Knowing the history of a language can help one learn a new language because knowing the roots of a language can help you understand where the words stem from. If we know where the roots of the words originate from, we may also be able to guess the meaning of the word if it belongs to the same family of words. Language itself is also history. So learning how it evolved may tell us something about the culture of our target language as well and what caused such changes and improvement in the language.
All Posts (91)
Sort by
I remember when I first came to the United States in 6th grade, I had a culture shock due to the different standards of personal space and eye contact. In Korea, you are taught not to look at someone older than you directly in the eyes because it's considered rude. However, in America direct eye contact in a conversation is considered more polite. Also, even though America is known for giving each other personal space in interactions, the personal space that Koreans give each other was much greater. So I felt uncomfortable in the beginning when my teachers came too close to me to talk to me. Another culture shock I had was the sense of individuality and independence. In Korea, you are taught to compete against your classmates and win against others to be on the top. However, American culture was more about yourself is your only competition and you are encouraged to compete against yourself to improve yourself. Calling adults older than you by their names was also another culture shock that almost never happens in Korean.
For my fourth cultural post, I learned and analyzed relationships within families in Korea. Unlike America, Korea has different names for relatives. For example, Americans call all of their parents’ siblings aunts and uncles. In Korea, there is a different name for all your aunts and uncles depending on which side of the family they are. This is the same for cousins, great grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and distant relatives as well. Additionally, women in Korea traditionally go live with their husband’s family right after marriage. In the old days, women were literally sent off to their husbands’ families and barely had contact with their own family. Koreans are also less likely to get divorced than Americans. This statistic is slowly changing as more Koreans are getting divorced due to a rise in liberal minded individuals but it is still lower than that of America. Certainly, there are a lot of differences between the culture of families in America and South Korea.
During this semester, I have learned many things about Korean culture. I am Korean American and I still have Korean culture around me; however, I learned about things that I did not know before. Even with Korean cuisine, something that is around me all the time, I learned something new. I learned mostly about the political system and the level of corruption going on. This has opened my eyes to how Korea is. This taught me that all countries are flawed in some way and how traditional Korean culture is. Throughout this semester, I believe the most valuable cultural information that I learned about Korea was about the political system. This was something so interesting to me, because of the level of corruption. I was also interested in the prevalence of plastic surgery in South Korea. This also opened my eyes on how common and how mundane plastic surgery. I personally do not believe in this cultural aspect of Korea, but I definitely see how and why Korean girls are almost forced into it.
For this first artifact, I read a short story that I found online. It was hard to read it even though it was for elementary school students. Listening back to the recording, I realized that I could improve my reading through accents and speed. I was pretty slow on reading the story, but I did understand a little bit of it. I believe that this is a good benchmark on my skill level of Korean and is a good indicator of my skill.
For my fourth artifact, I decided to have a text message conversation with another student, Jacob Park. As you can see in the attached pictures, we said hello to each other and set plans to go out for a drink later in the week. This was our first-time texting in Korean in a long time so it was a bit difficult. We also tried our best to incorporate Korean-style emojis and abbreviations. For example, the way of texting “lol” in Korean is either “ㅋㅋㅋㅋ” or “ㅎㅎㅎㅎ”. I believe our spelling throughout the entire conversation was correct but we will check with our language partner for further review.image1.pngimage2.png
-During these two weeks, we watched several Running Man episodes to learn how to talk in an informal setting. Running Man is a reality TV show that features 6 main celebrities with guest features every week.
-We learned that in Korea, sarcasm is used slightly different than in America. Americans love sarcasm and it is a main source of humor for many individuals. However, in Korea, it can seem rude depending on the delivery. Of course, in America, sarcasm depends on delivery as well but it is used much less in South Korea. In addition, due to the formal and informal speech in Korea, it may seem awkward to see a celebrity joking around with someone older. However, using polite grammar and respectful tone of voice, these celebrities still succeed in joking around with their elders without coming off as disrespectful.
-There were many times in the past where I wanted to make a joke around Korean adults that were older than me. After viewing these videos and learning from my language partner, I think I can have casual conversations with respectful humor that will not disrespect my elders in any way.
For this artifact, I decided to use my writing skills and text James. This was kind of difficult because it has been a while since I texted in Korean. The pace of the conversation was a little slower than normal, because of the use of Korean rather than English. This was a fun little exercise that helped me understand what I need to improve on and what I did well. I believe that I used the Korean emojis pretty well and the spelling was decent. I think if I improve my spelling, it would be a better, more fluent conversation
For these two weeks, we decided to take on a more casual approach to our listening. We decided to watch the popular Korean reality show, Running Man. This TV show is a show where a bunch of celebrities come out to play games and do various tasks.
This taught me about Korean culture regarding reality shows and what is acceptable to say and not to say on national television. Compared to American shows, the stars are a lot more careful about what they say on the television shows. The show, however, is very relaxed and it taught me how people talk casually. Seeing the different ways humor is used in the Korean language was also interesting to me. There were a few vocabulary words that I did not know. Joo did an excellent job explaining to us the words and it was an effective way to learn them because of the humor that was involved.
The next week we continued our learning by finishing the episode. I believe that this was a very good learning experience for me, because of the context involved. I still remember the vocabulary words that I learned in the television show.
-This week, we focused on our reading skills using Korean news articles. We read some business news articles regarding Samsung and its current state with its CEO in jail for bribing the president.
-Aside from learning about the current news in Korea, I improved my reading skills with the help of my language partner. My partner corrected me on pronunciation and pauses. I never thought I had trouble with pronouncing Korean words but getting advice from my language partner helped me realize my weaknesses in reading Korean. For example, in Korean, there is no “r” so I often found myself pronouncing the “l” words in Korean as “r”. The more practice I had with reading the article helped me correct this issue. I definitely should practice more by reading articles every day in Korean to improve my weaknesses.
-For my third artifact, I decided to improve my speaking skills in the business environment. For this exercise, I found a video of interviews for a prestigious hotel position in South Korea. Being someone who has gone through the interview process with several accounting firms, I was able to figure out the differences between interviewing for a job in Korea and in America. One thing I noticed right away was how formal Korean candidates are when interviewing for positions. In the US, especially in accounting, interviewees are looking for casual conversations to get to know the candidates better in a casual setting. However, this particular Korean candidate sounded very formal and a bit tense compared to interviewees in America. By watching this video, I learned how to structure my sentences in a way for the interviewer to understand my better. Organization was a key factor in a lot of the responses by this interviewee. I feel like Korean candidates like to use lists and organize their responses to put emphases in their answers. I have attached the video below.
After learning about the history of the Korean presidency, I decided to watch a movie called The Lawyer which is based on the true story of the former president Noh-Moo-Hyun. Once just a lawyer trying to move up the ladder, Noh became a civil rights lawyer after seeing the corruption of then president Park-Jung-Hee who falsely arrested student protestors and tortured them because they accused them of being North Korean. Although this movie does not show Noh’s rise in politics, it focuses on Korea’s history of dictatorship and military brutality that not a lot of people outside of Korea are aware of. One thing I learned about when researching about this film was that former president Park-Geun-Hye, who is the daughter of Park-Jung-Hee, had a secret blacklist of key individuals in the entertainment business. This blacklist was for banning artists expressing political propaganda that went against Park’s views and ideas. The actor who portrayed Noh-Moo-Hyun, Song-Gang-Ho was in this blacklist because of The Lawyer. Although this movie took place in the 1980’s, a lot of conservatives are still against this type of political opposition. Many Americans may think the political divide between the Democrats and Republicans of the US is terrible but it is even worse in South Korea.
-In class, our teacher gave us a brief history lesson on the former presidents of South Korea. From what I’ve learned, I decided to read more about the presidents and see what kind of impact they had on South Korea’s people and history.
-I mainly focused on president Noh-Moo-Hyun. He was a civil rights lawyer who became president in 2001/2002. Many Koreans, including my relatives, told me that Noh was one of the most popular presidents in South Korea because there was really nothing corrupt about him. He truly fought for the people and was not interested in accumulating wealth and power for himself. Unfortunately, after his 5-year term, he committed suicide due to extreme pressure from the opposition party. The opposing party continually harassed him and his family by accusing them of briberies and such.
-I learned that Korean government was and is corrupt, even more so than politics in America. I especially wanted to learn more about Korean politics because a majority of the population in Korea follows politics. I want to be able to have intelligent and relevant conversations about politics with my parents, other adults and friends.
In these two weeks of class, we decided to focus more on reading using news paper articles. First week, we read various business articles that was currently happening in Korea. We read them together in class and highlighted any words that we did not know. After we read the articles, we came together to see if we understood the article's main points and went over the vocabulary words. This gave me more insight to what Korea is today and the problems that are going on in Korea. The article really outlined the political issues that Korea was going through. This way of learning helped me improve my vocabulary and knowledge of the current events.
For the second week, we continued our learning from the articles. Since the article was so dense with information, it was a good learning material. It allowed me to learn the nuances of the Korean language and its syntax. It was something that I appreciated because I learned how Korean newspaper articles are written in an unbiased matter. There is also some specialized vocabulary that I learned as well.
For this cultural food, I will explore Korean food, both traditional and contemporary.
Korean cuisine is based off of a main dish of rice with various side dishes. The side dishes are on the center of the table and each person has their own rice and maybe soup. The side dishes are usually made of vegetables and meats. The most popular side dish is Kimchi. Kimchi is a fermented cabbage dish that is coated in mainly salt and a chili paste. This versatile dish has many different forms and can be used to create other dishes.
Korean cuisine has not evolved that much from what it used to be back in the day. The concept is still the same, but there are some chefs around the world that are taking a more contemporary approach to Korean cuisine. One of the most popular currently is Korean fusion food. Where different dishes like Kimchi or barbecued beef are used to make tacos or hot dogs. ZZaam in Carytown would be a good example.
There is also a whole different section on Korean dining etiquette. The main rules are that you cannot start eating until the most respected elder has taken their first bite or gave permission to eat first. The other part of the culture is that you may not leave the table until the elder has instructed to you that you can.
For this artifact, I will translate a Korean news article that I found online. I found this article through Google searching "Simple korean news articles." This website showed up and seems to be a good source for me since it is exactly at my level. The link is here.
Title: 120,000 evacuate Indonesian Island Bali in danger of Volcanic Eruption
As the biggest volcano in Bali, Indonesia was known to be in danger of eruption, 120,000 locals have evacuated.
An Indonesian local has said that the locals on the popular tourist attraction have evacuated to different locations around the island. There are also plans to evacuate any cows in a 12 km vicinity.
Indonesia officials have said that it might be related to the event that happened on the 22nd. The possibility of eruption has been reinstated since last August.
There was an eruption from the same volcano back in 1963 that caused 1000 locals to die in a year.
Create a learning activity to teach someone else something you have learned in your language;
outline this activity in your learning journal.
My learning activity is to teach someone how to navigate the subway system in South Korea. I chose this activity because I will be using the subway as my main source of transportation. Therefore, it will be great practice to teach this activity to another individual.
I will first show the map of the subway system, so that they can visualize what we will be learning. Then, I will teach them how to load money on their T-Money card, which is similar to how a metro card is used here. Afterwards, we will look at going from Sinchon, which is the subway station at Yonsei University, to Go-seok terminal, which is where a huge shopping center is located. We will talk about which direction the end destination is and which lines we will need to take to reach there.
Teach someone using the activity you created in Week 9; reflect upon the effectiveness of the activity.
The learning activity was a little complicated and confusing at first, but I think it went well overall. My friend was initially overwhelmed by the complicated map (shown below), which is how I felt when I first saw it too. However, I tried to show how it was not as complex as it looks. After this initial hurdle, we were able to go smoothly with the rest of the activity. Overall, we concluded that it was not that difficult to navigate through South Korea using their subway system. But, we do need to be careful about making sure we know which direction to go and knowing which routes are the most time and cost efficient.
For these past two weeks we have been focused on current events in South Korea.
We started the week by talking about the schooling system in South Korea. We talked about the making of "수능" which is the Korean SAT. We talked about how this was such a big deal in South Korea that planes are actually grounded for the whole day and the test making process. This gave me an insight to how much emphasis Korean culture puts on education. During these lessons, we talked about other vocabulary and other cultural norms of Korea regarding studying and College entrances. This was an eye opening experience that taught me how different the culture was in Korea. I believe that learning a language is important, but we should not forget to learn about culture.
The next week we talked about other current events that was happening. We talked about the North Korean deflector that ran across the border and the earthquake that occurred in South Korea. This surprisingly led to a conversation about politics in Korea and the potential issues that arise from this. I learned lots of things about the Korean political system and the intricate details that are going on in Korea right now. This taught me the culture and politics of Korea and made me more aware of what was going on in the country.
For my second artifact, I will be summarizing a clip from a Korean talk show
The premise of this talk show is for normal people to come on and talk about their problems. The girl that came on the show was having a hard time because of her looks. She has the appearance of an elementary school student but is actually 23. She came on the show with her friend and her friend said that when they went to go take the bus together, the friend got charged as an adult and she got charged as a student. The friend also said that they went drinking for her 21st birthday and other people in the restaurant was giving her a hard time because they thought she was young.
The clip moves on to reveal that she is married and that she has a son. This is where the main part of her problems arise. She said that when she went to the hospital for her pregnancy, the other people would think that a minor got pregnant. This made her scared of going to the hospital. She also went to the hospital because her son had a high fever but the hospital said to bring the baby's guardian and took extra time to process things when she showed them her ID.
The solution that was proposed to her was that she should be more confident when she goes outside and deal with the problem face on. She was also told to go outside more and since the national television exposure would allow people to be more aware of her situation, the situation would get better.
