I watched two cultural presentations: one on transgender people in Pakistan and India, and the other on language usage in Indonesian. I thought it was really interesting that in Indonesian, there is such a complex pronouns structure. It must be difficult to know when to use which pronouns. It was also interesting to me to see how the transgender people were treated in Pakistan and India. I thought it was intriguing how they are seen as blessed and cursed at the same time.
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This semester, I focused on learning the basics of Ukrainian. I used my textbook, watched language videos, and listened to Ukrainian audio files in order to learn. The biggest challenge I faced this semester was separating Russian from Ukrainian. The alphabet is almost identical, but there are different pronunciation rules which gave me some trouble in the beginning. Also, because the language is so similar to Russian (in terms of sound), I sometimes found myself filling in a Russian word in place of a Ukrainian word that I either did not learn or forgot. For next semester, I will continue to focus on learning the cases, as I did not get through all seven of the cases in Ukrainian.
When I started studying Arabic, I searched youtube for makeup videos in Arabic and there was surprisingly a lot. So I decided to search for videos in Turkish. I came across a few, but I like one channel in particular, Merve Özkaynak. Because I already know the vocabulary in English and the structure of makeup tutorials is always the same, I can pick up on what she is talking about and what is coming next. I listen to the videos once to see what percentage of words I know, and then I'll watch it again with subtitles. I find that just listening to videos of people speaking my target language helps my pronunciation.
In this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3wNnH1NHA8, I was able to understand the colors and transition words as well as her introduction and farewell. There were surprising less loanwords about the topic than I expected. I'm not sure how much I'll talk about makeup and stuff if I go to Turkey, but I talk about it with my friends in English, so I might use these words if I get more Turkish friends or if I end up living in Turkey.
I recorded myself conjugating "to work" in present continuous tense. Shayna%20artifact%203.aup
I recorded myself talking about my daily routine. Shayna%20artifact%204.aup
I feel confident that I will accomplish my learning goals this semester. The only change I made was the addition of a resource, “Istanbul: Istanbul Turkish for Foreigners Course Book”
This week I learned more verbs for everyday activities as well as more adjectives. I have been practicing learning adjectives in their opposite pairs (wide and narrow, ancient and new, calm and angry, etc). Some adjectives are negated by using a suffix -suz. Others have their own, unrelated word. There is no predicting when an adjective will have a suffix -suz at ht end to negate it, so it will just take memorization.
I learned more verbs this week about everyday activities such as cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner (kahvalti, yemek). I can talk about my daily routine from morning to night. I can express what I enjoy doing throughout the day as well with the addition of an infinitive "I like/love" (sevmek) before the main verb. The main verb always goes at the end of the sentence.
I am using my language partner as well as "Istanbul: Istanbul Turkish for Foreigners Course Book."
This week I learned past tense. It is in some ways harder than present continuous, but it is definitely helpful to know and expand my language ability. Additionally, I am learning how to negate the past tense. This is done, by an affix, similar to negating the present continuous tense. I am continuing to learn new verbs about everyday activities as well as non-action verbs (to like). Verbs always go at the end of sentences in Turkish as it follows the OSV order. Next semester I will continue working on present continuous, past tense, and will learn future tense.
The resource I have been using throughout this course with my language partner is "Istanbul: Istanbul Turkish for Foreigners Course Book."
My first artifact was texting my mother in Korean who I normally text in English. Although it was a bit difficult, I managed to use correct grammar and vocabulary with no abbreviations. This is usually not how Koreans text. Koreans love to use abbreviations and shortenings but I kept it formal not just because I'm speaking to my mom, but also to get better at formal writing in Korean. This also helped me get really used to the Korean QWERTY keyboard. I wouldn't say I'm the worst at it but I certainly can improve more. Texting my mom has increased my skills and familiarity with the Korean keyboard.
Taking Self-Directed Language with Professor S and Ms. Jung was enjoyable and helpful form Korean-language learning experience. I have learned a lot about the culture and language of Korea and I gained a lot of insights about myself as a language learner. I realized that when it comes to languages, I learn the best through having conversations with others and trying to come up with personal stories that relate to a word or phrase I’m learning. The most difficult part about this entire process was time management and developing a passion for studying Korean. Time management was a big issue due to my Junior year classes, interviewing for internships, campus jobs, and what not. It was also an issue when it came to me planning to do a task for the language class. I sometimes just forgot to do what I was going to do to improve on my Korean. I believe this all ties into how much passion I have for the Korean language and preserving my heritage. Even though I’m Korean and consider myself a patriotic individual, I do not have a passion for studying the Korean language further than what my skill level is at the moment. However, this class has helped me change that because I learned to enjoy learning Korean and learning new vocabulary that will be extremely useful when I visit Korea in the future. Obviously, this entire process was enjoyable as well. I really liked learning Korean with one of my close friends who I have never spoken to in Korean. Korean-Americans like myself never usually speak in Korean to each other. English has become our prioritized language and Korean just seemed to be slipping off as we grew more accustomed to the American life in the US. However, studying with my friend was enjoyable and helped me appreciate the learning process. Additionally, I loved giving presentations and seeing others present about their own countries and mine. I gained a lot of new knowledge on cultural facts that I would have never came across if it wasn’t for this class. As I have learned a lot this semester, I’m going to take advantage of this opportunity to continue learning Korean next semester when I study abroad at Yonsei University. There, I will be able to learn Korean by speaking it with natives and Korean students who live in Korea. Additionally, I’m going to try my best to talk to my relatives a lot more so that I not only learn more about my culture but the language as well. A lot of the readings done in the class were very interesting especially the one about how being bilingual is the same as being intelligent. I truly want to believe this but I feel that this article is taking away hope from others that might want to pursue learning a new language in the future. If I could take this class again, I would have liked to learn more about each individual students’ perspectives on the various languages we studied and on the culture and traditions of the languages’ countries as well.
I have attached my cultural project with the sources on the last slide. In short, my project was about why Korean learn English and why English is so important in Korea. I suggested that Koreans learn years and years of English, not to communicate with native speakers, but to get higher scores on tests and to become more competitive in the work force. English learning focused on solving problems rather than communication skills. After the goal is reached, English is usually forgotten and not practiced. I also included a video that shows Koreans who have learned up to 17 years of English but struggling to speak to a native speaker.
My task for this week was to watch an episode of a Korean variety show without the subtitles. My goal for this task was to watch an episode of a Korean variety show and discuss with someone what the show was about. I can assess this task by watching the episode again with English subtitles to see if my summary was accurate. My task for this week and last week were similar because my senior seminar class is getting difficult and I needed to do something that felt like a break but was still learning.
For the final artifact I decided to write out my task from Journal 12. I watched the first episode of the Korean drama "W" without subtitles and typed what I understood from the plot. There was a lot of dialogue that I could not understand some of the words, but I was able to use context clues and figure out much of what was going on.
In episode 1 of the drama W, a young man from South Korea named Kang Chul participates in the 2004 Athens Olympics in the shooting competition. He is in the lead for the first eight rounds but makes a mistake in the ninth, allowing another shooter to catch up and surpass him. In the tenth round, the other shooters take their shot, but Kang Chul takes all of the time allotted to gather his nerves and shoots a perfect bullseye. The scene changes to Kang Chul’s family watching the television. The front door opens and his mother goes to see if it is him but shows a face full of terror. The father hears a thud and goes to see that his wife has been shot in the forehead. The shooter then kills the father and then Kang Chul’s little brother and sister and leaves. Later, they arrest Kang Chul as the prime suspect. The police unveils the murder weapon to be the gun Kang Chul had used in the Olympics. While being interrogated, the prosecutor yells at Kang Chul saying something about him not wanting his dad around, which Kang Chul profusely denies it. While in jail, Kang Chul finds out that they held his family’s funeral without him and cries. Later on in court, the prosecutor asks for the death penalty and Kang Chul lashes out at him, cursing at him and calling him crazy.
In another scene are two people sleeping in bunk beds with the phone ringing. The young woman picks up the phone and see that someone named “crazy dog” is calling and tosses it to the young man in the other bed. He answers the call and tells her that “crazy dog” was actually calling for her. She picks up her phone to see ten missed calls and rushes out of the room. She finds “crazy dog” in the hospital and he yells at her before asking if her father really is the famous manhwa writer Oh Sungmoo. She confirms and crazy dog asks her why she is just Oh Yeonjoo if her father is Oh Sungmoo. He goes on to ask for spoilers because he is a big fan of her father’s manhwa “W”. They both bond over how cool the character Kang Chul is. Apparently the series is about to end and crazy dog wants to know who the killer is, but Yeonjoo says her father doesn’t even tell her details, but she calls to ask anyway. She calls his assistant Subong who says that her father has gone missing. She comes to look in his office when Subong tells her that it is strange that he is missing because he never left the room.
Yeonjoo and Subong start talking about the manhwa when Subong says that Sungmoo was planning to kill Kang Chul. He shows her a frame of a bleeding Kang Chul on her father’s drawing pad/monitor and Yeonjoo asks why he would kill off Kang Chul. She finds a picture on his desk and reads the writing on the back. The writing seems to have been some kind of magic spell because suddenly a bloody hand reaches out of the monitor and grabs onto her jacket. The hand drags her into the monitor and the picture falls to the floor. Yeonjoo wakes up on the roof of a skyscraper and turns to see Kang Chul in the human version of the frame Subong showed her earlier. She asks if he is okay and checks to make sure he is still alive. She runs down to a kitchen saying that someone is dying and to call for help. A waiter comes up to see what’s wrong. She asks where they are and he says they’re at a hotel. She says she is a doctor but that she doesn’t have a lot of talent. Kang Chul suddenly struggles to breathe and she sees that his lungs are filling with blood. She takes a pen from the waiter’s pocket and tells herself she doesn’t know what she’s doing but to do it anyway. She stabs him in the chest to puncture his lung and let him breathe. The staff thanks her for her help and she says that this is what a doctor is supposed to do, and gives them her card. They ask her why she is on the roof, which stumps her. The waiter tells him that the man who was dying is Kang Chul and he runs over. Yeonjoo looks at Kang Chul saying to herself that he can’t be Kang Chul since he is a character, that this much be Kang Ta not Kang Chul. Yeonjoo and Kang Chul stare into each other’s eyes before he is taken away. Yeonjoo is now on the roof by herself and looks over to see floating white text that says “continue”. She is suddenly back in the office and touches the monitor with the drawing of a bloody Kang Chul. Subong comes back in the room. Yeonjoo says she’s been gone for a long time but he doesn’t know what she is talking about. He says that her father has turned in the last issue of the manhwa even though he has disappeared. They read the last episode and one of the staff says the series actually has not ended. While reading, Yeonjoo sees herself and everything that has happened with Kang Chul had been written into the story.
Then there is an introduction of the manhwa character Kang Chul. He wasa born in 1987 and his company JN Global is worth a lot of money. He was very depressed after the death of his family and the trial that he tried to kill himself by jumping off the bridge, but saves himself at the last minute by hanging onto the edge by one hand. We go back what happened after the last episode and Kang Chul is fine sitting in a hospital bed. He is talking to his assistant Sohee about finding the doctor that saved him and she believes that there’s something strange going on with that doctor. He says he doesn’t remember what happened, but he has a feeling that the doctor that saved him is “the key to his life”. His bodyguard jokes with him and says that he must want to find her because she’s pretty and he’s fallen for her, but he argues that she’s not pretty. Sohee gives him some attitude and Kang Chul tells her to only speak informally with him when they are alone. Kang Chul looks at Yeonjoo’s business card and asks himself where she is.
Yeonjoo is reading the newest episode where she reads the last scene with Kang Chul asking where she is. Crazy Dog bursts in the room asking why Sungmoo wrote his daughter into the story. Yeonjoo calls Subong and he tells her that the story is getting weird but he still hasn’t heard from her father. Yeonjoo goes crazy saying that the world of W really exists and that Kang Chul really is looking for her. She hangs up and looks at her monitor and asks why Kang Chul is looking for her and why he believes she is the key to his life.
My task for this week was to be able to discuss current events in Korea. My goal for this task was to read a news article from a Korean newspaper or watch the news and discuss one of the stories. We ended up doing something similar to this in class. One of the students brought in an article about lead poisoning in children in Korea and we discussed the article in class. We also talk about current events in Korea often.
In this artifact, I explained to Zaka my reasons for taking Urdu. I explained how I hope this course will help me fully immerse myself in the language. I will be able to hold whole conversations with family members about complex matters. They won’t feel as if they cannot have a certain conversation because I won’t be able to understand the surrounding vocabulary. In addition to this, we also discussed the background that I have in Urdu and I explained to Zaka how I speak with my mom in it, it is not the most fluent and the pronunciation is something I also want to work on so that I can retain the main form of communication among my family as well as retain my identity.
This semester was a little too hectic for me. My task completion was getting pushed further and further back because I had so many responsibilities to do at once. It was hard to find time to keep up with them all and I found myself doing multiple tasks in a day toward the end of the semester. I definitely need to do better with work distribution. I should not be putting work for other classes on the back burner.
As for progress with Korean, I do not feel that my speaking has gotten much better, but my listening definitely has. I can understand rather difficult topics if a few keywords are explained to me. I have difficulty contributing to the conversation because I am thinking too hard about making perfect sentences or getting my thoughts across in another language. When Minkyung asked me to repeat long complicate sentences I had to ask her to repeat it multiple times and I would get frustrated with myself. Next semester I want to work more on speaking rather than listening.
For the third artifact I decided to translate as much as I could of a Korean song. I chose the song I wrote about in my 9th learning journal. Some lines I could not understand very well so I used context clues. I looked at the English lyrics afterwards and saw that I was mostly correct with my translations.
Playing with Fire by Blackpink is a song about an intense, dangerous love. Going through the lyrics, one of the singers is saying that her mother always told her to be careful of guys because love is like playing with fire. Her mother was right because whenever she sees him her heart gets hot. She can’t stop trembling and wants to throw her everything into his world. She tells him to look at her now because he is making her fawn over him like this. She can’t turn it off, their love that’s like playing with fire.
The rap portion says that she has come too far and that none of this is a game anymore. She says love is like a red fire and tells the wind to blow to make it bigger. She asks if this is medicine or poison and says her mother also doesn’t know. She says a robber is in her heart and asks why the police do not know either. She tells him to pour oil to make her burning heart bigger. The color of her heart is black.
The final part of the song says that she can’t control it. The fire is moving too quickly. Do not stop her so that this love can burn tonight.
In this artifact, I discussed what my family members are like. I described the personalities of my mom as tender and caring and always concerned about whether someone had eaten. My sister on the hand is headstrong and has a strong personality unlike my mom. I also discussed how my mom is a daycare provider and how she takes care of children for a living. I described my brother as a slacker when it comes to school and how he is a student at George Mason University unlike my sister who is very punctual about time and money.
In this artifact, we discussed the different provinces about Pakistan and we also discussed what I already know. For example, we discussed the weather, the geography, the population of Baluchistan. We discussed how Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is the most dangerous area in Pakistan because the border is surrounded by Talibans and attacks are very common in that area. We also discussed how Sindh is the area that is one of the more affluent areas in Pakistan with bigger cities. Punjab is one of the biggest and progressive provinces in Pakistan. Punjab for this reason is considered to be the area where income is highest. We also discussed which places are safer to travel and where Zaka has traveled for vacations with his family
My task for this week was to be able to follow instructions regarding a certain topic in Korean. My goal for this task was to follow the steps described in a Korean makeup tutorial and replicate the end product. I ended up picking a style from Pony Makeup. I was able to assess this task by how accurately I was able to replicate the look and counting how many steps I was able to understand before the step was demonstrated.
