I think one of the biggest things I took away from the articles and from this week's lessons was that there are an infinite number of ways to conceptualize and understanding things, in this case a new language. In our language lesson, some people found certain sounds easier because they spoke another language where they have similar sounds. For others, the strong "R" sound did not exist and the speaker had no practice making that sound. I found myself relating the sound of the Turkish alphabet to the Spanish alphabet which I already know. The ability to relate the new information to something I already know was extremely helpful. However, going forward there isn't always going to be something I know that relates to what I am learning, that's where the methods of conceptualization come in I think. In the article about brain function, they would make assumptions about left vs. right side of the brain but also immediately recognize that these assumptions were flawed. Because of the complexity and the individual interconnectivity of the human brain, we all use our brains in different ways. That to me means that things are going to make sense to us via different methods. Knowing this I am more likely to be create in my learning methods. If I am just not understanding something, I know that I can try and learn it in a different way, maybe through a different medium, and maybe that will click better with my brain.
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Since I was born in the US, my first language was English. However, since my family is Korean, I have always went to Korean school to learn the language because I needed to communicate with my other family members. I enjoyed going to Korean school because I was able to work together with my peers to learn how to read, write, and understand the beautiful language of Korean. This is reflected in my results for the Multiple Intelligence test because I scored highest on the Interpersonal category, which means that I value communicating and having relationship with others. A similar result was also seen in the FIRE model for integrative thinking because I feel like I most resonate with the Evaluative category, which shows that I learn best when I work with others, rather than working by myself. Also according to the FIRE model, I dislike learning when it is competitive, which I can agree with. Through the surveys I completed, I realized that the best way for me to learn is by writing the material down. I am also a visual learner, so I can learn by organizing big concepts into pictures that make sense to me. I can apply these evaluations to my ability to learn/develop my Korean speaking, reading, and writing skills. I am most interested in deepening my vocabulary by learning how to talk about field of study courses, such as Chemistry, because that field is related to my future career path. I will also like to know more about Korean culture, such as understanding how they celebrate certain holidays.
Mango languages can help me to learn more vocabularies during my dead time. I will study one topic per week and review the words I learned through easy game, hard game and speaking game. By doing those, I will be able to be familiar with different topics in Turkish and will be able to increase my reading and listening skill. I will use Diigo bookmarks to explore interesting facts about Turkey. I will learn Turkish culture through Youtube channels that show festivals and holidays in Turkey. I started working on my first task by studying vocabularies about sports on UTalk Challenge Application. I played easy and hard game to review the words. I had a class with my language partner on Thursday and learned Turkish alphabets, greetings, and farewells. Through Mango Chapter 1, I learned how to introduce myself, and that there are formal and informal language in Turkish. I will keep learning different topics through UTalk Challenge and Mango on week 3.
The readings were very interesting. I thought it was quite interesting that the process of language was so complex. Even though we say something simple like “How are you?,” the brain is doing so much behind the scenes. In mere seconds, the brain processes what we want to say. Furthermore, I thought the concept of a word by itself having too much meaning to also be interesting. I would assume that individual words would be simple due to only being one word. However, the article argued for the point that an individual word has too many meanings due to not being in any context. These readings helped shape my learning language process by giving me insight in what language is. Language is more than speaking words and writing sentences. Language is about making connections, both in the brain and with others. It is ironic in the sense that the less words used, the sentence will be more open to interpretation.
The information provided in these articles elaborates on how complex the brain is, and more specifically the aspects of the brain involved in language learning. A language is much more than just a finite set of words used to convey meaning. Without some form of structure and context, memorizing a large amount of vocabulary in a given language is pointless. Instead of trying to memorizing grammar, verb endings, vocabulary, etc.; I will derive the underlying rules of the Spanish language so that its structure makes more sense. In my past attempts at learning Spanish, I have purely memorized only the information relevant to examinations and homework assignments, which resulted in a weak understanding of why these rules work the way they do. This semester I will focus on learning about the Spanish language itself, rather than merely translating English phrasing into the correct Spanish form.
For the Global Studio, I know that they have books on general Central European lingustics and culture, which I will be able to use to gain a better understanding of the neighbouring languages. Additionally, I will be able to use the computers to be able to communicate with some friends and professors from abroad to help me practice my Czech.
For my first language tasks, I wanted to learn future and present progressive tenses. I have mainly been focusing on future tense because it is very difficult. There are two ways to indicate future, the first is changing the verb directly such as pojedu (I will go by foot) or using I will which is Budu. I have also been doing some additional vocabulary learning and have expanded my vocabulary a bit in terms of food and occupations.
I have also been having casual conversations with a friend about the weather and her school and she asked me about my day. I was able to respond with basic sentences in czech, but am hoping to enhance my grammer and descriptive capabilities as I go on.
Overall, it is a challenge, but I am beginning to meet new people, such as one of my professors who revealed to me that she knows quite a bit of Czech and has been willing to speak to me during her office hours in Czech, which I have appreciated.
Korean culture is much more formal that that of the United States. There is a lot more respect for family and elders and it is also is more prominent in the language. Elders have different titles and honorifics based on your relationship with them. There are certain actions you take if the person you are talking to is older than you or your superior. For example, at the dinner table it is expected that younger people will pour drinks for their elders, and while pouring it is considered good manners to pour with one hand and hold the elbow of that hand with your other hand. When communicating there are actually three different levels of formality you can use: polite, informal, and deferential styles. Most of the time when people speak to a person of similar rank and age they use the common polite style, where most sentences end with the word "yo". When you know the person you are talking to and their age/position in society you can determine how you should speak to them. When speaking to someone older than you often you are supposed to speak in a deferential style, politely and with honorifics. However if you are speaking to someone younger than you, you can be more informal and use what they call "half-words" with them.
I've been trying a couple different learning methods in order to find what works best for me. So far I like using uTalk and just browsing through different websites and apps like learn-korean.net and the Learn Korean app. I have also been trying to get Korean talk radio working but have had some difficulty setting it up. The most useful thing so far I'd say would have to be using uTalk and talking to my girlfriend. I can also go to the Global studio and use their headphones and microphones to listen to record myself and listen to myself speaking to help correct problems with pronunciation.
In Czech, there are formal and informal greetings. For a phrase such as "Jak se Mas" (how are you [informal], you would use "Jake se Mate" [formal]. For a non-native speaker, it is more eloquent to say things formally because the teh-eh sound is easy on the tongue. In contrast, Mas (Mah-shh) is more rough and not as pleasent to hear. I recently realized that most language have formality and informality and that English is one of the few languages that don't. Instead of changing grammer, we add additional words to show respect such as "Mr. Johnson, would you please join me for a drink?" instead of saying "John, could grab a drink with me." In English, it is more about culture and certain phrases that form the formality rather than an official grammer rule.
For all three articles, I found that the central focus was about the relationship between the language and the brain and how that relationship develops as we begin to learn a new language. When we were children, our brains were at a developmental stage; all of the different lobes and gyrus' that help us learn and retain different languages were not at full capacity. That is why our native language is so important because it is essentially rooted in our brain development. Once we begin to develop speech, that is when meaning becomes important. As I begin to continue my Czech studies, I should be asking myself "why does Ja Jsem mean I am, when in Korean it is Na Niun, Spanish is Yo Soy, and Chinese it is Wo Shi." They all have the same meaning, but different ways of saying it. It also makes me wonder how in other languages, certain words or phrases carry more meaning depending on the emphasis of a accent or a vowel. Ultimately, I believe language is more than just a method of communication, it is a lifestyle and a way to form a deeper relationship with the people, the culture, and the country.
Reading the articles, I was interested in the one on how our brains handle language and speech. I didn't realize how complex the brain's response to hearing sound or creating speech is. I was also interested in the second articles notion of meaning and sense. l thought it was interesting when they wrote that isolated words can have too much meaning, and that in order for you to completely convey your intentions you often need to use other words to narrow down that meaning and give the reader a better idea of the sense you are trying to convey. I also thought it was interesting to think about how words are connected to each other in lexemes, and how often you know what someone is talking about in English based on indirect references.
My goals for this semester are:
- To read a children's book for 20 minutes everyday -- from Monday-Friday -- and write 10 new vocabulary words from the text
From the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture:
- Unit 6: Describing Humans and Animals;
- Unit 7: Locations and Directions;
- Unit 8: Daily Activities; and
- Unit 9: Physical Characteristics of Objects and Body Parts
I will allocate two weeks for each unit.
Assessment:
- Each week, I will meet with my partner for two hours. The first hour will be devoted to a conversation concerning the vocabulary that I will have gleaned from the children's book. This will be a good opportunity for me to make sentences from the vocabulary.
- The other hour will be devoted for the material from the aforementioned units. Here, I will practice my speaking skills, practice my listening skills (the units have listening passages), practice my writing skills (the units have writing activities), and practice my speaking skills.
In Portuguese there are formal and informal tenses. Similar to Spanish you use the tense when addressing a formal group of people. It is a conjugation that switches ar verbs to an ending with e and er and ir verbs to and ending with a. This rule is different for each tense such as future or conditional, but the difference between formal and informal tenses does exist in Portuguese.
I have begun my first language task by learning some background about the Afro-Brazilian culture. I watched a documentary called Brazil an Inconvenient Truth. I learned about Brazil's past, and why the culture has such a heavy African influence. I also watched a Afro-Brazilian performance in downtown Richmond that was put on by the Modlin Center. It was quite a good performance, and gave me an even stronger idea of what the Brazilian culture is like. There was also singing in Portuguese within the performance. I was unable to decipher what the words were, but I was able to decipher what the performers were singing about due to their movements.
After having read the articles the one that really made me think about my learning plan was the one about meaning. The article has given me a new perspective on the term of meaning.While learning Portuguese I hope to be able to gain a stronger sense of words. I also hope to better understand the different terminologies used for similar words in English. I believe that a big part of me learning Portuguese will be distinguishing sense from reference. I will probably be able to say words quite quickly, but being able to formulate sentences with the words will help me put those words or references into the right sense. In terms of shaping my learning process, this has informed me to put a greater importance on sentence forming and learning the correct context and meaning for words in certain situations, rather than just expanding my Portuguese vocabulary.
Having a better understanding about how my brain processes language is interesting when I think about the ways that I have learned in the past and my goals for this class. The readings gave me insight about the things that I don't even actively think about, such as sounds, slips of the tongue and also the section on meaning really made me dive deeper into my own thinking. Relating words and things seems natural but there is so much more that goes into it which is why learning a new language can be so difficult. This knowledge helps me to understand that there will be challenges that I encounter especially with vocabulary because I am accustomed to referring to things in a certain way, but the more that I push myself to study and "think" in my new language, the more easily it will come to me.
I had different thoughts to the articles so I'll bullet them below. Overall, I think these articles were an interesting look at the things we take for granted.
How the Brain Handles Language
- Neurolinguistic Processing section really stuck out to me because I feel that the more languages you know, the harder this process can be to control. For example, after coming back from Korea (and still to this day) whenever anyone expects me to say "yes" regardless if it's in English, German, or Croatian, I want to say it in Korean. It became such a habit for me over the time I was there that I haven't been able to separate the languages well enough.
- I read a study recently that children who grow up as bilingual are better at paying attention in class because they have to pay extra attention when switching between languages. I wonder where that might play into the brain and Crystal's research.
How We Mean & How We Analyse Meaning
- I think this is always the hardest part of language learning, getting to the point where the words make sense instinctively to you
- Consider learning idioms in another language! How would you even begin to teach "break a leg" or "whole nine yards" to someone who doesn't know English? For a native speaker, it seems clear, but these idioms come packed with cultural references that aren't inherent to someone outside of the culture.
- I think these articles really makes you stop and appreciate the complexity of language.
Global Studio Resources:
- I will admit that I didn't have much time to go to the resource center and look through the materials. I did notice a book for learning Business Korean. I think this could be useful for me since I'm looking for work in Korea now.
- One addition that I would recommend (if not available) is the purchase of graded readers. Such as the Yonsei ones. These would be useful for intermediate and above Korean learners who need practice with reading and reading comprehension. This is also a key part of the TOPIK test for anyone who plans to take that.
Diigo Resources:
- I bookmarked two resources. One of them is "ihaessi" which is a Chrome plugin that allows the user to scroll over a korean word and it will auto-translate it and show various possible definitions along with cultural meanings. I think this could be useful for anyone who plans to read articles online during their self-study period.
- Another thing I bookmarked is TTMIK's "Describe This Picture" series. This is especially good for intermediate and above learners who want to apply their language skills and not just memorize term after term. When you go to Youtube, the TTMIK staff actually provides their own sentences for the pictures, so you can compare your sentences and see how you could improve.
- Since I am using a main textbook, the same one I've been using since I started learning Korean, these resources are just added benefits to me. I wouldn't recommend that anyone depends heavily upon them. However, I think they can be very useful to fill in gaps in main resources.
My progress:
- My first task was to write daily Korean journal entries. I chose this because my goal is to express myself more authentically in Korean. I thought a good first step would be just getting used to the vocabulary I would need to use and how to arrange my thoughts.
- I have been writing 5-6 sentence long diary entries every day and I hope to continue them for the remainder of the semester.
- So far, I have been checking them by sending them to my Korean friends or posting them on Instagram and asking my Korean friends to comment with revisions.
- Most of my issues have been minor grammatical issues or a misuse of a word. For example, I talked about wearing a ring and I used the verb 입다 which means "to wear," without knowing it was only for clothes. So my friend told me to change it to 끼다 which also means "to wear" but specifically for objects like rings and other accessories.
- Overall, I've really been enjoying this exercise and it's really helped with my confidence in using Korean because I've started to feel more comfortable sharing my mistakes.
