Blogs

I created my learning plan for this spring semester through Microsoft PowerPoint as a standard mini presentation. I have some previous knowledge of Korean language and culture, but my language partner helped me with outlining a plan to improve on some of my weaker points and to also learn in areas I haven’t explored yet. Since we talked about the four skills of learning a language, I organized my plan into those points: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Within those categories, I tried to specify more in depth of what I wanted to accomplish.

My style of learning is tactile, so I know that I’ll have to use my speech and body and not just read to learn successfully. So far, my language group read some news articles together and tried to interpret them. Through this lesson, we learned many vocabulary words related to weather and also the supply and demand of stores. We also went over spacing rules when writing in Korean. Reading and writing are not my fortes, so I had some difficulty, especially the reading. I was able to read but did so at a slow pace since I was not familiar with that particular type of reading. I thought that learning the spacing rules were interesting but also learned that most native Koreans also have trouble doing it the correct way because the rules are flexible and have many exceptions. As for resources, my language instructor brings in copies of the articles, so I am not in need of textbooks. I found that a website called LifeinKorea to be helpful when looking for vocabulary words because they separate it into topics. I glanced over body parts and the health sections and was able to pick up a few words. My other resources would be my friends who already speak Korean or are learning the language. We try to speak in Korean so that we practice the language and so we can learn more through them whether it’s about culture or some current slang.

I think because we are reading current news, I will get to understand the culture of Korean more deeply. This also implies for the language since the way people speak in a society changes over time. Even though I was born in Korea and still consider myself as Korean, I was raised in the U.S., so I wasn’t completely exposed to modern Korea until I visited recently. It prompted my interested and motivated me to learn more about my country. I realized that I was missing so much information about their history and traditions.

I have yet to receive any written feedback from my classmates, but we did discuss about my level of Korean after my presentation in class. There are different reading levels in English and pronunciations can sometimes be difficult. In Korean, you should know how to pronounce it once you learn the basic alphabet. It might take a little longer, but there will most likely be one way of saying it. On the other hand, I also discussed with my peers that if someone says a word, there can be multiple ways of writing it. Overall, we discussed about the interesting aspects of different languages in general.

Somyung%E2%80%99s%20Learning%20Plans.pptx

My Learning Plan

Where are you now?  What can you do?  What do you know?

Use the Levels of Competence document and the LinguaFolio® checklists to assess your current abilities in your language.  For more information, see the SDLAP Wiki.

Interpersonal Communication

Only understand a few phrases and words with the ability to self-introduce.

Interpretive Listening

I can’t really understand most of the conversations.

Interpretive Reading

Can’t read anything

Presentational Speaking

Haven’t learned any about formal language

Presentational Writing

Only with the help of the dictionary.

What is your ultimate goal?  What is your goal for this semester?
What do you want to be able to do with this language at the end of this semester and in the future?

The main goal is to be able to communicate without any difficulties with the locals and learn how to write and read Korean words.

What tasks will you complete and what activities will you do this semester to meet your goals?  How will you document and evaluate your progress?

Novice learners should consult the ‘Language Tasks’ page of the SDLAP Wiki and incorporate the required tasks in their learning.  Be as specific as possible when planning activities, e.g., “I will watch YouTube videos to learn how to talk about the family.” or “I will consult a grammar text to learn about possessives.”  Make sure you include some tasks that are relevant to your interests, e.g., “I will learn to understand soccer commentary.” or “I will learn to talk about the stock market.”  Culture and language are, of course, inseparable.  It is expected that all your language will be culturally appropriate and that every task will contribute to your cultural competence.

Korean New Year is one of the most important days in Korea which will be celebrated for three days typically. Juxtaposing with Chinese New Year, both are celebrated at the same time and are based on the lunar calendar. Most interestingly, Koreans are always a year older than people with other nationalities because they are considered one-year-old the moment when they were born and they turn a year older on New Year's day rather than their birthdays. What's more, their traditions are slightly different than those of Chinese New Year for the following reasons.

First of all, Koreans normally eat rice cake soup (떡국) which consists of thinly sliced rice cakes with the broth and this is a very traditional dish. Mandu (만두) is dumplings in Korean cuisine that can be boiled, steamed or pan-fried in varied regions in Korea. Jeon (전) refers to a dish made by seasoning whole, sliced, or minced fish, meat, vegetables, etc., and coating them with wheat flour and egg wash before frying them in oil. Therefore, there are many different kinds of Jeon with different coating and meat. For example, 호박전 (Korean squash small pancake), 동그랑땡 (small meat patty) and 깻잎전 (Sesame leaf filled with meat patty). 

Secondly, most of the Koreans will play varied games in the New Year's Day, one of which is 윷놀기 (stick game) and the other is 화투 (hwa too). The rules are all somehow complicated, one of which is a board game and animals-related while the other one is a card game. 

Thirdly, one of the most important things to do is definitely getting pocket money which refers to 복 주머니 (blessing pouch) in Korea. And to get the pouch, the young should greet the elder by saying wish you have a very good year and stay happy and healthy using formal language 새해 복 많이 받으세요 (Se hae bok many ba de sae yo) . And then the young should bow and wait for the elder to give their blessings 덕담 (duk dam) and then they could get the money. 

Last but not the least, the zodiac is an important part of the Korean traditions. For example, 용띠 (yong ddi) and 운세 (oon sae) which represents luck for the upcoming year.

LEARNING PLAN PRESENTATION

I organized my Korean learning plan by creating a Google Slides. I first introduced some facts about myself, including my intended major, minor, and when I arrived to the United States to explain to my fellow classmates why I decided to take SDLC 105 and 110. Ultimately, my goal was to improve all three of these categories to another level of proficiency: reading, writing, and speaking. The reason is because I want to work in Korea or an American business/firm located in South Korea in the future. 

I decided to divide my learning plan into task-based goals. The first one was the task of understanding television news and broadcasting coverage. Ever since I was young, I have always been exposed to television news from my parents. Although I knew that the reporters were speaking in Korean, I had no clue what information they were reporting or comprehend the topics being stated. I believe that understanding the news is a vital part of succeeding in the future as a Business major. I know that I must stay updated about current economic events to be able to work in Korea’s fast-paced economy. Therefore, in regards to the language elements, I will learn certain vocabulary words that pertain to current events/news. For example, words like, economy, politics, and markets. Additionally, I will try to learn phrases that I am likely to hear on the media as well. An activity I can do to improve my news comprehension skills is to probably simply listen to some Korean news channels. Then I can write down words I do not recognize or know. And finally, I can attempt at summarizing the information stated in the broadcasting. 

Another task based goal is that I want to improve my academic/scholarly writing abilities. I have always been pretty good about texting in Korea, however, I am very poor at writing professional letters and essays in Korea. For the language element, I will work on learning some professional vocabulary and not slangs and acronyms. In addition, I want to learn how to How to address certain people by learning more about the hierarchical positions in Korea.

And ultimately, I want to learn how to correctly space the words and phrases in Korean. I think an activity I can do is to work with my language partner, Jenna, to learn about spacing in Korean. In addition, we can write about interesting topics using the method learned even if there are mistakes. And finally, I can have my writings checked by Jenna and make meaningful revisions after.

Jenna and I had our first meeting this Tuesday and I learned quite a lot from that one session. 

For our firsft meeting, Jenna brought two Korean articles about the weather forecast and the spread of coronavirus in Korea. I thought it was actually gonna be easy and I was gonna know all the words, but to my complete surprise, there were so many different vocabulary words I did not recovgnize and sometimes could not even pronounce. Then we went on to read the articles together, sharing a line each and then Jenna asking me to translate those lines. For the first time I learned how to say North, South, East, West.

This is the second week I have met with my language partner and attended the 105 class. In the last few days of taking both SDLAP 105 and 110, I have learned a couple of new Korean terms related to slang and watched cultural content. My language partner Jimin is a big source of knowledge and help. She has brought the material to our first lesson about Korean slang such as “아아”, “사바사”, “괄도 네넴띤 (팔도 비빔냉면)” and “별다줄”. The terms mean various different things from “Ice Americano” to “person by person” and “Paldo BibimNoodles”. It’s interesting to learn about how young students and adults shorten words for convenience. I tend to find slang in any language unnecessary since it’s an addition to the words we use and know, however, I also do find it interesting and an innovative way young people change up the vernacular. We even practiced reading comprehension by reading an advanced news article on the research found on the Corona Virus. In addition to Jimin, I have been looking to online sources such as Naver Blogs (native Korean speakers make blogs about all subjects, including the ones I am looking to study) and Quizlet to gather different new terms to study. I’m still brainstorming the best way to study Korean current and historical events. I want to utilize the Global Studio’s collection of Korean books and content in addition to online sources. I hope to find children’s history comic books, for example, to easily study Korean history. Through my studies, I want to focus on four things: writing (grammar and spelling), modern/historical content (slang, history, college life), advanced expressions (idioms and proverbs), and business vocabulary. Because I grew up in a bilingual family and attended an international school in Korea, I am fluent in the Korean language but not proficient. I hope to take on the four focuses to advance my knowledge and proficiency in Korean. I also believe that learning these different topics will help me better understand part of my culture. For example, history will not only allow me to learn about important terms and figures but how the events of the past affect the lives of Koreans in the contemporary world.  Another example is the Korean expressions. By learning and using commonly known idioms and proverbs, I can expand my perspective of the world because I will have new ways to express my thoughts, feelings, and experiences. I’m motivated to learn more about one of my languages and cultures because I find it important to be in touch with your culture as much as possible. After moving to the states, I realized that I had taken advantage of my life and experience living in Korea. I could no longer share the same bilingual connection with classmates and was worried about losing my Korean abilities. My interest in Korean entertainment and future hopes of working in, or with, a Korean company has also prompted more motivation to learn Korean officially. As a student thinking of majoring in international business administration and who wants to study abroad in Seoul, I hope I can accomplish my goals this semester and continue forward in the next few semesters of Korean language studies. I think my classmates liked my short presentation in class and are curious to see how I will be able to develop my skills to a more proficient level. Overall, I am excited to fully develop my plan and dive deeper into learning Korean.

I've attached the presentation for reference: 

SDLAP%20105_%205%20min%20ppt.pdf

One fun interaction I had this past week related to the Ge’ez language is receiving a letter in Ge’ez from my friend in Dallas, Texas. I sent her a letter a while ago in tigrigna and she leveled up to Ge’ez. While we are both novices in the Ge’ez language we make efforts to practice and formulate sentences between each other and our other friends. It makes for a nice challenge and a purposeful use of language! 

Here is the letter. 

In it, she begins with and greeting that says: ifo haloki or how are you...she continues to recall the last time we actually saw each other at a friend’s wedding and she comments on how long it has been. She describes me quite poetically and wishes me the best. There she ends it saying “be well until we see each other next”. It is a mix of Ge’ez and Tigrigna throughout which is interesting because some words are close enough to being cognates but some aren’t. On the other hand with the verb conjugations, there is a similar pattern where the difficult conjugations lean towards Tigirgna.

Some letters are hard to decipher when written by hand because they differ by such minute marks or lengths of strokes. It’s very interesting to read the handwriting of others because I don’t do so often. I am usually reading digital texts or printed texts. There are also some handwritten scriptures that I have to get used to reading. 

I plan to write back with a narrative. I can talk about a young girl, daughter of modernized parents in the U.S. who loves Ge’ez and has always wanted to learn it. She sets off into the monastery to learn because that’s where all the teachers are. She learns more things than she expected; how to speak with kindness, humility, and patience. I want to name the character Hanna which is my friend’s name and it also means grace. The character’s name will be revealed at the end. I hope she will find it amusing. 

I think this kind of application will help me with my use of Ge’ez because of the relaxed, low pressure situation. Also it is fun to imagine and discover new words through searching for the ones to fit the story. I may post an update to this post later on in my cultural artifacts or journals.

This Wednesday is my first Korean class. Since neither I nor another student had studied Korean, we started with the most basic Korean alphabets. Before the class began, Ms. Kim asked about our major and told us how to say it in Korean. Because I am a double major in mathematics and business, the word that I learned is “경여학과”, next class I will learn how to say mathematics major. The word “경여” means “business” and “학과” means “major”.  Therefore, as long as I learn Korean words of other subjects later, I can figure out what to say in that major by combining words, for example, another student in my class majored in journalism, which in Korean is “신윤학과”. And then we learned how to introduce ourselves through a simple sentence, by learning this sentence pattern, I can introduce myself with many words. In English, the sentence is made up of subject-predicate-object form, while in Korean, the predicate should be put at the end. At the same time, because we are learning honorific, we also have specific requirements for what we call ourselves. In the sentence “저는 에즈메 입니다.” “저는” mean “I”, “입니다” means “am” and ”에즈메” is my English name “Esme”, it is clear that this sentence structure translate to English will be “I Esme am”, so Ms. Kim told us it is hard for Korean to learn English. “I” in Korean can be said in another version as “나”, but since we are learning honorific, it is impolite to call ourselves “나” when talking to others. With this sentence pattern “저는 ___ 입니다”, we can put other words that can introduce ourselves in the blank to form a sentence, such as “Chinese” in Korean is “중국사람”, “저는 중국사람 입니다” means “I am Chinese.” We also learned some words in class, such as cosmetics and so on. 

For the focus of this semester, our plan is to learn through interest. Since we all like Korean TV dramas very much, we decided to choose a TV drama as the learning material of this semester. Among the choices given by Ms. King, I prefer a TV series called “Crash Landing on You”. The TV series tells the love story of a daughter of south Korean chaebol and an army officer of north Korea. The daughter had to make an emergency landing in north Korea after being hit by a hurricane, the officer found her accidentally and decided to help her, the whole TV series romantic and interesting. Although there will be a lot of north Korean language in the TV series because the officer is from north Korea, Ms. Kim believes that it will not make our study more difficult, but make our classes more interesting and we can learn more knowledge about this two countries. When watching the TV series, what we should do is to write down the words we hear while watching the plot, even if we don't know the meaning, then we will share them in class. Next class we will have a small word test and continue with Korean alphabet.

It has only been one week since my last bi-language weekly journal post. However, due to the late start regarding my language instructor meeting, this post may have less content then future ones. Nevertheless, I had my first sign language courses this past week! In total, I had three meetings: one on Sunday, January 26^th through italki.com, one on Monday, January 27^th with my language instructor, Reba, and one on Wednesday, January 29^th with Reba. To say the least, every session was incredible! Not only was every session informative towards ASL vocabulary, but I also got to see parts of ASL culture and, most importantly, it was a BLAST!

            My first ASL session was on italki.com and was taught by a deaf man. The reason I chose him as my instructor was because, out of all the instructors, he was the only one that I found who was deaf. Although I was nervous about how the two of us would communicate, I know language is learned best through emersion, so I dove in! My instructor and I were able to communicate through a chat box during our learning session; however, we kept such usage to a minimum to really expand my understanding of ASL. We started the lesson with introductions, followed by learning a series of signs regarding movement, emotion & feelings, animals, and common adjectives.  An interesting aspect of the language that he taught me was storytelling. Although I know ASL is a visual language, storytelling resembled that, almost, of a charades game. Now, I do not mean for this to be interpreted as ASL is a charades game, but rather that fingers were represented of people and events that happened in the story were demonstrated through action. It was an incredibly eye-opening process that not only revealed deaf culture’s stories but the beauty and emotion of the language. I had not realized the importance of facial expressions within sign language prior to this learning session, but after seeing the story my instructor told, their importance became clear.

            For the remainder of our learning session, he would have me infer his facial expressions and have me mirror them on my own. These facial expressions when signing can have an impact on the meaning of a sign, thus making ASL, not just about the signing, but rather a holistic langue that encompasses action and expression.

            Now, for my instruction with Reba, I learned just as much. We went over simple, essential phrases, question words, family members, days of the week, and common verbs and nouns. However, the main focus of our first week of lessons was ASL spelling. Because the two of us will not always have an interrupter or writing utensils to communicate, the use of ASL spelling is an essential component to learning the language. Spelling out words allows a learner to learn words they deem necessary for their language developmental tasks while learning to read ASL spelling is essential to understand new vocabulary. Now, as one with reading and spelling disabilities, this is extremely hard for me. Not only do I have to decipher which hand symbol is correlated with what letter, but I also have to string all the letters together to create a word. I am getting better as I practice more, which is too be expected. However, the process often feels tedious and frustrating at times.

            Reba, like my italki.com instructor, is also deaf. So, our only consistent form of communication was through whiteboard messages. Nevertheless, the amount I learned was more than I could have imagined. I find myself remembering and practicing signs throughout the day that we discussed in the classroom and I can not wait until the two of us meet again.

I organized my learning plan for Korean through the app MindNode. It allows me to add and delete thoughts and move things around very easily. Based on the suggestions provided by Dr. Soloway and my own desire to be able to have daily conversations in Korean, I divided my syllabus in a few fields including hobbies, health, food, accommodation, directions and so on. Besides, I also added the learning methods section which contains several strategies I want to try during my language learning process.

I started to have contact with K-pop culture in 2014. Then the immersion of Korean continued since then. I had learned Korean alphabet and some simple words and phrases on my own, but have never studied the language systematically and continuously. 

The book I have been using is called 标准韩国语 which has three books in one set for version 7. The book is written in Chinese. Each chapter has a short conversational passage in the beginning and vocabulary lists after that, and there are related exercises at the end of each chapter. There is a limited amount of pictures and graphs which may seem a little dull at first, however I found it informative and efficient. Probably there is a relation in my previous language learning experience which is pure structural approach and my expectation with this new journey. Beyond that I also found an app called Duolinguo very interesting. I have started using this app to learning Korean a year ago and I really like the test program design which allows me to see how much I have conquered the content.

I always think of language is the product of civilization, in other words, languages exist because of the culture and the people. After I came to America and started to explain Chinese to people from other cultural backgrounds, it occurred to me that explanation is hard to proceed if they do not know about the culture. Little by little, I noticed the extremely strong impact of culture on language and vice versa. In Korean, this observation still stands. The concept of respecting elders and many other cultural signs are shown in Hangul both explicitly and implicitly. By learning the language, it is inevitable to understand it with the support of learning about the culture and the history.

The very first motivation for me to learn Korean is the K-pop idols and their live streaming videos which I can only understand a few words and phrases. Another important push for me to learn the language is the urge to be able to communicate friends from Korea that I met and the urge to meeting more people from Korea.

Many of my classmates are taking Korean and we share our ideas about how to increase learning efficiency. One of my classmates suggested that I should be more specified about grammar learning. I would improve my plans about grammar after I got more information about Korean grammar in general.

In Figuring Foreigners Out, the author compares the different tendencies of cultures. Some cultures identify strongly with individualism, which favors independence, while others with collectivism, which stresses group harmony. Across cultures, non-verbal communication can relay the same messages, different messages, or no messages. Cultures also differ in their perception of time– monochronic time is quantifiable and limited, while polychronic time is unquantifiable and limitless. There are also contrasting views about the levels of an individual’s control– internal means that individuals have great control over their lives and external depends more on ideas of nature and destiny. The final aspect that the reading pointed out was indirect versus direct communication. I think that this reading was very informative for comparing and contrasting different aspects of cultures. It also emphasized the idea that cultures do not usually strictly identify with one side of the spectrum; rather, cultures lean more towards one and can still demonstrate divergences. It made me think about my upbringing as a Korean-American, and how my cultural identity is a fusion of both Korean and American culture.

Developed by Dr. Geert Hofstede, the Hofstede Dimensions of Culture are composed of six dimensions that supposedly differentiate between cultures. The six categories are individualism, the degree to which individualism or collectivism is reinforced; power distance, the degree of social equality or inequality; masculinity, the level of gender differentiation; uncertainty avoidance, the level of tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity; long-term orientation, the measurement of change; and indulgence, the extent to which desires and impulses are controlled. I thought it was interesting that these are called dimensions of culture, yet it seems to be of countries. I find that a country can have multiple cultures so it would be wrong to say that the entirety of a country has the same cultural practices. Going further, I would question how the maps and comparison charts were formed. As I saw the rankings for the United States and South Korea, the two countries with which I identify culturally, I am unsure if I would necessarily agree with every single one.

My Learning Plan

Where are you now?  What can you do?  What do you know?

Use the Levels of Competence document and the LinguaFolio® checklists to assess your current abilities in your language.  For more information, see the SDLAP Wiki.

Interpersonal Communication

- Beginning 0

I have no ASL Experience

Interpretive Listening

- Beginning 0

I have no ASL Experience

Interpretive Reading

-Beginning 0

I have no ASL Experience

Presentational Speaking

- Beginning 0

I have no ASL Experience

Presentational Writing

- Beginning 0

I have no ASL Experience

What is your ultimate goal?  What is your goal for this semester?
What do you want to be able to do with this language at the end of this semester and in the future?

            My ultimate goal is to be able to effectively communicate with deaf patients I encounter during medical emergencies as an EMT and to be able to obtain information regarding their symptoms, allergies, medications, past medical history, and events proceeding the incident.

What tasks will you complete and what activities will you do this semester to meet your goals?  How will you document and evaluate your progress?

Novice learners should consult the ‘Language Tasks’ page of the SDLAP Wiki and incorporate the required tasks in their learning.  Be as specific as possible when planning activities, e.g., “I will watch YouTube videos to learn how to talk about the family.” or “I will consult a grammar text to learn about possessives.”  Make sure you include some tasks that are relevant to your interests, e.g., “I will learn to understand soccer commentary.” or “I will learn to talk about the stock market.”  Culture and language are, of course, inseparable.  It is expected that all your language will be culturally appropriate and that every task will contribute to your cultural competence.

In addition to posting your learning plan to the Ning, provide a brief commentary describing how you have organized your self-directed learning plan. What have you learned so far? Have you identified resources and textbooks to promote your task-based objectives? How will your studies allow you to investigate your target language and culture more deeply? What first prompted your interest, and motivated you to start learning? What feedback have you received from your classmates? Dr. Marsh-Soloway will provide written feedback.

Much of how I would like my SDLP to be structured mirrors that of a beginner's ASL course while also adding a medical terminology aspect to it. I hope to work in the medical field and use ASL as a tool to communicate with deaf patients and offer medical services within deaf communities. After just a single meeting with my language instructor, I am blown away by ASL and, now more than ever, investing in learning more. Besides my language instructor, I have several sing language textbooks, school-provided funds for italki.com/, and several apple store apps. I plan on recording the information I learn on my own phone, and then uploading said videos to my school's box folder. In addition to all o these resources, there are numerous videos online that provide instruction within specific fields of terminology or grammatical structure of ASL that if my own instructor does not cover, I feel confident I could find online. However, my instructor is deaf and as such, she has been a part of deaf and ASL culture her entire life. I am excited to ask her about her own experiences growing up in a soundless world. I still have yet to receive feedback from my peers and instructor, but I am eager to hear their thoughts and opinions. 

This semester, I'm going to research dating culture and relationships in South Korea with subtopics including the role of parents, age ranges for dating and marriage, arranged marriage, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, gender roles, and foreigners.  For this post, I will talk about the social and legal acceptance (or lack thereof) of the LGBTQ+ community.  

Currently in South Korea, being homosexual is not illegal and the South Korean constitution deems unlawful the discrimination based on sex, religion, or social status, which apparently includes sexual orientation without explicitly saying so.  Although this law is in place, the enforcement is lacking in discrimination cases against members of the LGBTQ+ community.  Companies such as Samsung and Google even went as far as to ban popular dating apps for homosexuals in 2013.  Unfortunately, same-sex marriage is still illegal in South Korea.  The current view on the matter does not suggest any change as a 2017 poll found that 58% of the population opposed same-sex marriage while only 34% supported it.  The remaining 8% left their response as undecided.  Homosexual couples are denied many rights that heterosexual couples have such as pensions and adopting children.  Same-sex couples cannot adopt children due to the legal requirements of being married.  Courts are allowed to grant gender changes, but only at the expense of other civil liberties.  I wish the article had gone more in-depth about which civil liberties transgender individuals would have to sacrifice to be legally recognized for who they are.   As for some progress, back in 2003, homosexuality stopped being considered obscene or harmful.  In 2015, South Korea supported the UN’s efforts to fight discrimination against sexual and gender minorities.  Finally, in 2017, the Gallop poll revealed that 90% of the South Korean population supported equal employment options for sexual minorities. 

One article written within the last two months highlights the discrimination that the LGBTQ+ community faces. The blame is mostly placed on the government for reversing anti-discrimination laws to limit or rid of legal protection against those who believe being gay is immoral and seen as a mental illness.  Surveys clearly show the stance of the South Korean population on the matter and the repercussions that the minorities face as a result.  According to The Korea Social Integration Survey, a little under 50% don’t want any association with a gay person.  The article relates this idea to the 20% of the population that is affiliated with conservative churches.  Additionally, a poll led by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea revealed that 92% of those who identify as LGBTQ+ are afraid of being a target of hate crimes.   An emergency hotline was created in response to the results of a national survey of members of the LGBTQ+ community under 18.  About 45% have attempted suicide and more than half have attempted self-harm.  The article brought to light a personal story to exemplify the severity of this issue.  A 20-year-old was fired from his office when his boss found out he was gay.  On the same day, his mother kicked him out of their house and has since attempted to find him and force him to go to conversion camp.  There several protests for gay rights and many counter-protests by conservative groups.  It is hard to say whether there will be progress anytime soon, but I hope that members of the LGBTQ+ community at least feel safer.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49751410

https://www.nqapia.org/wpp/lgbtq-rights-in-south-korea/

For this week, I met with my language partner and worked on setting study goals for the whole semester. First of all, the main goal is to be able to speak instead of focusing more on grammar and language structures and so on. By speaking I mean being able to hold conversations with Korean people when I travel to Korea without any hardship. What's more, learning to speak means that I will have to learn both formal and informal Korean (eg.  안녕하세요 | 안녕 Annyeonghaseyo | annyeong Hello) so that whenever I encounter with people of different ages, I can communicate with all of them courteously without making any errors. 

What's more, I want to be capable of writing conversations as well, meaning that I want to write daily conversations to improve my writing skills. To achieve this, we decided to learn the alphabet in the first place since this is the backbone of both spelling and writing. Also, we wanted to watch some Korean movies and dramas to familiarize myself with not only Korean pronunciation, but also Korean slangs (eg. 남친 | 여친 namchin | yeochin Boyfriend | Girlfriend).

Therefore, for this week we learned the alphabet, including 10 vowels and 14 consonants. The 24 letters are combined together into syllable blocks. The shapes of the consonants g/k, n, s, m, and ng are graphical representations of the speech organs used to pronounce them. Other consonants were created by adding extra lines to the basic shapes. The sounds of some consonants change depending on whether they appear at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a syllable. Korean can be written in vertical columns running from top to bottom and right to left, or in horizontal lines running from left to right. Also, I learned how to spell and write my Korean name according to its pronunciation and some other Korean names with the same method. We also discussed the basic introduction in Korean. Things like 안녕하세요. 만나서 반갑습니다. (Annyeonghaseyo. Mannaseo bangapsseumnida. Hello, it's nice to meet you). And we are going to learn more about it in the following weeks. 

When I was in high school, I learned both Spanish and Korean. I have to say that those were not good and useful learning experience for me personally. I learned Spanish in class and the teacher was a Brazillian. She was a nice person except that she started the class by only teaching grammars and told us to memorize all the words and phrases that we learned during classes. This ploy is undoubtedly not wrong and those who follow the instructions strictly can definitely learn something more about Spanish. Also, is not that I don't like learning languages which is one of a few ways to interact with the rest of the world more easily and comfortably. However, this class to me was just tedious and monotonous since the teacher never talked about anything else other than the textbook and all the class activities were about recitation and presentation using the words we learned. The same situation happened for the Korean class as well. It was a free online course I took and I watched the recordings of the teacher telling me the structure and grammar of Korean from the beginning, which was stressful for me. It is not that I don't consider grammar as an essential part of a language but is more about the ways teachers pass on the knowledge that discourage me from the beginning. 

For me, I mostly enjoy learning languages in an environment that is more conversational, less stressful and the topics I'm more familiar with. For example, regarding Korean, it will be more intriguing for me to talk more about something like, Korean dramas that are popular and Korean songs that most people listen to, and gain knowledge from those topics. 

According to the FIRE model, factually I excel at memorizing facts and prefer objective tests.  Also, I excel at organizing structures and ideas insightfully, I dislike instruction which seems rigid and didactic and I dislike learning which is competitive, purely theoretical. However, I think I should expand my learning activity by learning more about formal writing except for purely reading and conversational speaking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCu5oKwRP0U

To prepare for my first cultural post, I watched Youtube video called “Common Mistakes Foreigners Make in Korea” by Rachel Kim. Although the video is only nine minutes long, it provided very useful and interesting information that is applicable to not only non-Korean foreigners, but also Korean ones that were born outside of Korea.

For her first tip, Rachel advised foreigners not to drink all the alcohol that people pour for them. She states that it is not actually rude to turn down drinks. Rather, she states that it is incredibly rude for the pourer to constantly pour drinks even when the receiver feels uncomfortable. I was surprised about this because the information she provides differs from the research that I conducted about Korean drinking culture. According to several cultural blogs, Korea’s “hweshik” or corporate drinking culture encourages employees to constantly take drinks from their superiors to create a corporate bond. While I do agree with her statements it is incredibly rude to pour drinks for an individual who is uncomfortable, I think she does not provide a holistic perspective on drinking culture. In my opinion, her views on Korean drinking culture are mostly applicable to the casual drinking sessions among friends and acquaintances.

For her second tip, Rachel teaches her viewers Korean table manners. She states that an individual should bear partial responsibility to distribute utensils, napkins, and water to members of the table. For example, if an individual is busy passing the utensils, another may pour water for other members of the group. This shows that he or she is considering the other members of the group. As a Korean who has eaten Korean food his whole life at home and at church, I agree with her advice completely. Offering to help to set the table is a sign of humility and respect for other people. She also advices a person to wait to eat before an elder or a group begins. She states that this is also a sign of respect and an acknowledgment of the unspoken social hierarchy in Korean culture.

For her third tip, Rachel cautions foreigners from calling a person they just met by their first name. Rather, they should attach suffixes such as “oppa” or “unni” if the person they met is older than them. This is especially important when socializing with people in Korea as this is also a sign of acknowledging the social hierarchy in a group. In my experience, calling a Korean by his or her first name without attaching a suffix is not the most shameful behavior, but if it is repeated, he or she may feel disrespected. I personally advise people to follow all of Rachel’s tips because they effectively cover the basic social skills needed to interact with Koreans.

As a cultural artifact, I watched a Korean TV show called Heart Signal. Heart Signal is a reality TV show about dating. The concept of the show is that there are 6 strangers, 3 boys and 3 girls, that live in a house together. As an audience, you just watch them live their normal lives and see how they interact with each other. At the end of the day, each member of the house has to anonymously text the person they are interested in.

I thought this show had a very interesting concept and I’ve also never watched Korean reality TV before. I was able to get a glimpse of Korean culture by watching this show. I think that this show does a pretty good job of letting viewers learn about Korean culture in all aspects of life. Since it’s just following their normal lives, you get to see Korean culture at home, at the workplace, their family, and how it plays out in their relationships.

One aspect of Korean culture I saw was how Korean people flirt with each other and their behaviors in relationships. Although flirting is a universal thing, I thought that there were aspects that were more specific to Koran dating culture. One example of Korean culture be evident within relationships is when a younger guy went on a date with an older girl. Korean is a language that uses honorifics, so the guy had to use honorifics with the girl. Since they were on a date, it was a little awkward and she told him that he didn’t have to use honorifics with her. The guy took this as an opportunity to tease her and flirt in that way.

Another aspect of Korean culture was watching 밀당 (mildang) between two people. Mildang is literally translated to “push and pull”, and the English equivalent is playing hard to get. One of the guys was playing hard to get by teasing the girl and seeming like he wasn’t interested in her. This only made the girl want him more. I did my final presentation last semester on Korean dating culture and this was one of the terms I researched for my project. Speaking to my Korean friends, they’ve said that this is a very popular thing to do for Koreans. I’ve never witnessed it myself, but it was cool to actually see how it plays out and understand why people find it so attractive.

A final aspect of Korean culture that I have learned more about while watching this show is the Korean work culture. These people are very focused on their career and it seems as though their career is one of the defining characteristics of a person. 5 out of the 6 people living in the house are working, while one of them is a student. In one of the episodes, the student was distressed over her career path and how she didn’t have things figured out. She was so distressed about it to the point that she started to cry. Since the other people in the house have experience working, they consoled her and assured her that although there is a lot of pressure put on people to find a good career, she still has time to figure out what she wants to do with her life. I think this is not just specific to Korean culture, but Asian culture in general. There is a huge emphasis on your career, since it will dictate how you are viewed in society.

In conclusion, I thought watching Heart Signal gave great insight into Korean culture and I really think that I’ve learned a lot from watching it. Since it has been so beneficial for me to watch, I will continue to watch it and maybe even watch other seasons.

This week, I met with my instructor, Jenna, to discuss my learning goals for the semester and what materials we want to incorporate in our lessons.  We are thinking of pairing me up with Maggie to have a partner on a similar level to practice with.  Personally, I prefer small group learning as opposed to a large group or one on one instruction because I believe having another brain working and learning at the same time is helpful.  That way, their perspective brings about questions I may not have thought of and offer different ideas and ways of learning that are supplemental to my own learning. 

My main focus for this semester is to work on my reading speed, conversation skills, and vocabulary.  The topics do not concern me as I would like to eventually be able to talk about almost anything.  I am starting to realize one of the hardest parts of learning Korean as an English speaker, which is that much of what you are saying is implied when speaking Korean.  English is a very specific language in which the subject and particles are included in every sentence, even when speaking.  In Korean, many of these grammar specificities are implied and left out when conversing.  This makes it very confusing for me sometimes to understand the translation of what is being said.  This part of language learning goes beyond vocabulary and sentence structure and steps into thinking like a "Korean".  To native Korean speakers, this type of speech is normal and the constant repetition of context specificities one would say in English seems unnecessary.  I hope that practicing conversation skills will help to bridge this gap in my understanding of the language. 

During my lessons, I will be given a conversation to practice with my partner and together we will go over the meaning and practice the fluidity of our reading and speaking this way.  There will also be a list of vocabulary words related to each conversation for us to study.   I will also build up my reading speed by practicing reading mini blurbs of varying subjects starting at a basic level and gradually increasing in difficulty as the semester continues.  I am aware that my learning partner would like to incorporate cultural aspects of South Korea into our lessons, so I believe that the combination of these topics with our conversations and reading practice will give a well-rounded structure to our lessons.

I am excited to continue this semester learning Ge’ez and I hope it is just as informative as last semester. I think it would be good to start by reviewing the content from last semester until we work out the details for my language partner. In that I can also print out all my materials and organize them with the corresponding notes. Re-writing my notes is one way to help me memorize concepts and since I previously only dealt with the digital version of the content that Kesis Moges gave me, it would be good to work with the physical copies. 

Unfortunately, I didn’t practice Ge’ez much over winter break but I hope to more now since I have had a new family member come from Ethiopia that speaks and reads Ge’ez! It was very exciting to meet him as he is a scholar in many ways. He is also very forthcoming about what he knows and easy to engage with. 

Last semester, we left off on learning more verb conjugations, pronouns, and numbers. My plan is to start with the numbers then verb conjugations and different types of pronouns. I am thinking about working with a language partner that was once a student of Ge’ez and now teaches it. Besides that there is another proficient student of Ge’ez that I am thinking about, he is a deacon and a university student. Both of these people are in Canada and I only know them through mutual friends or working on projects together. However, they have aided my understanding in ge’ez in one way or another. 

Until that is sorted out, I am also continuing on working on Ge’ez translation projects. The current one I am working on is called Melkea Si’il or ‘Portrait of the icon’. It is very beautiful and rhythmic. 

In the future I am interested in doing larger preservation of documents through grants and research opportunities and also through the Orthodox Church. Next winter, I want to spend some time in Eritrea and Ethiopia continuing my language study. These are long term dreams but it is truly where my passion is and I intend to invest in it. In the past I have seen that one of the possible language partners has spoken at large in conference style on their research area. I think this is a good step forward because I can also ask him further about his past research and how he got into it. Regardless if I will have the opportunity with this particular community partner, I think he would still be open to discussing those topics with me in the future.

Overall, I am really excited about the decision I made to join this class and am hoping even more than from last semester.

           After a tasking day of work, a leisure activity that I like to do the most in my dormitory is to watch mukbang videos. Mukbang (먹방) which is an acronym mukneun bangsong and translates to ‘eating show’ in English are videos that youtubers film of them eating a particular type of food, often in huge portions. In these videos, the mukbangers often explain the food they are eating and describe its taste, texture, appearance, and information where they obtained the items. In addition, these muknang videos also serve the same functions as a Yelp review in the sense that they offer recommendations for the restaurants and give their honest opinions about the food. This way, the viewers can get a great sense of what that food tastes like and if they would like to spend their money on it. Furthermore, youtubers tend to film themselves eating types of related to fast food items like (McDonald's or Domino’s Pizza) or late night cravings like tteokbokki and ramen. Uploading these kinds of content means audiences will want to watch these videos to “satisfy’ their own cravings (although personally, I think watching these videos make me more hungry). 

          Despite stating that these videos make me hungry, I frankly watch maybe around 10-20 mukbang videos daily, especially when I am on a diet plan. My favorite mukbang youtubers include “ddonggae,” “sas-asmr,” and “nado” which all have more than 2 million subscribers. For some reason, I watch these videos when I am craving a certain type of food. For example, when I crave authentic, Korean chicken with cheese balls and fried mozzarella sticks, I proceed to search mukbang videos that correspond with those food items. Additionally, I think the mukbang videos are very useful when you do not know what to eat. I simply scroll down a mukbanger’s content channel and look at the titles of the videos. After looking through it for about 5 minutes, most likely, I will find something I want to eat, especially during my cheat day. Personally, the main reason why these videos are so fun and satisfying to watch is because there is something so pleasurable when the mukanger takes a huge bite out of their food. It is an unexplainable feeling. I know that in the United States, mukbangs are not that popular and are in some cases hated because of the emphasized noises of chewing and biting when the mukbangers eat the food. When I talked to my non-asian friends about watching mukbang videos, she was very weirded out about the entire idea of filming oneself eating. Additionally, she was very conscious about the mukbangers’ chewing style while I, on the other hand, was not really aware that they were not chewing with their mouth all the way closed. 

          I believe mukbang is an essential cultural aspect of Korean entertainment which has developed exponentially over the years. It has become such a huge part that some mukbangers consider filming mukbangs to be their career and earn a great deal of money. 

This is my second semester of taking Korean. After one semester of exploring different ways of learning a new language, I found a few ways that work pretty well for me and a good amount of topics that I want to learn more about. I worked with my language partner last semester in a small group, and that really helped me discussing and doing conversation practices.

I met with my language partner last week and we talked about the topics I want to learn. I definitely want to learn more about Korean traditions and interesting manners. For example, there is a manner in drinking in Korean culture, and there are a lot of interesting games for drinking too. I also want to learn about traditional games in Korea, since I've seen them a lot on TV shows but never really understood them. 

We also talked about my goals for this semester. First of all, I want to be more fluent in conversation. We did a conversation practice last semester and it was really fun and helpful. We learned a lot of vocabulary and phrases on various topics, so now we want to start making them full sentences. I also want to be better at reading and listening. I did get better at reading Korean phrases last semester and became more confident in it, so I want to keep practicing that. For listening, we found out that YouTube videos are really helpful, and they can bring me into a context too. Overall, I am very excited about the Korean course this semester.