An assignment we had this week was to teach someone something in Korean. I had this same assignment for SDLC 110, and I taught my 105 class how to order food in Korean. This semester, I decided to teach my friend how to say different colors in Korean. The colors I taught her included red - 하얀색 pink - 분홍색 purple - 보라색 green - 초록색 orange - 분홍색blue - 파란색 yellow - 노란색 white - 하얀색 and brown - 갈색. I taught her the colors by showing a sample of these colors and saying them out loud. I then had her repeat after me a few times so that it would be easier for her to remember. Then, I wrote out the colors, and had her practice a few times. After all of that, I finally quizzed her on whether she could remember how to say and write them. Since this was one lesson, she obviously did not know how to write/say all the colors, but was able to remember some of them. This experience was a bit different from last year, as I was teaching one of my friends and not the whole class. Therefore, I was able to get more personal, and it seemed a lot easier to teach her since I could correct her mistakes at an individual level.
With my language partner the past two weeks, I read an article as we always do every time we meet. One of them was about a cherry blossom festival that is coming soon. Cherry blossoms are a huge deal in Korea and Japan, and I have always wanted to go back to see them. The last few times I went were in mid-march, and so I always missed them by a few weeks which made me sad. The article we read talked about a festival at a horse-themed park, where not only would there be cherry blossoms to look at but also activities for children and couples as well as a horse themed light show that would happen at night. When reading the article, I was able to identify the majority of these words. However, I had a little trouble with technology words that were used to describe the light show. In addition, I do generally have trouble with words that are in english but are written in Korean. People in Korea seem to be using these words increasingly over time, and it's hard to identify quickly when reading because they're spoken in such different ways since Koreans don't use "r"s or "fs" For example, "Paris" is pronoucned "Pah-li" which makes sense when you know that's what the reading is talking about but it doesn't seem to click as quickly sometimes when I'm reading quickly.
During our meeting, we also talked about different aspects of culture such as relating to the cherry blossom festival. My language partner explained to me that Koreans enjoy things that are beautiful like outdoor festivals. He said this also relates to the fact of why Koreans like plastic surgery so much. I never thought of it in this way, and it was interesting to think of it in a more positive sounding way.
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