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So far my learning process has been going good. I have started a new thing where I write down what I am going to say before I actually say it. This helps me to ensure that I am speaking in the right tense and that the structure of my sentence is in the correct order before I actually say it. It also helps me to check if I am going to say something in Spanish rather than Portugese. Another new activity I have begun with my language partner is we have begun watching a movie in English with Portugese sub titles. We have been going through the movie slowly, but overall it has been a good learning expereince. I am learning alot of new vocabulary from this process. 

I have learned words about myself, colors, numbers, and simple phrases in Korean. I learned them by writing them down in flashcards and then practicing the words over and over again. I did not set realistic goals if I am being honest. I aimed to do a whole elevator speech about myself, and I wanted to be able to hold a conversation with another individual in Korean. I feel as though I need more time to be able to do so. I know some words, but I do not know how to put them together, and that is a big issue I am trying to work on now. Korean sentence structure is really confusing for me. I am not able to write down sentences without memorizing them first, because I have no idea how to write them! The important part for me is to work on my progress one step at a time. Right now, my focus is on memorizing key conversation phrases. I already know how to read and write, and I know that I have done the hardest part for now, so there is no need to worry. Language learning takes time and practice, and for now, all I can do is try my best to work towards accomplishing my goals.

• Respond to the reading, reflecting on what is lost when languages die.  (You might want to watch the interview with David Harrison posted to the front page of the Ning.)

When languages die, the history and the culture of people dies too. Languages are chain links that bring people together with a common shared history and culture. Without a language we would not have communication, nor would people have common bonds between each other. Therefore, I believe that the death of a language is a symbolic death of a community and the death of the history between people.

Once a community dies, people grow further apart. People lose their uniqueness of culture, what made them different from the other languages. Furthermore, the knowledge obtained by this community is lost as there is no one to rely the stories to the next generation.

As a language is lost, so is the way of life. Rich stories full of life and history disappear, and are lost forever, with no one to help bring them back.

• Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language.

A language’s history can help you understand why and how meanings and words and sentences are formed in a language. Knowing the history of the language can help one become a better language learner and speaker. After researching the history of Korean language, I feel as though I have a better grasp on why Korean was created they way it is. Korean language was created in the Yi Dynasty era, during a time in which only Korea’s upper class were taught to read and write in Chinese. King Sejong wanted to create a language that every Korean could learn. He asked the scholars of the Royal Academy to create a simple phonetic alphabet that all Koreans could easily learn. When King Sejong did this, he changed Korean society forever, as he broke down the barriers of writing and reading in the class-conscious Korean society. In the early 20th century when the Japanese occupied Korea they outlawed the use of Korean script. This move created a huge renewed interest in the national language, and scholars worked together to preserve the language. After their efforts, the Korean language remerged as “Han’gul”. Han’gul was used against the Japanese movement in Korea, and became a symbol of hope and Korean perseverance.

Knowing this about Korean language makes me have a deeper understanding and appreciation of the language, while this knowledge of the Korean Language history also helps me learn the language with more insight. I now understand how important the Korean language is as a symbol of hope and power of Koreans in the early 20th century. Furthermore, knowing that Hangeul was created specifically to help everyone learn the language makes me have more faith in becoming fluent in Korean.

We started off the week with simple assessments on our Korean and mostly communicating with the language partner to gain a better understanding of what we want out of this semester. James, my classmate, and I both agreed that we would like to increase our knowledge in our major as well as writing and listening. Joo, our language partner, has agreed on this and structured his class accordingly. The next class we met and talked about a Korean video on Youtube about Finding Nemo. We went through the script of the video and talked about what it meant and all the vocabulary that we did not understand from it. This was slightly ineffective because of the level of the content. However, it taught me how to go about learning something that I have no idea about. 

The next week, Joo brought us the financial statements of Samsung in Korean. We went together and translated all the terms on the financial statements and learned specialized vocabulary in Accounting. This taught us about many different tools that we can use to find business resources in Korean. This gave me an opening to where I can go to find out more information about the Korean business side. This was something that was very relevant to me and James and was something that was very effective. The way Joo went through and explained the statements were something that sticks with me. 

My cultural learning goals for this year will be about the College system in South Korea. I want to dive into the differences between the Korean education system and the American education system in the collegiate level. I also want to find out why so many students study abroad in America and if that gives them any advantage in Korea. I also want to mainly focus on what it takes to get into the SKY universities in Korea and how stressful and important that title is. 

I would be mostly using research online and my language partner for the research. 

I want to gain a better insight on why Korea has one of the best education systems in the world and what that means in terms of students and colleges. 

Here are my personal benchmarks:

Interpersonal Communication: Intermediate Low

Presentational Speaking: Novice High

Presentational Writing: Novice Mid

Interpretive Listening: Intermediate Low

Interpretive Reading: Novice High

I believe that this is a fair representation of my current proficiency in the language. For this semester, I want to be able to increase my skills in mostly writing and reading. Since these two skills are something that will be most relevant to me in the future, I want to be able to get these skills up one level. I also attached my learning plan to outline my goals and tasks for this semester. 

SDLAP_learningplan.docx

Knowing a language's history can help me learn the language in not just understanding and recalling the newly learnt language but also gain deeper insight into similarly clustered languages with the same family. It is similar in ways such as knowing the roots to a word to aid in conferencing the word's definition. A language history's may connect the dots similar to what Dr. Atlansin in the NY Times article said "and colleagues have taken the existing vocabulary and geographical range of 103 Indo-European languages". Languages sometimes gives information on history instead of the other way around. An example was in the article that "Romanian and other Romance languages, for instance, started to diverge from Latin after A.D. 270, when Roman troops pulled back from the Roman province of Dacia. Applying those dates to a few branches in its tree, the computer was able to estimate dates for all the rest." 

Knowing that modern Hebrew has history from Biblical Hebrew is what aided the revival of hebrew. Imagine how a religious group recreate the language of their tribe thousands of years ago and re-adopt it as a mother language - of course it won't be perfect but it is after rediscovering the language after not speaking it for 2000 years. The Bible was obviously written in a very different world from today which means that some Biblical Hebrew are used today to represent a different thing, but a thing that performs the same function.

Biblical Hebrew is usually pronounced with Modern Hebrew pronunciation, so lots of people aren't aware of how Biblical Hebrew used to be pronounced. It had a lot of sounds that are only present in Arabic. They cannot be found in Modern Hebrew because modern hebrew was first revived by Europeans speaking Yiddish. This goes to point how difficult to accurate revive a language after thousands of years especially if aiming for accuracy. 

So far my learning experience has been good. Recently my lesson have been very much discussing our own events during the week or over the break, and learning new vocabulary or conjugations from there. I feel that my sentence forming has improved alot, and my portuguese accent is also improving. I am still finding that occasionally I make mistakes by trying to use Spanish words, but I feel as though I am getting better at catching myself. Overall, I think I have progressed alot since the beginning of the semester. 

Culture shock is real, even though it might seem like an exaggerated experience. Though my computer did not allow me to view the video, from what I saw/what we discussed in class, I believe that I had a brief period of culture shock this summer in Spain. I lived in Spain for 2.5 months this summer, working at an finance internship in Madrid. During the first few weeks of my experience, I was absolutely enthralled. I was in a brand new country-- not just any country, but Spain!-- and in a new, exciting, and culturally diverse capital. There was so many museums to explore, cafes to try, foods to eat, that I filled my days with walking and traveling easily. However, after the initial excitement, a deep longing came to me for home. I missed America, and Richmond especially. I missed everything-- Chik-Fil-A, good burgers, unlimited cellular data, spicy Thai food, driving, English speakers, and everything and anything American. I never felt such a longing for home. At that point I did not want to be in Madrid any longer, as the city had lost its spark and I began to see the flaws. I desperately wanted to be home with my friends and family, but I learned that I had to acknowledge my luck in being able to do such an experience in the first place. I never expected to feel the way that I did, but I am glad I did. It taught me so much about traveling, and about life itself. I now know not to take vacations longer than two weeks as I get easily tired and homesick, and I now know that I am not really a solo traveler. I love having friends around as it makes me feel as though I am less in an alien space. I am grateful I felt culture shock, as now I feel that in my next experience in a foreign culture, I will be better prepared and ready for what is yet to come.

When I first started learning Spanish, one of the most confusing things to me was using the object before subject, like saying “Me llamo,” which means “Me call” instead of saying “Call me.” It is hard to wrap around my head that not all languages structures are made the same or equivalently. However, like the article in the Scientific American wrote, language works very differently. For Korean, when I start learning how to create sentence structures I need to learn what comes first, the subject or object, if the ending of the verb changes to match both the subject and object, if conjugations are required for two verbs in a row, and more. This presents a very daunting task to me. After four years of Spanish, I am still very easily confused on sentence structures. I believe the best way to acquire the knowledge I need is by reading books and examining the way Koreans create sentences. This, in addition to assistance from Youngmin, will help me garner an understanding of sentence structure. I believe a reference can be useful in the purpose of understanding the underlying principles, explanations of the creations of sentences, phrases, and grammar, and for phonology studies. But I also am a person that needs to see and hear the sentences that are written instead of reading a reference grammar. I am sure that even if I read a English reference grammar, I would honestly be confused and bored with the explanations. I rather dive into reading structures and learn through trial and error of what is correct and what is not, as I believe this is the best way for me to learn, instead of reading about it.

I liked the presentations of all my classmates, I thought it was a fun and informative way to learn about aspects of Korea and Turkey that I did not know about it before. The presentations pushed me to examine more about historical, economical, and cultural differences in American culture and the target cultures. For example, I learned the KPOP culture in Korea is very important, in a way that Hollywood is to us. KPOP in Korea influences the style, the slang, and the fashion in Korean culture.Groups like EXO and BTS dominate social media, and kids across Korea try to emulate and follow the influence and fashion of these groups. There are videos of KPOP stars all over Instagram and YouTube doing mundane things like dancing or laughing, brushing their hair, and KPOP fans adore and continue watch these videos in the millions. This is fascinating to me, as the closest thing we have to do this probably die hard Taylor Swift and Beyonce fans in America. Though, I don’t think it's on the same level as the KPOP fans in Korea.

I also learned about Korean history, such as the fact that the Japan occupied Korea from 1910-1945. I never knew that Japan and Korea’s histories were intertwined and this came as a shock to me. When I was listening to one of the presentations, I learned that Japan had a harsh military occupation in Korea, and to this day some Koreans still harbor some resentment over the suppression of their culture and freedom. Though after some further research, I learned that some Koreans have mixed feelings about the occupation, as modern Korea was created during this period. Japanese occupation brought in unexpected technological development and advances that Koreans cannot deny. So, it is differently a mixed bag of feelings, and I would love to hear more about this for the next presentations.

Korean is one of the more unique languages in that its written language was created by a former King designed to be so simple that even the commoners could learn it. Today it is still hailed as a near perfect phonetic language.  However, its language originates in Chinese. Thus, when learning Chinese, I find many similarities in words between the two languages. For example, the words for exercise, library, museum, sound relatively the same. In addition, Japanese colonization of Korea in the early 20th century affected its language considerably. Vocabulary from Japanese carried into Korean, where many words now have Japanese origins as well. Thus, learning the language’s history when learning Korean, understanding that Korean has many roots in Chinese and in Japanese.

Reflection Paper #2: Reflect on your language learning so far and the relationship between understanding the target culture and the target language.  What do you need to improve your communicative competence?

So far, I have focused on establishing a firm understanding of the basics of Korean language. I began by learning how to read, write, say, and recognize the sounds of the Korean alphabet. This presented more of a challenge than I initially anticipated, so I ended up spending more time on the alphabet than I intended to. I still find some of the subtleties between some letters difficult to distinguish between, but I think that the context of a word and sentence will help me understand what sound is being used. I’ve also studied some simple grammar to communicate information such as ‘Hello. My name is Carson. I’m an American.” I’ve also learned some common phrases to like ‘goodbye’ and ‘thank you.’ Recently, I’ve begun to learn the native Korean and Sino-Korean number systems, so I can now tell my age and phone number. I have also been working on introducing myself to others and on asking for information on other people. Although I haven’t mastered as much vocabulary and grammar that I originally planned to by this point, I think that I have covered a considerable amount so far, especially since I know much more about Korean now than I did at the beginning of the semester.

For the Korean language, it seems that culture plays a heavy role. As in other Asian cultures, being polite is important in Korean culture. Because of this, respect and showing a proper degree of respect to the person you’re communicating with through the language you use is a critical expression of politeness. While studying Korean, I’ve learned how to communicate the same idea in several different ways to fit varying levels of formality. Levels of formality affect verbal conjugation, honorifics, and words choice. When speaking or writing, you must be conscious of the relationship between you and the receiver, a consciousness that I rarely think about as an English speaker. Thinking about language usage in this way makes you more aware of possible factors that would affect your relationship to another person. It’s important to consider age, experience, familiarity, and more. I have had some experience with honorific speech during my studies of French and Japanese, but for those languages, I usually only had to deal with two forms, formal or informal. With Korean, there are more than just those two options.

In order to improve my communicative competence, I need to keeping expanding my understanding about Korean Grammar and vocabulary, and the take my knowledge of Korean syntax, morphology, etc. and use it with native speakers in the real world. Understanding the appropriate times to use a particular word or phrase can be better understood and reinforced through practice. Other modes of communication, specifically silent ones such as gestures, are probably best explained by a native. I don’t know much about silent communication in Korean language and culture, but I would like to learn more as I continue my studies. I will also go to the Korean TA to help me improve my communicative competence in Korean. 

Learning Journal 7:  Reflect upon your progress to date, consider the effectiveness of your learning plan and activities, and discuss what changes--if any--you will make to finish the semester.

I know that I haven’t progressed as far into my learning plan as I had anticipated when I was initially writing the plan. Because it has been a long time since I have studied as a complete novice, I think I had forgotten how difficult it is to get down the basics. The basics are the critical foundation for language learning, so I’ve had to work carefully and slowly up until this point. I will need to reassess my learning plan and make appropriate adjustments to fit the pace I’m at now. I still believe that most of my goals are achievable but I will need to shift some into the second half of the semester.

For the rest of the semester, I will focus on building up more vocabulary. I’ve learned some basic grammatical structures, so learning more vocabulary and common phrases would allow me to communicate more information through the grammar I have already learned. Of course, I also want to increase my understanding of more complex grammar, but I don’t know how much I can learn well by the end of the semester.   

*In your learning journal, reflect upon your progress to date, consider the effectiveness of your learning plan and activities, and discuss what changes--if any--you will make to finish the semester.

So far, I feel like I am making good progress with my learning plan! I was able to accomplish one of my learning goals, which was to learn about grammar tips and working on spelling in Korean. I know that there are more things I need to learn, but I am glad to make progress on that goal!

I also learned a lot about Yonsei University, such as campus structure and campus lingo. I feel more prepared about my study abroad experience next semester at Yonsei University because I have learned so much already. However, I am excited to continue learning new things to prepare for this experience!

Since I primarily worked on interpersonal communication and writing, I think I can also work on reading, listening, and speaking. We can work on these goals by reading articles and watching videos.

Since one of my learning goals is to improve my grammar, my learning partner and I had a grammar lesson about how to write endings to certain words. For example, we learned that “eun” and “neun” are endings used in the subject form, and you choose one or the other based on if the word before has or doesn’t have a “ba-chim.” A “ba-chim” is a form of Korean writing where there are letters written under consonant+vowel pair. This is another grammar topic that I struggle with, so I think we will work on this topic as well.

We also checked out a book from the Global Studio that dealt with “business-type” words to learn how to say some words formally. For example, in English, there are different words to describe document, file, and report. However, in Korean, we can classify all of those three things under “seo-lu,” which is a more sophisticated term to describe just papers.

I think having a balance between learning new vocabulary words and having a mini grammar lesson is a good way to learn because I am not overwhelmed with too much at one time. I like how we used a Korean book to learn about new terms, while we used powerpoint slides to work on the grammar. We also applied my learning by making sentences using these words, which we practiced by speaking to one another.

Reflect on presentations of your classmates.

I really enjoyed everyone’s presentation! I love how everyone had their own interpretation of the culture despite the fact that most people were presenting the same culture. For example, Taiyaba presented on a more business side of Korea, which aligns with her studies, while Jessica presented on something that her parents reiterated throughout her childhood. I believe that these approaches among others have given me a more well-rounded understanding about the country and its history. Shiv’s presentation stood out to me as well because I love lights so I would love to experience the festival.

Also, I am thankful for the video because it gave me more perspective on my presentation skills. Recently, I have been making a lot of personal Spanish videos in which I talk about random things. It has become my own personal way of tracking my development in the language. I thought it was interesting to see the contrast in my intonation, attitude, and confidence. I am now inspired to make more videos in English to further improve my presentational skills. 

Reflect on the Culture Shock video and your own experiences and expectations of culture shock.

I believe that my major moment of culture shock was my transition into college life. I grew up in a fairly sheltered household and did not have much opportunity to interact with people from different backgrounds outside of my high school. At the same time, my high school was not increasingly diverse either so I did not have much of an idea about people in the world. Upon arrival to the University, I initially felt overwhelmed by the seemingly homogenous atmosphere of the campus. I felt that I was in an interesting situation because I grew up with the habit of internalizing issues that I would face. I dealt with my internalizations without formally seeking support from family or  faculty, but I luckily began to meet people who fostered a sense of community on campus. Also, I felt comforted knowing that there were so many genuine and supportive professors to help me navigate college life.

Because of this major transition, I believe that I felt more equipped and prepared for the unexpected on my first abroad experience to Barcelona. For the most part, I felt comfortable walking around the city and getting to know people. I accepted the fact that I would not know everything and decided to let myself have an open mind. Consequently, I believe that I have learned so much about the world and about myself. I am looking forward to more of these moments when I have to step outside of my comfort zone because they seem to be the moments when I learn the most about myself.