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Bi-weekly Learning Journal 10/6

I have been reviewing Hangeul and learning some basic words and conversations in Professor Kim’s class. I didn’t go to class this week since I was out of town for most of the week, but I did go to both the Wednesday and Saturday class for the week before. I feel that by getting familiar with Hangeul, it is getting easier for me to read the characters even though I don’t exactly know the meanings. 

The practice of the basic conversations definitely reinforced my memory too. We practiced on self introduction, including saying our names, greetings, what we do(college student), our major, and our interests. Korean as a language has many rules regarding manners. That’s why there are polite ways of saying things and a casual way. Usually when you are talking to people older than you or people you are meeting for the first time, you should talk in the polite way. For example, when doing the self introduction, we will say 저는 instead of 나는. Some other words we learned for basic conversation include 남자 친구(boyfriend), 여자 친구(girlfriend),예쁜(pretty),귀엽다(cute),이름(name), 대학생(college student).I learned how to say yes and no, to say I have/not have something, like/do not like something. And we also learns some basic sentences like what, why and how. These kinds of basic sentences would really help to express a lot of things. 

We took a quiz in the Saturday class, and it made me realize that even though I am familiar with the sounds of consonants and vowels, I still do not know the written forms well enough. Another thing other students and I all discovered in that class is that some consonants and vowels have different forms of writing. And sometimes it really confuses us because what Professor Kim wrote on the board looked completely different from what the vowel/consonant is on the Hangeul handout. It took us a few minutes to clear this with Professor Kim, but we are all glad that we solved that problem.

On the Wednesday class, we were discussing that we would learn some Korean songs together as a class and maybe also watch a Korean movie. I recommended 사랑을 했다(LOVE SCENARIO) by iKON as one of the songs to learn because I think the song is really catchy and the words are easy to follow. I definitely like kpop but I have never really learned to sing a Korean song since I didn’t know Korean before. But I think right now learning one is a great opportunity to learn more about some Korean songs I love and improve my Korean skills.

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Discussion 5

Unitha Cherry

SDLC

 

In my starting research I have found that what interests me most about my target culture is the intersection of Judaism into Israeli culture. While in America for the most part there is a separation of church and state to some degree Judaism is Israeli culture. Hebrew being the language of Judaism is the language of Israel. Many travel blogs recount that to foreigners’ Israeli people can seem rude but it is due to the bluntness of the Hebrew language and in reality, many Israelis are very friendly. In the case of Hebrew and Judaism I think that because Judaism is based in the promise between G-d and the Children of Israel is it so enmeshed in society. For example, no transportation is available on Shabbat which starts Friday night and is until Saturday evening. This is because in Jewish tradition one is not supposed to drive, work or cook on Shabbat. When it comes to the intersection of Hebrew, Judaism and Israeli culture I think that I do need some language in terms of understanding the religion but I think that because of my own involvement with Judaism I have some understanding of how to talk about it. I will say however in the vain of Communicative Competence I do think that will be gaining the needed Sociolinguistic competence will come as I learn more about the culture and even still it may not come because that is something you get from being in a culture. Sensitivity to different dialects comes from being aware that there are linguistic nuances and being able to hear them and I can not yet do that. 

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Bi-weekly post #3

I really enjoyed the classes in last two weeks, because we have studied lots of new stuff and watched lots of Turkish cultural videos which were very interesting. A good progress is that right now I can pronounce Turkish letters pretty correctly and do the basic greetings in Turkish. And I also found it was getting more interesting when I became more familiar with this language. Sometimes I think Turkish sounds like Japanese a lot, but I cannot speak Japanese, so I really want to ask people who can speak Japanese whether they feel the same way. Also, we studied numbers in Turkish and I have already memorized them by using a kind of stupid way. For example, “sekiz” is eight in Tukish, and I easily memorized it because it sounds like “赛棋子” in Chinese which means “chess competition”, so I remembered numbers very fast in this way. And they are not very hard actually, because Turkish does not have specific words for 11, 12, and etc., they use “on bir” or “on iki” as 11 and 12, while “on” is 10 and “bir” is 1. Other numerical patterns are basically as same as English.

We also learnt expressions related to time in Turkish. It’s interesting to see that they don’t have the expression of a.m. or p.m. and they use 12 hour rule, because my language partner told me that they can tell the morning or the evening by looking out at the sun and she believes it is always unnecessary to use a.m. and p.m. thing (I thought in the same way all the time, maybe I should live in Turkey). They also loved to use the expression of “10 minutes to 9” or “5 minutes past 5” to stand for “8:50” and “5:05”, which are “Dokuza on var” and “Beşi beş geçiyor”. I had trouble with expressing time in this way at the beginning because we don’t express time like this in China. If it is 8:50, we will just say “eight o’clock fifty”.

We also watched lots of Turkish music videos and Turkish food videos. Originally, I thought Turkish music would be very different from any music form I listened before, maybe Turkish music would include some religious stuff. However, we watched several Turkish pop music videos, and I was very surprised to find that they were really similar to American pop music and the music videos are similar to American style as well. I really like Ariana Grande, and I found one of Turkish singers we watched that day has very similar style to Ariana, including dancing style and make-ups. We also watched two videos that they invited several American kids to taste Turkish snacks and most popular foods. And Turkish foods look so great, because I love cholates and meats, which Turkish popular snacks and foods contain a lot. Those kids in videos also loved Turkish foods. I asked my language partner whether Richmond has great Turkish restaurant, but unfortunately the answer is no. But if I go to New York or Washington DC one day, I must try the Turkish restaurants there, because my language partner said these two places have good Turkish foods. And she also said every one fell in love with Turkish foods after tasting it, no matter where you come from.

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Biweekly Language Learning Journal

In the past two weeks, I have learned a lot more about Korean writing and reading. Last week, Jenna my student teacher, brought in a weather news article and a large chart with different combinations of vowels and consonants (See attached). We went over the pronunciation of each word. We also started learning simple Korean words like dog and wood. These words are simple two-character words that use basic Korean characters. I also learned how to say, "I don't like/I didn't like" and "I like/I didn't like" in Korean. We practiced how to say it (formal) and how to write it. I used examples of myself liking watermelon and other foods. Furthermore, during that class, we read a news article about the daily weather forecast in Korea. I learned many new words such as highest/lowest, wind chill, dust particles, and north/east/south/west. One thing that was really interesting was that in the weather report, they reported the levels of dust in the air. In Korea, there are high levels of particulates floating around the air. Because of this, Korean news reports always include dust particle levels, in order to alert the population of harsh breathing conditions. This is fascinating because we don't have that in America. This is a clear example of how different cultures can have different patterns and problems. This past week, Jenna and I reviewed the chart again and identified my most common mistakes. She also quizzed me on the basic vowel/consonant alphabet to make sure I was reviewing it. We spent another 30-45 minutes reviewing how to write/say "I like/used to like" and "don't like/didn't like." Lastly, Jenna brought in an article about the Los Angelos Lakers NBA team. It was written by a Korean sports analyst and it was an eerily long article about the team as a whole. Jenna told me that this article contained lots of fluff and unnecessary information. As we read through the first three paragraphs, she helped me identify words I did not know. There were many words I didn't know but learned through context what they meant. I think this is a great skill to practice for the future so I can use context clues to understand a specific sentence. On my own time, I have been practicing how to read and write Korean. A game that I have played to improve my Korean writing/reading skills is to ask a friend to say any creative sentence in English. I would then translate it into Korean and attempt to write it out. To check if my sentence was written correctly, I would go on voice notebook and check. This was a great way to self-evaluate myself on a certain word or phrase I didn't know how to spell. I have also been watching Korean music videos to become familiar with pop music in Korean (https://www.ranker.com/list/best-korean-hip-hop-songs-2019/ranker-music) In the next two weeks, I want to be able to write a letter in Korean to my parents and grandparents for their birthdays or holidays. I've never been able to write a fluid thoughtful letter in Korean so that will be my goal in the next few meetings. I will also continue to practice reading and writing in Korean to become better at it.


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Discussion Post 5

I am learning Korean and am interested in many aspects of its culture. Although I was born in Korea, I moved to the USA when I was three years old, so I don't remember anything about Korea. Because I am a true born Korean, I think it is important for me to learn Korean culture and understand it. There are two main cultural aspects of Korea that I really want to target. First, I want to learn about food culture. I've grown up eating all sorts of Korean food, but I want to be able to learn the true culture and history of Korean food. My second target culture is music. Korean music is very different from American music and it would be interesting to learn a new music culture. I am primarily interested in rap/pop culture in Korea and how they change the pronunciation of words to make the music flow better. 

Another side target culture is sports, especially basketball. I love playing basketball and following the NBA. I know there is a Korean professional basketball league, and it would be really fun to watch Korean sports broadcasts and highlights. Recently, I read an article in Korean about the NBA, and there were many words that I had to learn in order to understand the meaning of the article. There were vocab words such as team, record, practice, losing streak, pride, etc., that I had to become familiar with. I also have added these target culture learning aspects to my learning plan and have been starting to learn about these things with my student tutor and during my own time. 

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Learning Journal 3

Last week, after some review on self-introduction and sentence structures, Jenna took us to a higher level of reading. We have a weather forecast and a list of words on our handout that day. Before we started reading, we learned quite a few new works regarding weather, such as micro dust, temperature difference, and fog. We also encountered geographical words such as inland and the East Sea of Korea. There are some sentence structures such as “to be expected” and “to be forecasted” in the passage as well, so we talked about them too.

Then, we started trying reading the weather forecast. It started with simple sentences that we could understand, but then it gets more detailed as it moves on. I read it quite slowly because there are many vocabs in it that I didn’t know, but Jenna pointed them out and explained them to us. I read the handout for a few more times after the lesson and became more familiar with the words. It feels so good to be able to understand the majority of a paragraph.

We did a little review on a weather forecast this week, and then we learned about 개천절(National Foundation Day) on October 3. We watched a short video talking about the original story, and Jenna added more details to it afterward. We learned the name of the characters in it as well as the vocabs for bears, tigers, and some veggies. I am quite interested in the history of Korea, so I asked Jenna more about 세종대왕 who created hangul and also a farming guideline. I enjoyed our lesson a lot and I’m glad that I’m working on my Tasks 1 and 2, which are to discuss the weather and to learn more about animals, colors, and Korean holidays.

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Biweekly Post #3

For the third week, Brenda asked us to choose from three topics that we are going to cover this semester, including topic about shopping, restaurant and tourism. As a foodie, I definitely vote for the topic of restaurant. I am really excited about that because one of my goal this semester is to improve the skills of communication, especially to learn the conversation that I can truly use when I travel to Korean. I have been to Korean restaurants in Richmond several times but never spoke in Korean with 이모, the female owner in the restaurant who help us with ordering food. Korean food is the most attractive part of Korean culture.

Usually the menu is visible on the wall of the restaurant, however if for some reason the menu is not there, we need to ask for the menu. Through situation dialogue, Brenda taught us how to order the food in restaurant and some common phrases we can use.

여기요!

Here!

주문하시겠어요?

Would you like to order?

육게장 일인분주세요

One order of spicy beef soup please.

어떤것을추천하세요? 

What would you recommend?

이거좀더주세요! 

Please give me some more of this!

제가낼게요

I am ready to pay.

This is very helpful because after class I went to Korean Garden, a restaurant owned by 이모, I used this conversation and it works! Besides some vocabularies I learned in class, I also learned from menu. My favorite Korean food is 육게장(spicy beef soup) and 김치볶음밥(kimchi fried rice). 이모was surprised and acclaim my Korean pronunciation as well.

For the fourth week, we learned 30 vocabularies related to dormitory and country.

Korea 한국     India 인도     Philippines필리핀 Thailand 태국

Australia 호주  Canada 캐나다     China 중국    France 프랑스

Germany 독일       America 미국      Japan 일본         UK 영국    

Russia 러시아   Vietnam베트남

Refrigerator 냉장고   pillow베개    fan선풍기     shoes신발

Trash can쓰레기통   hanger걸이  blanket담요    window창문

Wardrobe옷장      bed침대     curtain커튼    cup 컵 

I believe that nouns are vital because they refer to places, objects and people. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language, so knowing nouns can largely improve the effectiveness of conversation,especially for a beginner of language-learning. Sometimes I might not speak a complete and grammatically correct sentence, but if I can speak out the main object, my conversation partner can still understand what I mean.

To sum up, I was satisfied with what I have learned these two weeks and after class I made a detailed plan to review and consolidate my memory by making sentences with new vocabulary and applying it with Amber.

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Learning Journal #3

Last week in class after a brief review of the previous class's lesson, Jenna, our language partner, gave us a Korean weather forecast article. From the article, we learned many new vocabulary words that have some relation to weather. These words include nouns such as inland, daily range, clouds, air temperature, sea, fine dust, the lowest/the highest and some verbs like to fall/precipitate, to be expected, to forecast, and more. Even though I was familiar with many of these words, we also came across many other words that I normally don't use or saw for the first time. These words are the following: 지표 (the surface of the earth), 가시거리 (visibility/range of visibility), 유의하다 (to pay attention), 미만 (under/below/less than), 형성되다 (to be formed/built/developed), 대기 (atmosphere), 원활하다 (smooth/smoothly), 확산하다 (spread/disperse/diffuse), 농도 (concentration), 권역 (limited area), 천문조 (astronomical tide), 만조 (high tide), 저지되다 (be blocked), 침수 (flooding), 대비 (preparation). After reading it aloud and going over the article together, we answered some reading comprehension questions. Then we also watched some YouTube videos on weather forecasts.

I was very surprised that the article was only about ten sentences long. I didn't know that such a short article about weather would have so many new vocabulary words. I have realized how lacking my range of vocabulary is. It was great to learn more technical/scientific words, because those are the type of words I don't ever use in daily conversations.

This week the day we had class happened to fall on 개천절, or National Foundation Day, so we learned more about it for our lesson. It was on October 3rd, and it is believed to be the day of the traditional founding of Korea in 2333 B.C. Jenna explained to us the folktale of the founding of Korea, which is also the ancentry legend of god-like King Dangun, the founder. One day, a bear and a tiger prayed to Hwanung, the prince of the heavens, that they want to be human. Hawnung told them that if they want to become humans, they have to eat only garlic and mugwort inside a cave without sunlight for a hundred days. After twenty days, the tiger gave up and left, while the bear persevered and eventually become a woman. The bear/woman ended up marrying Hwanung and giving birth to a son named Dangun. Dangun Wanggeom became king and founded the kingdom of Gojosen, or ancient Joseon. We then watched a video that explained this story in Korean. This week's lesson was very interesting. I had not heard about National Foundation Day even though I think I heard the story with the bear and tiger before. It was nice to learn about the history of Korea.

We also review what we learned last week by reading another news weather article in Korean. This article used many of the same vocab words in the article from last week. This time though, I recognized the words we learned and made reading it much smoother. I think reading the vocabulary words in another article made it easier to remember.

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Discussion Post #5

I'm interested in Korean culture, and I think one of the most distinctive features of Korean is honorific language. I often watch Korean TV dramas and variety shows, especially those shot by my idol. At first, I was surprised by the way they communicated, because many words or names are followed by several words. I didn't know Korean at the time, and it didn't exist in my native language. After I felt strange, I searched the Internet for this phenomenon, which was my first understanding of Korean honorific culture. I think one of the most distinctive features of Korean is honorific language.

 

There are also honorific terms in China, but only the honorific names are widely used, for example you should not use "Ni" (which means "you" in English) to call your elders, but use "Nin" (which I can't express in English). Honorific language exists in every situation in Korea, and people have high requirements for respect. The younger should use honorific words to the older, even if their birthdays are only a year or even a few months apart. When people meet for the first time, they should also use honorific words. It is extremely impolite to address each other by name, always be sure to add honorific suffixes. In the variety show, many guests after getting familiar with each other will still use honorific words until both parties confirm that they can treat each other as friends without honorific words. In many cases, when two people are very close to each other, they will only change from honorific to semi-honorific, which retains part of the necessary honorific title.

 

In my future Korean learning, I think it is very important to learn and master the use of honorific language. This will not only help me understand Korean culture better in the future, but also be helpful for daily communication. I don't want my Korean friends to think I am impolite.

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Biweekly Post #2

For the first week of Korean class, I am very excited to work with a group of students who are friends with me as well. Last semester, I had a great experience of one-to-one class with Seonghye, so I became more excited to have a bigger study group. In first class, we reviewed some knowledge I learned last semester. Since four of the us were on different levels, we began with self-introduction. Take me as an example:

  1. 안녕하세요저는류한첸입니다.

Hello!  My name is Liu Hanchen.

  1. 저는만20살입니다.

I am 20 years old.

  1. 제전공은 수학입니다.

My major is mathematics.

  1. 저는동생 한명 있습니다.

I have one younger brother.

  1. 내생일은7 월29 일입니다.

My birthday is July 29th.

7.     나는 우상을 좋아하지 않는다

I do not have a favorite idol.

 

Then, Brenda asked us to do the introduction one by one and let us know more vocabulary from Amber, Yuting, and Nichole’s introductions. For example, Yuting has a little sister, and in Korean, we called younger sister여동생. It is similar to younger brother (남동생), with only the first character being different. Brenda showed another analogous example to help us remember the difference between “여”which means female and “남”which means male. Boyfriend is called “남자친구”and girlfriend is called“여자친구”.

When we discussed Korean drama, I mentioned a web series called 퐁당퐁당Love (Splash Love). It pronounced as “pu dang love”, but I accidentally pronounced as “pu dong love”. Brenda seemed confused and then she realized that I want to say 퐁당(pu dang) instead of 포동(pu dong) because what I said is a word means chubby.

For the second week, Brenda used Yongsei textbook and talked about the difference between 가and 는. However, since Seonghye and I mainly focused on this book last semester,  it was not something new for me. Besides that, we spent the rest of the class learning vocabulary of different colors of the rainbow. There was an interesting phenomenon that the pronunciation of color in Korean is basically the same as the English pronunciation of this color. For example, red is 레드(lede), and pink is called 핑크(pinke). There is a more traditional way to say colors. Red is 빨강색; orange is 주항색; yellow is노랑색; green is 초록색; blue is 파랑색; purple is 보라색; black is 까만색. I was delighted with learning new Korean vocabularies because one of my goal this semester is remembering more daily vocabularies and try to use them when I talk with native Korean speakers.

    To sum up, the first two-week class is helpful for me to pick up what I have learned with Seonghye after a long summer. The new stuff for me is attractive, which helps me step closer to my goal.

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SDLC 111: Biweekly Journal #3

For the past two weeks, I realized that I need more practice for reading than what I originally imagined. I spent the past two weeks trying to read more Korean articles. One of the articles I read was about Korean holidays and the government’s role in enforcing them. I read this while I was learning new vocabulary and Korean holidays during my time with my language partner.

 

The article talked about how the government would repeal a holiday that it previously announced upon review of current economic conditions in Korea. I struggled with this article because the vocabulary was more difficult than those of any article I read in the past. The vocabulary words consisted of words that describe public institutions, government districts, and political policies. These words were not intuitive because of they were specific names that could not be derived from other Korean words. Therefore, I spent a lot of time learning the definitions for these words before trying to understand the article. I did this because I thought learning these words beforehand would help me to gain a holistic understanding of the situation. Even after I learned the words, I had difficulty understanding the article. For the first time in a while, I felt challenged by a Korean article.

 

            I communicated to my language partner about the difficulties I was facing in understanding the vocabulary and reading. Thankfully, I was able to readjust some of my learning plans to prioritize reading. When I’m with my language partner, I will focus on learning vocabulary. Outside of the classroom, I will take more time to read more Korean articles that talk about politics and economy. However, I am worried that I will not retain this information because I won’t have the time to talk about Korean politics using Hangul except when I’m in class. I am also not an expert in Korean politics, so the conversation topic itself is already limited. I retain information mainly by talking to other people with general vocabulary words, but I do not know if it’ll be possible for these words. Therefore, I am going to try to write sentences using the words that I learned.

 

            I’m also still watching Korean television shows that use more conversational Hangul. I think that shows are a good break from the more academic Hangul and keeps my casual conversation skills intact. Watching television is also a fun way of learning Korean. Sometimes, I watch with some of my friends, transforming a solo activity into a group one.

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112 Learning Journal Post #3

During these past two weeks, I have covered a lot of material.  With my language partner, we have been focusing on time orientation and location.  There is a particle (에) that has many uses, but its three main purposes are to indicate a location or time.  For example, if you were to say, “We meet at 10 o’clock tomorrow”, you would say 내일 10시에 마나요.  We’ve also been going over vocabulary for today, yesterday, every day/month/year, now, later, etc.  This is a great place to start off because we can text each other saying where and when we are going to meet for our next lesson.  I think this allows for good practice.

In my later lessons with my language partner, I want to learn some general sentence structures such as, “I want to do this” or “I have this”.  These are very basic things I still do not know, yet I think they will be easy to understand.  I know that I use these phrases a lot in English, so I would like to learn how to say them in Korean.  Afterward, we can build on the structure to make it more and more complex and add in more vocabulary as we go. 

During my meetings with Professor Kim, we have been talking about complicated topics such as political corruption and history in Korean and English and going over vocabulary as we go.  This part can get pretty confusing for me because I don’t understand a lot of sentence structures.  Most of them sound familiar to me, but I don’t know what they mean exactly.  Because of this, I am easily lost.  Professor Kim will stop and explain a lot of things though, but in this context, there is little repetition.  This makes it harder for me to remember things.  I think all of the vocabulary is useful and we go over concepts I need to know, but the information is not being portrayed in the style that is easiest for me.  In later lessons, I will talk with her to try and reach an understanding of how I process and learn information. 

We’ve also been talking about and preparing for our presentations due at the end of the semester.  We’ve been going over topics and Professor Kim has been giving us some suggestions and information about our topics to incorporate in our presentation.  She has been very helpful with that and helps us stay on time with it. 

Something that was surprising during my sessions with Professor Kim is that she will talk to me in Korean at the beginning of class asking how I’ve been, what I did etc. and I can understand most of what she is saying.  And if I don’t understand something, it's usually a word I don’t know the meaning of, but I am able to pick it out and specifically ask about that one thing instead of just being overall confused.  I wasn’t expecting myself to understand basic conversation questions.  The main thing is that I have to work on answering them.  However, the practice every time we meet is a great opportunity to better that skill. 

 

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112 Cultural Post 1 with Artifact

I read an article written by Gyoung-hae Han, a professor in the Department of Home Economics, at Seoul National University, about the transition of Korean culture around the role and perceptions of elders in a modern society.  The concept of ‘modern’ is relative due to this work being published in 1996.  I still think it has important perspectives on the cultural movement to provide a background into what is going on currently.  The bias of the author is sided with the importance of continuing to honor elders in society. 

Han begins by emphasizing the importance of understanding cultural values and attitudes that relate directly to the perceptions and roles of the elderly in South Korea.  One of these values is the aspect of filial piety, which promotes the devotion to and importance of family.  When filial piety is highly incorporated into society, elders hold a high status that supports their involvement in society.  Han paints the picture that the “'blessed elderly' was the image of 'long life' surrounded by many filial children and grandchildren, enjoying a place of honor, authority, and respect in family and community,” (43).  It is clear that the elders have had a strong, established role in society that is well-known by South Korean citizens.    

Not only does filial piety affect the elders, but the youth carry a lot of responsibility.  They are the source of support for their parents and grandparents, even after they move out of the house.  This is sourced from the cultural value of reciprocity.  Since the parents loved and cared for their children during their youth, the children, therefore, give back to their parents in their old age to honor and respect them.  The concept of familism also plays a role in giving the elders their high status by making them the head of the household, leaders of rituals/celebrations, and able to control property.

In recent years, the Western ideology of individualism and egalitarianism has brought some very opposing views of the elderly.  As youth wish to become more independent, they see their grandparents as more of a burden.  Many have come to value opportunity and autonomy over filial piety and familism.  In this “cultural transition” some elders wish to be self-sufficient to lessen the burden on their children (42).  This ideology has had a weird mesh with the traditional perceptions of aging that has regarded elders as wise and respected and their old age celebrated as an accomplishment.  The Western ideology of the elderly as sick, poor, and weak has started a contrasting idea that the youth are benefitting from.  In the growing popularity of the ideology of independence among youth, they have experienced more opportunities for economic and social freedom. 

There has been some push-back that Han supports in her article.  She believes that education of youth about filial piety and respecting elders should be prioritized.  In her opinion, this is the only way for the aged community to feel a sense of purpose and honor. 

Before reading this article, I knew that elders were more respected and honored in Korean culture than in American.  However, it is interesting to identify the specific aspects of the culture that favor the elderly.  I was also unaware of the extent to which the youth cater to their parents and grandparents, or at least what is expected of them.  I think learning about the culture around respect for elders is extremely important in learning Korean due to the prevalence of formal and informal speech.  In my previous lessons, I have learned how to speak respectfully to someone older and about someone older when speaking to someone your age or younger.  An interesting factor is that there is even a different way to refer to yourself when talking to elders so that you appear humble.  As I delve more into this research topic, I would like to focus on cultural customs that reflect honoring the elderly and the presence of Western ideology and to what extent it is affecting current perceptions of aging comparatively to Han’s article. 

Han, G. (1996). TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN THE CULTURE OF AGING IN KOREA. Korea Journal of Population and Development, 25(1), 41-57. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43783476 ;

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