Blogs

Last week, we took a look at all of the resources available to us for studying languages. I thought that Mango Languages seemed like the most helpful, because not only did it have a ton of languages to offer, but it also had both a web and mobile version. It seems like the program stresses repeated quizzing and intermittent learning, which seems very helpful for learning vocabulary over time. That being said, it seems like Mango Languages is somewhat limited, and only has the basics for the language. 

Byki seems a little more expansive, but does not have a mobile app like Mango Languages. The website is also not nearly as polished, but I think Byki would be a great resource to supplement Mango Languages. This website can further be supplemented with Diigo, which is a really useful tool for bookmarking websites for sharing with other. On top of that, any online English-Korean dictionary will help a lot. 

I've started to learn Korean by looking up basic greetings online, which are pretty easy to find from a quick google search. It's been easy to find out how to say "hello", "goodbye", and "how are you", so I'm hoping to continue this process to learn basic conversational statements. 

Based on the Levels of Competence and Can-Do statements, I’m currently incompetent in Korean. I may be able to recognize phrases here and there by ear but I still consider myself a complete novice. And so because I want to be competent in Korean, here’s my plan of action: 1) to master Hangul so that I'll be able to sound out characters even when I don’t know them yet; 2) to develop a decent vocabulary so that I may eventually engage in a minimum of 5-minute conversation in Korean with a native speaker. I think I’ll start with these humble goals for now and gradually build on them through the course of the semester. My goal is to reach at least novice mid or high, particularly in the interpersonal communication and interpretive listening aspects, by the end of this semester. 

Although there are lots of competing ideas for how the brain processes language, it seems apparent that language processing is a complex neurological process that involves many different parts of the brain. As a result, it would be helpful to the language learner to make many different associations when learning vocabulary in order to make neurological connections stronger. This can be done by varying forms of learning (listening, speaking, and reading) as well as frequent quizzing.  Also, we tend to learn and understand words based on the context of the sentences around them. When learning vocabulary, it helps to also practice sentences with the words, because this helps the language learner understand how the word functions in a sentence. 

The three articles expressed the interactions that languages have within science and the brain. There were several interesting learnings that came from the learnings. First and foremost, I found it interesting that your dominant hand played a role in what type of thinker you were. The hand you use is dictated by what region of your brain is being utilized. Furthermore, one of the article investigates the origin of tongue slips. Apparently, tongue slips are voluntary and are engrained in our brains.

In addition, one of the articles talks a lot about how we make different, distinct meanings. Language is a tool used for communicating meaning to one another. Different cultures have different meanings for certain objects, which make it difficult to always translate language. Languages also have ample exceptions and caveats, which may also make it difficult to fully understand a language. Overall, it seems that the meaning of different languages must be interpreted in different ways.

Overall, I think that I can use this information to become a smarter learner. Different psychological and mental techniques may prove to be extremely beneficial when I teach myself a language. 

Like many Asian countries, Korea consists of a hierarchical format based on age, in which elders are given ultimate respect in terms of not only how they are treated but also how they are spoken to by those who are younger. In simple terms, when a younger person is talking to an elder, he or she must speak using “요” (“yo”) at the end of every sentence as an indication for politeness and formal speech. “존댓말” (formal speech) is not just addressed to those who are older in age but it is also used when talking to strangers, professors, and someone who is "higher in rank" job-wise. There are exceptions, however. For example, based on a family’s rules and culture, some children may speak with parents using “반말” (informal speech) if it is permitted. “반말” is essentially used between two people if they have a relatively close relationship, such as best friends, boyfriend and girlfriend, and etc. When an older person is speaking with a younger person, the older person is allowed to automatically speak in “반말” to the younger person while the younger person must speak in “존댓말” to the elder unless he or she is permitted to “lower his/her speech” to the informal style.

I have grown up with the Korean language and culture all my life since my parents are both from Korea. But while I did grow up learning the elementary parts of the Korean language, such as how to read and write simple sentences and how to speak informally and formally, my passion to become better in Korean only truly began when I got older and I realized my Korean was becoming less and less adequate for my age. I became more interested in the Korean culture when my older brother introduced me to my first Korean song, “Wedding Dress” by Taeyang that is still to this day, one of my favorites. As I got more into K-pop I quickly discovered other Korean entertainment as well such as Korean dramas.

Before my senior year of high school, my mother had promised for years that we would be visit Korea the summer after I graduated. I patiently waited and waited with this trip in mind, since the only other time I visited Korea was when I was five years old. Unfortunately, when the time came around we were suddenly unable to go due to complications. So as I began my first year at UR last semester, and learned that there was actually no Korean class but instead an independent study option, I immediately decided that learning independently was better than keeping my Korean skills at an elementary status. Through this program, I am hoping to become proficient enough in Korean to carry on a conversation with any person (elder, friend, stranger, etc.) while also improving my reading and writing skills, expanding my vocabulary, and gaining more knowledge of Korea’s history and culture.

To be honest, I don’t really like learning from online sources because prolonged hours in front of a computer screen hurts my eyes. Also, my past language study has been primarily textbook- and print-based so I’m used to offline studying. However, I’m willing to give it a try. I looked through Mango Languages and it seems to offer very basic and practical Korean lessons, which I appreciate as a beginner but unfortunately it seems that I’m only able to access a limited number of lessons, so I don’t think I’ll use Mango too often beyond the first couple lessons. Diigo seems surprisingly useful: it’s a nice place to store any potentially informative Korean study and culture websites I come across on the Internet. BYKI is more comprehensive than Mango and arranges useful vocabulary words into lists, which makes it super easy to plan out lesson times. Overall, I think I’ll use Diigo most; Mango and BYKI will be nice transitions after I learn Hangul.

I recently purchased a Korean self-study book called Korean Made Simple by Billy Go. It appears to be a holy grail book for a lot of Korean self-learners and it received high review marks on Amazon, so I thought ‘Why not give it a shot’? I think that book accompanied with a high-quality Korean dictionary will be a good start. I’ve started learning Hangul because I was advised by my Korean friend that it’s a wise first step if I really want to understand the language in the long term, and I do. And based on my past experiences in education, I want to try my best to avoid leaving gaps in my learning because it will make learning the advanced material a lot easier. So, Hangul first.

My plan for the week:

Task 1: Learn Hangul (~3-5 days)

Task 2: Study basic everyday phrases (using Hangul, no Romanization) via Mango and BYKI (daily)

Task 3: Do Chapter 1 of Korean Made Simple Book (KMS) (2 days, after learning Hangul)

Turkish is a language that puts a lot of emphasis on respect. In Turkish culture, one’s familial and social roles are extremely important, as that determines your interpersonal relations. Along with placing an emphasis on formality, Turkish talks about time monochronically. Meaning, time is viewed as tangible- something that can be wasted or saved. In the Turkish culture, it would be rude to show up late to a meeting or dinner, as time is something that can be wasted.

Last week I learned greetings, introductions, and farewells. This week my goal is to learn numbers and phrases for ordering at a restaurant. By the end of this week, I want to have the vocabulary to confidently order at a Turkish restaurant. On Friday or Saturday, I will go to Doner Kebab on Cary St. and I’ll record myself.

SDLC%20Reflection%201.docx

Esther Kwon

SLDAP 110

Learning Journal #2

I have begun working on my first language task of improving my grammar by searching for specific YouTube videos that teach me how to use basic, subject, and object particles as well as prepositions. I also searched for online references through Google and found one particular website called zkorean that provides extremely helpful grammar lessons. I have also searched for YouTube videos that would help me improve my knowledge on the Korean number systems, time, and currency while also finding other lessons that will help me learn more basic skills and vocabulary such as the proper terms when doing math in Korean. To help me consistently listen to Korean dialect I have also been listening to Korean music as well as watching Korean dramas. I believe the video I linked to Diigo for learning the Korean number systems will be extremely helpful to those who have never learned them before.

These three articles talk about learning languages in science and brain aspects. It is very interesting to know that for right handed people, left hemisphere is found to be dominant in analytical tasks, calculation and logical organizations while the right is dominant in perception and creativity. Moreover, tough slip is not random but explicable by reference to certain basic constraints. This article explains many phenomenons happened for a learner to learn a language and tries to use science knowledge to explain. The another two articles, which are discussing about meaning analysis, are more valuable for me to shape the language learning process. For example, one of the articles mentions that different language "parcel out" the word in different ways. In English, there is no single word representing mother's brother or mother's sister. But in Chinese, there are different words to express the notion of mother's brothers or sisters.  I am also interested in knowing whether Korean has the words to express this family relationships or not. In addition, the collocations idea in the third article is also interesting. In English, when we see the the blond, we will strong relate it to hair.According to the article, collocation differs greatly in languages and makes us difficult to master a foreign language. Therefore, I look forward to know the collocations in Korean and how they are different from that in English and Chinese. 

There are various resources on reserve and the open shelves of the Global Studio for Korean including the Korean building blocks and workbooks. The building blocks would be a fun way to learn different words in Korean in order to expand my vocabulary. The workbooks would be useful to practice grammar, sentence structure and vocabulary. By using both of these resources, it will provide me with a fun and practical way of learning Korean.

On my Diigo group I shared three resources:

http://www.rocketlanguages.com/korean/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vntyHChognQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7qVwQk149w

These three sources along with BYKI and Mango Languages provide so much information on vocabulary and on how to pronounce the words. They are very helpful because they all allow you to listen to the word over and over again, and see how it is spelled. The "rocketlanguages" resource link also allows you to record yourself which is great because it helps me listen to my pronunciation of the words or sentences, so i know if i am doing it right or if i need to improve. They also all show you the different types of greetings used in Korean, formal and informal. Overall, all these resources are very helpful, and thus far I have not found a weakness in any of them. They will all be used to enhance my knowledge in Korean.

Finally, I have began to work on my first language task by watching a YouTube video on useful Korean phrases that are life survival language phrases. I also have practiced recording myself, and talking to my Korean friends using these phrases in order to improve my pronunciation and engrave what I learned. 

Interpersonal Communication:

I want to be able to use simple sentences and ask and answer questions in everyday conversation.

Presentational Speaking:

I would like to be able to give a short presentation (3-5 minutes) on a chosen topic, without hesitating or making grammatical errors.

Presentational Writing:

N/A

Interpretive Listening:

I want to be able to completely understand simple sentences and understand the main idea in a presentation (whether that be religious, academic, or something else).

Interpretive Reading:

N/A

Learning Calendar:

Weeks 3/4: Brush up on older vocabulary and learn more religious vocabulary.

Weeks 4/5: Focus on speaking in complete sentences and answering questions that do not just involve a “yes” or “no”.

Weeks 6/7: Learn more religious vocabulary and be able to talk about the weather and the seasons.

Weeks 8/9: Practice asking questions (correct words, facial expressions, etc…) and answering them.

Weeks 10/11: Practice speaking about a certain topic in ASL for a few minutes, instead of just having a casual conversation.

Weeks 12/13: Continue to speak in complete sentences and begin moving on to more complex sentences and questions.

(I’m planning on continuing to learn ASL even after I graduate, so that’s why the last few weeks are focusing on more complex sentences, instead of just practicing what I already know.)

After doing the readings, this knowledge helped me shape my language learning process because now I know that right-handed people have a dominant left hemisphere that is in charge mainly with language. When producing a speech its important to know how the brain processes the information, and that the brain does not issue motor commands one segment at a time. The "tongue slips" was interesting because it further explains the neurological processes of the brain regarding speech. Furthermore, knowing that different languages talk about the world in different ways helps shape my language learning experience because now I can better understand that the relationship between words and entities or concepts is all arbitrary since people see things differently than I do; thus, the words they use have different senses than how I would use them. The interaction between words and sentence structure is what conveys our 'sense of sense,' and this is important to know because words only make sense when they are used in a sentence. Therefore, it is important to know the sentence structure when learning a language in order to make sense of words because words in isolation can have many different meanings. Moreover, collocations is important because they are links between lexemes made by all who speak a language and they differ between languages. Also lexemes have sense relationships which include synonyms, antonyms, hyponymy, and incompatibility which help shape my language learning process because they help me with semantic analysis. 

The common form of speech in Korean is the formal speech. This is generally used when meeting a someone for the first time because in order to decide which form of speech one should use (formal vs. informal), one must first know the other person’s age. This is the formal form of speech, or 존댓말. Usually formal forms of speech end in 요 or “yo”. For example, when speaking to a stranger, or someone older than you, you would greet them by saying 안녕하세요. whereas if you’re just greeting a friend (친구) or someone younger than you, then you would say 안녕.

In addition to the formal, you should always use the humble form of “I” (저), instead of the regular form of “I” (나). If you meet someone who is the same age as you, you can say 갑이다!, “we’re the same age!”. Also, if you are close to someone who is younger than you, but the continue to use the formal speech, you can say 너도 말놔, “you can lower lower your words too”.

All of the formalities and more can be found at: http://atkmagazine.com/2013/08/02/polite-vs-informal-and-deferential-style/

My interest in Korean started when I was in grade 11 in high school after I stumbled upon a Korean pop music video on YouTube. The group’s name was 4minute and the song was called “What a Girl Want”. At the time I did not know what language that they were saying because I had never heard Korean before, but after looking the group up, I discovered this crazy phenomenon that was known as “K-pop”. Since then I have discovered Korean dramas, which are similar to soap operas, but less dramatic, as well as Korean movies of various genres. These things and more led me to know more about the Korean culture as well.

Since my first year at the University of Richmond, it has been a goal of mine to go travel around South Korea after graduation, provided that I had the funds to do so. I did not have the opportunity to go study abroad because I went through many changes with my major and I felt that if I wanted to go to South Korea, I did not want to do it while also having to take classes. Thus this semester, there are many things that I hope to get out of this self-directed language class. First, I want to be able to introduce myself, greet my peers and elders and have a full length conversation with a native Korean speaker. Second, I want to know how to ask for directions, understand directions and be able to find my way around Seoul, South Korea. Third, I want to know how to order food in a restaurant and how to go shopping online and in person, in addition, I want to have the ability to bargain and get reduced prices on stuff. Simple things such as those are some goals that I want to accomplish this semester.

My Learning Plan

The hyperlink is my learning plan for this semester on mastering the Greek language at a superior language level.

Last class I noticed that there were many useful resources for Korean on reserve and on the open shelves of the Global Studio such as maps and some books. I think these resources are very accessible and convenient for us to study basic vocabulary. When I am in Global Studio, I will definitely look up these resources often to help study Korean. For Diigo, it is a great tool for me to collect Korean Videos, which ofter posted by Korean instructors. This time I have shared two Youtube Videos:  

Learn Korean - How to Introduce Yourself in Korean

Learning Korean On-the-go: Useful Smartphone Apps

The first video is only four minutes, but you will learn the formal and informal ways to introduce yourself in Korean quickly and clearly. The best part of this video is that it also highlights the differences between formal and informal ways and tell students how to use them. The second video is very useful because I think it is important to immerse yourself into Korean when you are studying it. The girl of second video has learned Korean for many years and always shared her methods of learning Korean online. The Smartphone Apps she shared in this videos are very useful, especially for learning alphabet and pronunciation.

I have begun to study learning how to introduce myself in Korean with videos online. I try to speak with the videos and also record my saying and compare them to the original. Besides, I also learn some basic about alphabet of Korean. 

I have always had a strong interest in learning languages as I believe that language is the key to understand another culture. Other than Chinese which is my first language, I also speak English and a little bit of Spanish.

I started learning English since kindergarten and English is considered as important as Chinese in my school. We had English classes every day and needed to learn difficult grammars to prepare for the High School Entrance Exam. I really enjoyed watching American TV shows and movies to improve my listening and pronunciations of English. However, in class, teachers focused too much on reading and grammars, resulting in students really good at doing multiple choices while bad at speaking. In my opinion, language is a tool of communication, and speaking should be the first priority. I believe that if I spent more time on speaking with foreigners rather than doing multiple choices at that time, I would be more brave and confident to express my opinions in class now. 

As for the learning of  Spanish, it was a totally different experience from English learning. I signed up for a one-month Spanish class right before I came to the states, since I thought Spanish was the "second language" in America. There were only 8 students in my class, and we had two different teachers: one Chinese teacher who taught us grammars and one Spanish teacher who taught us more about speaking and culture. Although Spanish is similar t English in some words, it has completely different grammars like the grammatical gender (female, male, neutral). After the class, I could have some basic conversations in Spanish, like greetings, doing shoppings, and introducing myself. However, once I did not practice it for a while, I forgot it quickly. Therefore, I believe that insisting on practice and speaking it all the time are very important while learning a language. Since I have many Korean friends, I will try to practice with them as much as I can and watch some Korean movies/TV shows from time to time to keep myself familiar with the language. 

According to the assessments, I am an "A" style learner who tend to learn a new skill while discussing with friends and sound it loudly.  in order to learn a new language well, I should: 

• explain new ideas to other people
• use a tape recorder
• describe overheads, pictures, and visuals to somebody that was not there.
• leave space in notes for later recall
• put summarized notes on tape and listen
• read summarized notes out load
• speak out answers

Also, as a naturalist, I have a sensitivity to and appreciation for nature and have to do with how we relate to our surroundings and where we fit into it. I am considering combining my characters of naturalist with learning Korean. For example, I may watch some Korean outdoor TV shows to learn some professional vocabulary in hiking, climbing, as well as names of scenic places in Korea. I know that there are many well-known natural landscapes in Korea and I wish to visit there some day.

I believe that other than learning from my partners and Mango languages, I need to participate in more Korean culture related activities like Korean society to get more exposed to the language environment. Also, I would love to discuss with my classmates about our learning status in order to progress together.