, such as when I started learning Korean on my own and when I started Chinese here. Learning Korean on my own and being able to study at my own pace made me realize just how important having an intuitive knowledge of the grammar structure of a language is to being able to speak fluidly and recognizing when one's grammar is "off." That this unconscious skill helps bilinguals not mix up their two languages when speaking makes a lot of sense to me and is also very interesting.

This week's conversation was more casual. The main topic was what I was doing for Halloween weekend, which really only included shopping and homework, so we built a conversation out of that. One verb ending I have trouble with is the ending -seo. Depending on the context of the sentence, it can mean "because I did ___, ___ happened" or "I did ___ and then I did ___." I seldom use the latter because it makes less sense to me, but what I say instead doesn't connect the two verbs as fluidly. For a sentence that gives a clear sequence of events, Alvin will typically rework what I say to include that verb ending -seo to make my sentence better, so I've been getting used to using it and taking note of these sentences so that I can learn from them. 

Another issue I have is with time and date. While I know numbers well enough (although since Korean has two different systems of numbers, it can take me a hilariously long time to simply think of the right number to say), I don't know how to apply them in sentences that talk about a time frame, or then talking about spending time. So I learned during this lesson how to say I would be at the mall for a few hours, which was a lot more straightforward than I would've expected. I learned some other useful sentences related to talking about homework and shopping, which use sentence structures that I can apply to other situations. Lastly, we talked about majors. I learned the word for "major" in college, and verified how to say what my major is, which is helpful to be able to talk about as a college student.

During this week, Alvin and I discussed hobbies. I described as best I could in Korean how I am in a hip-hop group on campus, and how my high school color guard experience means that I then can't do hip hop as well. I built on and connected vocabulary related to talking about experience, such as learning the word for "thanks to" and how its positive connotation makes it different from the word for "because of," including example sentences where each would be used and why. I learned how to say "raise my foot," as that was related to what I was talking about when describing dance. I initially used the wrong verb, so Alvin clarified what the right verb would be, along with how to conjugate it as that confused me a bit. I also learned how to say "for example," which is very useful for me in trying to describe concepts using specific cases, as it's easier for me in a foreign language to give an example than to use more complex vocabulary.

I've learned very few words in Korean this semester. If I had to guess, I would say I learned approximately 20 new words/short phrases. I already have a very strong vocabulary base, so during my lessons, I either know which words I want to use, or I am reminded of vocabulary I had learned but then forgotten. Most of the new vocabulary I learn is either specific to a topic in our lesson, such as my dyeing my hair or working on my resume, or is in the form of short transitional phrases, such as saying "for example" or "thanks to" something.This fits with my language learning goals in terms of vocabulary, since I want to learn more conversational vocabulary but otherwise don't feel the need to study new words. The basis of our lessons are building on conversations, so the new words I am learning are very relevant to my goals.

When a language is lost, not only do we lose the fundamentals of how a group of people speak, we also lose insight on how an entire culture thinks. In any language, the grammar structures and vocabulary are different, and can give a lot of insight into what thought process went into forming words, what is considered important to know in a sentence, and how objects, people, and ideas are processed and talked about. Different languages show diversity in thinking, and to lose a language eliminates some of this diversity. 

While it is a good thing that more people are speaking the same language as this presents a common ground in terms of communication and methods of thinking, the fact that the spread of languages like English, Mandarin Chinese, etc. has historically come with the active suppression of tribal/regional languages is very sad. Since language is very tied with culture in the form of culturally-specific vocabulary and celebrations, in favor of becoming part of larger cultures, smaller cultures are being wiped out, which again causes us to lose some diversity in the world.

For learning Korean, I think knowing the history of the language is somewhat useful. The most important thing (although I may be biased as a Chinese learner) is to understand which words are natural Korean and which words are based off of Chinese and have hanja. Older words that are based off of Chinese are typically more formal words, and may either have a native Korean equivalent (for example, depending on usage, there are three words for a "class" in school in Korean, and two are based off of Chinese, the third having been taken from English). Learning words with hanja can help learn many root words in Korean, as one syllable in Chinese, and therefore Korean syllables based off of Chinese, contains one unit of meaning. So many words in Korean that have to do with learning have the syllable for "study" in them, and being able to identify this can help you better learn the word. With learning a new language, you have to develop a strong vocabulary base, and anything that can help you make distinctions between words can only serve to help you.

Understand which words have hanja can also help you better understand the spelling system better. While Korean has a phonetic alphabet, some words aren't spelled exactly how they are pronounced. For the word "music," the romanization of the Korean word is eum-ak, but it is pronounced eu-mak. Why not then spell the word as it's pronounced? Because the two syllables of the Korean word correspond in that way to the two-syllable Chinese word. Understand the historical root of words such as this help explain how it's spelled, which is essential in learning Korean.

After Fall Break ended, Alvin and I discussed what I had done over the weekend. Since I dyed my hair, I learned how to say that I dyed my hair in Korean, and also refined describing the benefits of going to a salon over using drugstore/convenience store dye. Something very useful that I covered, while basic, was which noun ending to use when I say that I got my hair dyed. One noun ending implies that I dyed my hair by myself, and stresses that I am the subject in the sentence, while the other noun ending is more neutral, and I use it to say that I got my hair dyed or I could use it to say that I dyed my hair myself. While I am familiar with saying numbers, I did not know how to say prices, so I then learned how to talk about how much something approximately costs in talking about dyeing my hair.

Lastly, I talked about how I am considering dyeing my hair a different color at a later point in time. Here I learned a lot about connecting two verbs together. For example, to say that I think a fact and to say that I am thinking about doing something, while the verb for "to think" is the same, you use two different verb endings before the verb "to think." I was not previously aware of this, and learning the difference also helped when I wanted to know how to use the verb "to consider" instead. I also used this opportunity to ask and clarify how to connect verbs to other similar verbs. Having a strong knowledge in vocabulary but not how words connect, this part of the lesson was very useful for me.

I also learned how to discuss time, such as when and event starts and when it ends, and the proper sentence structure for saying that I would leave an event early. Especially since in English, we can say that we leave an event, in Korean, the noun ending must reflect that you are leaving from an event, which Alvin then clarified for me, putting it more in my memory. 

The main topic of conversation during week 7 was plans for Fall Break. I described how my brother and dad were visiting me that week, and how we had been eating meals together every day. I then talked about how my friend texted me asking me to drive him to the train station, which was something I expected. Because that was a more abstract concept to describe, I really struggled with being able to articulately state it. How my and Alvin's lessons usually work is that I try to describe something, and if I say it wrong or if I am too wordy in trying to effectively describe it, he uses my vocabulary and gives me a more effective sentence. I then keep that sentence in my phone to learn the structure of the revised sentence, what makes it so effective (in my case, it is usually linking multiple verbs together that I find so difficult, which Alvin then helps me with so I can make my sentences more economical), and try to understand it so that I can use similar sentences in the future.

In trying to make sentences more economical, I also use subjects multiple times, and have to re-familiarize myself with the correct endings to add onto nouns in the sentence. Because I learned Korean so informally, you do not always need to put endings onto nouns, so I would drop them as I did not fully understand which noun ending is correct. By practicing speaking, I am able to learn what the right endings are.

I use an app called Memrise to learn vocabulary. It is a flashcard-based app through which you learn vocabulary and are then tested periodically on it. Learning Korean on my own before this class, I learned at least 1500 unique words through multiple vocabulary sets, and am slowly working my way through reviewing all of them to realize the full extent of my vocabulary to further vary the sentences I can use in casual conversation. 

I also sometimes use a website called Talk to Me in Korean, which provides free vocabulary lessons, including usage of verbs, example sentences, and podcasts during which they say these example sentences out loud. I know a lot of their beginner lessons, so it has taken me a while to find a point to start at where I never learned a particular grammar structure, but I find the podcasts to be particularly helpful, as my spoken comprehension skills are weak and they provide the written sentences that are used in the podcast.

For my purposes, I do not think BYKI will be useful. Because I have progressed very far in my knowledge of vocabulary words, and because my pronunciation is already very good for the level I am at, I would not learn anything new from BYKI. It sounds like it is more suited toward beginners, which I am not. The same applies to Mango languages, as I already used a different source to learn basic vocabulary and I plan on sticking with that source.

The service that the University subscribes to that I think will be particularly helpful is one for learning basic conversation scripts, that includes both a recording and a transcript of the conversation. I forgot the name of the service, but as I need to improve my spoken comprehension, this is very relevant to my goals.

As I had a late start into practicing Korean with a language partner this semester, I still have not learned much new in Korean. On my own, I practice vocabulary to catch up to my past knowledge and to re-familiarize myself with verb endings and other grammar structures. With Alvin, I then practice that vocabulary in a casual conversation.

Being able to practice Korean in this setting, with someone Korean who can correct my grammar as I speak to him, I have learned a lot about forming sentences. My goal is not necessarily to learn new vocabulary but to connect the vocabulary I already know with their respective verbs, connect verbs with verb endings correctly, and understand the nuances between similar verb endings. This is practiced as I work toward my goal of also being able to hold basic conversations, e.g., starting with “What did you do today?” or “What are your plans for Fall Break?” and saying whatever is on my mind that I can mostly articulate in Korean.

Culturally, my biggest problem is that it is hard for me to speak formally. In teaching myself Korean, I can recognize formal structures, but not reproduce them when speaking myself. Also, at the higher levels (such as when addressing groups and when addressing unfamiliar people who are much older than you), there are many similar verb endings that denote formality, and some basic nouns and verbs have a formal version. This all can be very hard to keep track of, and as a foreigner it is difficult to understand why speaking formally is so important and why failing to is seen as so disrespectful, so it can be especially hard to become accustomed to changing how formally you speak in different situations. This will be something that I will need to familiarize myself with in the future, especially if I plan to go back to Korea and make an effort to communicate with people.

With Alvin, I speak to him only slightly formally. This involves adding the ending -yo to verbs at the end of each sentence, and using formal versions of the words I/me. Sometimes even the latter aspect is hard for me to keep track of. As I become better at forming sentences and speaking in Korean, I would like to spend some lessons speaking more formally. Even though it would not make sense culturally as Alvin is only slightly older than I, it would be beneficial for situations in the future in which I would have to deal with older people.

Another cultural aspect that I am starting to be more exposed to is the types of sentences that Koreans ask as they get to know you. For example, it is very common to ask what one’s ideal type is, which is something I had seen in variety shows and already knew the word for. While asking about ideal types is not seen as something serious in Korea--it is more along the lines of fantasizing about what type of person you are interested in--it is very odd in America. In fact, when Alvin initially asked me what my ideal type was, I became flustered and did not answer the question. Just as foreigners here often have to be told how to answer the question “How are you?” I need to familiarize myself with answering common Korean questions, even if they are culturally considered to be weird in America.