This is in reference to weeks 3+4. I may have already talked about them, but I cannot find my posting, so i have re-posted.

For this week, I focused on greetings and introductions. I want to learn five sentences in order to use in a conversation. I want to learn how to introduce myself, follow-up greeting, who I am, that I am a student, and then a salutation. 

In order to learn these things, I will Google, them and practice with my Korean roommate. Lastly, I will evaluate my success by listening to feedback from my language partner and friends. My final chance for evaluation will be at the oral exam at the end of the year.

Things I liked using included: manga, youtube, dramafever, friends, and phone applications

I liked these things because of there simplicity. They correlated with my language plan and also were accessible on the go.

Things I didn't like using: rosetta stone, google translate

I didn't like these things because they conflicted with what my friends and language partner would tell me. Also often times, there were apparently easier ways to say some things, but google translate would produce the longest way to say something. Also rosetta stone produced a lot of random words that didn't correlate with my learning.

My Can-Do Statements:

I can greet others, introduce myself, and ask others about themselves.

I can use "survival" Korean in class or lost in public when I don't understand or need help.

I can say the days of the week and count 1-10.

I can ask/talk about family.

I can ask for/give basic directions to hotels, the restroom. and airports.

I can ask about ordering food and the price of things.

These things relate to my learning plan exactly. I wanted to focus on speaking, but more importantly the "essentials" such as introductions and survival phrases. 

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0Yw51sPhGL3

This recording uses introductions and farewells. I introduce myself by saying "hi". Then I mention where I am from, that I'm in college, how many people are in my family, and then reply saying that "it is nice to meet you". I then say "thank you for your time" and "farewell". All of these words can be used in an informal setting, but are not recommended for a formal setting. The only formal word I use is "an nyung ha se yo" as opposed to just "an nyung". I purposely did this because I usually talk to my language partner who is my friend and younger than me. I think this artifact documents my progress and is exactly where I should be in terms of speaking. Korean is not easy and is something that requires getting used to.

Days of the week in Korean!

Below is a link to download my lesson powerpoint:

Days%20of%20the%20Week%20In%20Korean%21.pptx

Writing regarding introductions and family.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0SfF2VmlEd5

My doing some bargaining and food ordering. Telling them its two expensive and later telling them that the food is good and delicious.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0kKIAmNuaPG

Me introducing myself, that I am from Philadelphia, and my family is from China. That I live with my parents and that I have one older sister and one younger brother. I go to school. I love my family. I am 22 years old.

This week, my language partner and I began preparing for the Cultural Presentation. Alvin helped me finalize the contents of the presentation. I asked about any last things that are important about Korean culture. He helped me pronounce some of the names of famous groups/ people and the not so famous groups/ people such as Hyu-Na. I truly found our discussion regarding plastic surgery to be very interesting. I find the procedure not only scary and potentially health threatening, but the trend and social acceptance of the procedure to be even more scary. Plastic surgery is given to teens as gifts and are greatly accepted. I read that there was a lawsuit concerning how a man had an ugly child with a woman that had plastic surgery. The man was not happy about this deceit and the child and thus sued his wife for being ugly. 

Besides this, Alvin and I reviewed words regarding numbers, countries, and colors to help describe differences between western culture and Korean culture. I still do not have the numbers totally down, but it's something I need to learn through application.

I thought that I had posted my learning plan, but after reviewing my posts, it seems that I did not submit it.

Thus, my learning plan and final culture project will focus on pop culture. As a business man, I am interested in how to do business in Korea. This means understanding the culture and customs. Thus, by focusing on pop-culture I'll be able to understand which K-pop stars are popular and why.

For the first few weeks I'll focus on becoming familiar with grammar points and introductory phrases that focus on things such as where I'm from, greetings, my age, and how are you. 

Next, I'll go into classroom survival phases. Basically things like "can you repeat that" and "what does that mean?"

Third, I'll start learning life survival phrases such as "where is", "how much", foods, and colors so that I can describe things.

Fourth, I'll go into talking about family, whose in my family and how old they are. This requires knowing numbers.

Next I'll use my knowledge of numbers to attempt to learn time and dates.

Lastly, I want to learn the names of Korean stars and slang terms to know what trends are currently popular. Examples include fashion trends, health trends, and other cultural norms such as plastic surgery.

Koreanpopculture.pptx

Overall, I felt that my experience learning Korean was very successful. With the help of the SDLAP, I was able to experience various methods of language learning and also have an in-class experience that helped to supplement my learning. I learned that I am a visual learner. It’s not enough for me to memorize something, I typically need to see it written down or spelled out so that I can perfect the pronunciation. Besides this, I’ve found learning phrases to be very useful, compared to simply learning a bunch of random vocabulary. When you learn a phrase, you get an idea of how sentences in that specific language are formed as well as vocabulary. In the past, I’ve found Rosetta Stone to be very useful when it came to learning vocabulary because it focused on a “matching” system, where the user would have to look at a picture and learn the word for the picture; however, with Korean, I’ve found things such as Mango and movies to be more useful.

Some of the difficulties from my experience included distinguishing the differences between Korean and Mandarin and also learning the Korean alphabet. Since Korean and Mandarin share so many similarities including culture and vocabulary, I often found myself applying concepts that apply to Mandarin in every instance of Korean. This was one of the problems for bilinguals that we discussed in class. Korean is a totally different language than Mandarin, so I eventually figured out that I had to learn various points separately and use my knowledge of Mandarin, not as a basis, but as reinforcement. Besides this, I also found reading and writing Korean to be very difficult. I love that Korean has an alphabet, but we learned in class that speaking is significantly easier to learn than reading or writing. Speaking is definitely the most useful aspect of learning a major language, however, reading and writing can help supplement the learning process.

My favorite aspect of the class was the fact that we were required to meet twice a week with a language partner. A language partner is a great resource to ask questions and to practice that language. This resource is not directly offered in the COM2 language classes, so I really loved the experience. I also liked how one of the two meetings was dedicated to direct learning time with the partner and the other meeting was dedicated to something less formal such as a discussion, watching a movie, or going to a restaurant. This helped to mix things up and reinforce previous knowledge through application. I will continue my learning of the language by continuing to “mix things up” by utilizing various software packages and also watching many movies/ shows and of course talking to my Korean friends.

Lastly, I found the readings on culture, time, bilingual intelligence, and language origins to be the most interesting and helpful. When learning Korean, I often was able to figure out why Korean people have certain customs because of discussions of the readings from class. For example, I was surprised to find out that Koreans are lenient when it comes to being late which shows that they are polychromic. As a Taiwanese, I figured that most Asian people valued their time and would frown upon lateness based on this principal and because it is disrespectful; however, this was not the case. Overall, the readings and discussions in class were super helpful and are things that I recommend for the future. 

From class we learned that learning how to speak a language is not only the most common method of language use, but also the easiest to learn for most people. Thus, I have been primarily focusing on that aspect. However, I have tried learning the alphabet and the reading and writing system as well. I must say that the process is not easy. The Korean alphabet has several rules to it, but the fact that there is an alphabet makes it a lot easier than a character system such as Chinese. I do understand that if I could perfect the alphabet, that I would be able to use the language more and would help me to supplement my language learning. For example, when watching Korean dramas, if I could turn on the Korean subtitles, I would be activating another sense and another part of my brain because I would be interpreting what the people are saying and focusing on translating the subtitles. I've found this method to be useful when I was learning Mandarin. Also, struggling to read the newspaper was something that I've found to be useful as well. I know that if I was serious about reading and writing, that something like Rosetta Stone would be perfect because it utilizes a matching figure that allows the user to first see the word and then match it. From there, it drills the word into the users mind through repetition. This really helps with the reading process. Overall, I've found it difficult to read and write in the language on my own, but it is definitely doable with more time and techniques such as matching and practice.

This past Sunday, Alvin and I started to prepare for the upcoming final oral exam. We went over the names of famous singers as the new vocabulary, and began a discussion regarding who is currently famous and who is not. I learned that famous singers such as Hyuna are not so much popular in Korea, but in countries outside of Korea. I found this very interesting because he also told me that the very popular dramas, music and pop-culture in general are very skewed and don't actually reflect Korean culture. The Korean pop-culture reflects people that are both glamorous and rich; however, from my research and from my friends, this is not the case at all. In Korea, there is a social acceptance of plastic surgery. People in Korea view plastic surgery as a norm and thus many people get it. The phenomenon is not only restricted to females, as shown by the increasing number of males that get plastic surgery each year. Besides this, there is also the misconception that K-pop stars are rich. Once again, this is not the case at all since the agencies that hire the stars actually receive all of the money so the stars make less than the typical U.S employee. I will go more into all of these details during my cultural presentation.

Besides this discussion, we also began preparing for the oral final. We practiced some dialogue from introductions to talking about family members and practicing numbers. On my own time, I tried watching Youtube videos talking about learning tips since Sam showed the class the Korean learning song.

For the week of 11/16, Alvin and I began discussing numbers, its applications, and the days of the week. I learned that there are two number systems: one that is closely-related to Chinese (Sino-Korean system) and the "Korean" number system. There is not one that is more-widely used than the other; but instead, they compliment each other. For example, the Korean number system is used in telling time in hours and applied in most counting situations. The SIno-Korean system is used in representing absolute values. Thus, the system is used in representing the number of years, months, days, minutes, currency and phone numbers. Besides this, I found the day of the week system to be very interesting. In Chinese, the day of the week is represented by simply combining the day of the week corresponding to the numbers between 1 and 7 and then adding the word "day" at the end. In Korean however, each day represents some symbol and combined with the word "day" at the end. I already talked about this in class, but will also list an artifact describing this process in further detail.

Between weeks 1-8, my language partner and I focused on the language tasks. For the first couple of weeks, we focused on introductions, greetings, classroom phrases, family words, and an introduction to numbers (how to count, time, and dates).We have been focusing on phrases rather than vocabulary. He often speaks to me in Korean and uses gestures at the same time. I usually have no clue what he is saying, but I guess until I am right. Then we take turns repeating the phrase or sentence multiple times in order to reinforce everything. We try to focus on only a handful of phrases each time because it is a lot to remember. So with every new week, we briefly bring up the old phrases and then continue learning. In order to supplement this learning, Alvin recommended that I watch "Secret Garden" which is a very famous Korean drama that he says usually pragmatic Korean. Thus, I typically watch one episode a week, since each episode lasts about one and a half hours long. I have still been finding the Korean grammar a bit confusing because I have previous knowledge of Chinese and Japanese to try to help my learning. However, this is actually hindering my progress. For example, Chinese phrases questions in the same way each time by having "ma" at the end. However, in Korean there is not a concrete pattern for this. Many questions end with "yo", however phrases and non-questions can also end in this manner. Thus, I am having a bit of trouble distinguishing that difference. Besides this, I have also noticed that problem as I am learning numbers. Korean has two number systems where one set is used for things such as telling time in hours, counting, and dates, while the other set is used for telling the time in minutes and seconds and also math-related aspects such as adding and subtracting. My previous knowledge of languages does not follow this, but it is simply going to take some practice getting used to. I learned the numbers in Japanese previously, through songs, so I am trying to incorporate that learning style as I perfect the Korean number system. Other than these challenges, I enjoy the learning method thus far and think that it is working well for me. Also, the dramas are pretty interesting!

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1q8rYaaa85D

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1eHHIllFjwd

Me answering questions regarding who I am, my name, age, where I'm from , and my family.

Also I ask and answer questions regarding location, where I currently am, how to get to a hotel, and regarding the bus.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0Yw51sPhGL3

The articles had many similar concepts including the role of executive functions and potential benefits of knowing more than one language. I found the articles interesting because many people believe that bilinguals are smarter, but the articles sort of refute this belief. They claim that being bilingual actually is a disadvantage when learning new vocabulary because bilinguals tend to analyze the new words in both languages. This makes a lot of sense to me, but I wonder how being left or right-dominated hemisphere brained, plays a role in bilingual processing. The pattern recognition aspect of various language learners makes a lot of sense considering the analytic aspect of knowing two languages. One of the articles talked about how bilinguals have a heightened sense of their environment because they are processing things in both languages. Thus, being conscious of the things of around you can be very advantageous in everyday situations such as crossing streets or even reading emotions of others. 

Besides this, the practical aspect of being bilingual are easily distinguishable. You are able to communicate and better understand people from different cultures that speak your languages. Knowing more than one language is also a very marketable skill. Businesses are becoming more and more global and clients in one country are often finding themselves dealing with clients in another country. Thus, being able to communicate and understanding proper etiquette can create a lot of value for a company. All in all, it seems that bilinguals are not inherently smarter, but there are added benefits to knowing a second language.

Overall, I have not been focusing much on specific vocabulary, but instead on phrases. My thought process is that phrases will simply come in more handy and is definitely more applicable. Honestly, I know quite a few phrases at this point, but if you were to ask me about specific vocabulary in those phrases, I would struggle to figure out the definition. Thus far, I've focused on first learning phrases and then breaking it down in order to understand the vocabulary. From this method, I am able to deduce several meanings simply from looking at the sentence structure. For example, I may recognize from the phrase that the phrase is asking a question and may be able to recognize one or two words from it. Thus, I can get a general idea of what it is asking by using knowledge of other languages. It is all systematic. Since we have a little more than three weeks left in the semester, I am hoping to simply reinforce my language skills at this point to truly perfect my comprehension.