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Week 8, I tried to practice reading Korean out loud. This also helped my pronunciation and reading at a more faster pace. I read multiple articles and tried reading text messages out loud as well. It made speaking Korean more comfortable and made my reading faster.

I decided to update my learning plan and shift the focus of it. Initially I planned to focus on the writing and reading aspects of Korean, however after meeting with my language group a few times, I realized that I wasn't understand the conversations as well as I had wanted. I thought understanding conversations would be more important to improve on before the reading and writing skills.

For week 6, I wanted to focus on reading Korean articles. Last time, I focused on understanding clips from a movie. However, this week I wanted to focus on my ability to understand written content. I read an article about the South Korean national soccer team and their upcoming young stars. Since I am very familiar with soccer I thought it would be pretty easy to understand the article. However, the writer definitely used some more difficult words, making it pretty hard to understand it. I just simply cut the article into smaller parts and searched up some of the sentences. Cutting the article up in parts was how I got the general idea of the article. 

For my presentation I decided to talk about the unique delivery service system in Korea (배달). Practically any restaurant or fast food chain delivers to your door in Korea, making it very convenient to eat without leaving your home. Another convenient aspect of the delivery system is that tipping is not required nor expected, making the process more swift and fast. Depending on the meal, you might need to put the dirty dishes outside your door, and the deliveryman will come back later and pick them up. Since this unique and convenient delivery system is so different from America, I thought it would be interesting to present about it.

Since I'm not taking SDLC 110 simultaneously with SDLC 105, I have not learned any new words in my target language yet. However, a lot of my goals in the learning plan involve acquiring more advanced level of vocabulary. My breadth of vocabulary has been very limited because I stopped reading academic or professional writing in Korean since elementary school. So while I am well aware of conversational vocabulary, I have a hard time understanding writing or speeches about more advanced and complex topics that I'm not familiar with. What is important to me in acquiring vocabulary is learning how to use the words correctly in context and therefore it is crucial for me to learn new words within context instead of simply memorizing the words. So my plan is to read and watch a lot of writings and shows in Korean that use more difficult set of vocabulary so that I can acquire more advanced knowledge of vocabulary. 

Hangul is the name of the Korean alphabet, which was created in 1443 during the Joseon Dynasty. It has 19 consonants and 21 vowels, grouped into syllabic blocks. Hangul has been described as an "alphabetic syllabary" by some linguists, as it combines the features of alphabetic and syllabic writing systems. 

When a language dies, history and culture of the people who used that language also dies. The loss of a language could be culturally devastating as it would be impossible to unlock knowledge about the culture if no one can understand or use the language. The access to the history of the culture that used the language is also lost if language dies as again there will be no one who can interpret any written or physical records of history. When a language dies, there will be no native speakers who consider that language as their mother tongue language and therefore it would cause loss of resources about the language itself. 

My goals weren't specific but looking back, I do believe that I met my goal from a general viewpoint. As mentioned in the first artifact, I would eventually use some of the words or phrases jotted down in my phone and even use them frequently enough to remember the spelling. My correct spelling became much better and improved to a point that I did not have to put much thought into what I was writing.

For week 4, I decided to study a short clip from a Korean movie. The first time watching it was at normal speed and with Korean subtitles. The first time through was a bit difficult to understand, since it is quite fast and there is the usage of slangs. The second time, I paused in between scenes and read the Korean subtitles only. Reading the subtitles made me understand much better, however I did have to search up a few words online. The third time, I went at half speed and tried to match up the dialogue with what I already know. I believe that going through the same scene a few times with different methods help one understand and learn better.

My learning goal for Week 3 was to learn more about Korea geographically. Although it is important to learn about Korean culture, one of the basic aspects of learning a new language is to recognize the geography of the country it originated from.  South Korea shares the border with North Korea, and is a pretty small country in terms of size. Apart from knowing the locations of two key cities, I did not have much of an idea on the other cities. I started studying the map of Korea and realizing the geographical locations of Seoul, Busan, Daejeon, Daegu, Gwangju, Jeju-do, and others. All the cities have their own charms to offer, and it is fascinating to see how different the culture and people are between these cities.

For the first task, it was a general goal: writing and texting in correct Korean spelling. My artifact was to jot words down on a list in my phone. What I would do was when coming across an unfamiliar phrase or slang, I would search up how it is spelt online then jot it down next to a translated version in English. I would then look back at the list a few times a week, and make an effort to use some in normal conversations. Eventually I would use a few of them and look back at the spelling from my list. After only texting those phrases/words/slangs a few times, I would remember how they were spelt.

State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

Since this was the final week before starting the Korean final exam, this week I focused on reviewing all of the information that I’ve studied over the course of the semester. I felt fairly confident in my ability to read, write, and identify teach letter of the Korean alphabet, so I didn’t review the alphabet very thoroughly; however, I will probably take another look at it before taking the reading a writing section of the test. So far, my approach to reviewing has been to skim over a section of material, take note of what I have forgotten or an unclear on, and then review that material more carefully.  If I still didn’t understand something, then I would ask about it during class this week.

In class, we have followed a similar tactic and have been quickly going through everything that could show up on the exam and then pausing whenever someone had a question or wanted more clarification. Because the speaking exam was on Friday, I focused on vocabulary or common phrases and less on reading and writing. I already know that I made at least one mistake during the speaking exam, so I’ll have to go back and review that grammar point again. Besides that, I think that I did well and that I’m headed in the right direction in terms of studying for the final. 

A learning task I have sucessfully completed is I have sucessfully transalted a full portugese interview. The interview was about life in china for a Brazilain soccer player known as Oscar. He described his current situation in China and the level of soccer. He felt as though Chinese soccer will never be able to reach the level of comptetivness that the soccer in England is currently at. He feels that English soccer, or the Premier league will always have the most competition. He does feel that there is China, but since the players don't start from early age their talents aren't as polished as those from other parts of the world. While translating his interview I found that Oscar used alot of slang that I was unfamiliar with, so I had to ask my language partner about it. Also Oscar spoke really fast so he often would merge two words together. 

These past two weeks I have continued to watch the Portugese show 3%. It has been quite interesting, and I have found the alternation of Portugese with English subtitles, to English with Portugese subtitles to be quite uselful. When I watch the show in Portugese with English subtitles, I enjoy listening to what they say and seeing if what I think they said matches with the translation. When I listen to the show in English, I pick up on a lot of new vocabulary as words they may just seem simple in the English language tend to be new words in Portugese. Another activity my language partner and I have done in the past two weeks is talk about our predictions for the world cup this summer in Russia. Since FIFA just did the draw for the world cup this summer it seems as though Brazil might have a good chance at getting their sixth world cup. 

This week, I learned about the geography of South Korea. I liked how we used an actual map to visualize all of the different regions because I am a visual learner, so this was more helpful than just verbally telling me where everything was.

During my study abroad experience at Yonsei University, I will be staying in Seoul, which is the capital of South Korea. It is special because it is recognized as both a city and a state. Although it’s a small region, 50% of the whole population in South Korea live here. Gyeongido is the “Seoul suburb” area that surrounds Seoul and Incheon is to the left of Seoul. When I study abroad, I will be landing at the Incheon airport, so it’s important that I know where this is located.

I am also interested in knowing where Busan is located because I have family who live there. I learned that it’s quite far from Seoul because it’s towards the bottom right edge of South Korea, while Seoul is located on the upper left corner. Nevertheless, I am excited to be able to explore all of these different cities and states in South Korea, during my study abroad experience next semester!

Throughout the course of the semester, I learnt variety of things such as months of the year, the days of the week, colors, times etc. I used a number of resources, and I am attaching some of the screenshots of the resources that I used when learning the above mentioned vocabulary/expressions. I believe the artifacts below represent some of my learning goals that I established at the beginning of the semester.

A learning task I have completed is sending an email to my friend who is currently in Brazil in Portugese. I went through the process with my language partner. For the past two year I have written an email everyday to my friend describing my day and any wordly events. For this day I described my schedule in portugese, meaning the classes I had to go to, and any tests I took. For example, one of the sentences I wrote was "hoje eu tinha uma prova em Linear Algebra." Which means today I had a test in linear algebra. Unfotunately, interms of worldly events nothing really important happend so I wrote, "nao noticia mundial hoje".

Even though I grew up speaking Korean, I never had to think about linguistic aspects of Korean language. It was very interesting to read about how time expression in Korean relates to a nature, in particular, the universe. For example, a year is expressed in a notion of sun whereas a month is expressed in moon. Article explains that this is originated from looking at the sky when figuring out the time in the past. Traditionally, Koreans tend to divide up a day into five sections which are dawn, morning,  lunchtime, late afternoon, and evening. Moreover, Koreans do not have separate words for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The word for morning and breakfast is the same, the word for lunch and afternoon is the same, and the word for dinner and evening is the same. Likewise, it is interesting to learn about time expression in Korean.

Another linguistic aspect that I think it is unique is polite word. Korean people traditionally thought that having an appropriate courtesy towards elders is very important matter. From the culture that elders are respected, the language has formed to have polite word. For example, there are different words for meal, sickness, asking and dying. These are not used in every situation where one is older than the other, but it should be used appropriately in Korean culture.

Merhaba.
Benim adım Manya.
Ben on dokuz yaşındayım.
Ben Ermenistan'lıyım.
Richmond'da yaşıyorum.
Richmond Üniversitesi'nde okuyorum.
Postanede çalışıyorum.
Her zaman sabah 8: 30'da uyanıp kahvaltı ederim.
Uluslararası İlişkiler üzerinde çalışıyorum.
En sevdiğim renkler siyah ve mavi.
Doğum günüm Ekim'de.
Genellikle 7.00'de akşam yemeği yiyorum.
Koşma ve okumayı seviyorum.

Iki erkek kardeşim var.
Kardeşlerim 15 ve 3 yasindalar.
Benim annem bir öğretmen, babam bir ekonomisttir.
İki amcam ve üç teyzemiz var.
Amcamlar avukat. Teyzemler doktor.
Büyükanne 66 yasindalar. O çok hoş bir kadın.
ben ailemi çok seviyorum
Sonra görüşürüz.

Hello.
My name is Manya
I am nineteen years old.
I am from Armenia.
I live in Richmond.
I study at the University of Richmond.
I work at the post office.
I always wake up at 8:30 in the morning and have breakfast.
I study International Relations.
My favorite colors are black and blue.
My Birthday is in October.
I usually eat dinner at 7.00pm.
I like running and reading.

I have two brothers
My brothers are 15 and 3 years old.
My mother is a teacher, my father is an economist.
I have two uncles and three aunts.
My uncles are lawyers. My aunts are doctors.
My Grandmother is 66 years old. She is a lovely woman.
I love my family very much.
See you later.