My experience in self-directed learning has been felt with mixed results. From speaking with my language partner and from the discussions in the 105 class, I now understand that there is a correlation between culture and language. One thing that is very important to keep in mind is that context and the various competencies associated with it. An example of this stems from Culture Shock. One student from the video misunderstood the phrase “that’s cool”. This phrase is very common in American culture, but the student took it literally because he lacked the knowledge of the culture and context of when such a phrase would be used. For me, I am fortunate enough to have a language partner that can tell me when certain phrases are appropriate to use and when others are not. Right now, my learning experience has been mostly hands-on. A lot of it’s through reinforcing not necessarily what I’ve already learned, but getting used to grammar and the way the language sounds. I am doing this by first meeting once a week with my language partner and then reinforcing it by watching some sort of Korean show or movie. I was skeptical of this method of learning at first, but I think it’s really working for me. Even though the people in the drama are speaking very quickly and with advanced vocabulary, I have noticed patterns in their speech and also can interpret some phrases. Phrases such as “oh my god”, “thank you”, and “sorry” are very common in dramas.
One thing I that I really want to focus on improving is my knowledge of discourse and conversation analysis. Discourse analysis basically looks at the relationship between forms and functions of language. Many everyday exchanges contain a single sentence and sometimes even only a few words. When I think of discourse, I think of “slang” or words and phrases that only natives would understand. Thus, by understanding the target culture and language, I would be able to improve my discourse analytical ability. I also want to improve my conversation analysis abilities because it would allow me to understand how to properly initiate, continue, and end a conversation with a native speaker in my target language. It would also allow me to understand which topics are normal to talk about in the culture.
Besides understanding these concepts, I will have to understand other things such as pragmatics and non-verbal communication. From my learning thus far, I have learned there are many different ways to answer one question. This has given me an idea of the pragmatics of Korean. Also, non-verbal communication is important because then you are able to understand tones, feelings, and how to respond to certain questions. Overall, understanding the target language’s culture is just as important as understand the target language.
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