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NOTE: As the title suggests, I have combined the two assignments of the reflection paper #2 for SDLC 105 and the learning journal #7 for SDLC 110 because both assignments focused on reflecting on the progress of my learning, while the reflection paper addressed a couple more specific ideas, which I will note in this blog post. 

SDLC 110: Learning Journal #7 and SDLC 105: Reflection Paper

For my learning plan, I have developed 8 goals that focused on all aspects of learning a new language, such as communication, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I purposely shaped my goals to address each of these 5 different areas, at least once. So far, I have accomplished about half of my goals (3-4, out of 8), which is a good sign of progress because we are almost halfway done with the semester. For the first half, I have mainly worked on learning vocabulary about topics that interested me, such as majors, careers, and family relationships. I wanted to develop communication skills first, so that I can learn how to have better and more flowing conversations with my family and friends.

For the second half of the semester, I will be focusing on developing my reading, writing, and listening skills for Korean. Some of my goals include writing a personal letter, reading a Korean article, and listening and understanding 2 minutes of Korean news. These goals are slightly more challenging than my first half of the semester goals because they continue to develop what I learned earlier and focuses on different aspects, other than just communicating. Since I know that these goals will be harder to accomplish, I will work even harder on these tasks, so that I can accomplish these goals appropriately.

Communicative competence can account for my struggles in learning Korean because I learned Korean initially from my family members, who were born in South Korea. Growing up in a Korean household can lead to learning some Korean words that may be different from what is commonly taught in educational settings. This can be a problem because what I know about Korean language can be different from what I learn and what other people are taught for this language. However, since I am aware of this difference, I can apply it to my life and acknowledge these differences, which is a way that I can improve my communicative competence.

Other ways that I can improve my communicative competence is by following the 4 elements that comprise of communicative competence: grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic, and strategic. Following and applying these four elements will allow me to become more familiar in my target language of Korean. For example, I must be aware of using discourse by knowing how to put things together, so that I can have a meaningful conversation with another native speaker. Also, it is important to understand sociolinguistic so that I know the context of the target language and the rules and norms of that language. This will lead to better communication and less chances of miscommunication with others who speak Korean.

Overall, I am proud of the progress I made so far with learning and developing my Korean skills. I have practiced what I learned in the first half of this semester through having conversations in Korean with my family and friends. My aunt in particular told me that she has really seen improvement in my Korean communication skills because I was able to have more flowing conversations in Korean. It was really encouraging to hear her mention that because that shows that I accomplished my goal for the first half of this semester, where I worked on my communication skills.

My progress up to today has just been average. I do not believe that my progress so far has been outstanding, as I don't feel I have been able to progress much in terms of my abilities in Portuguese. I have found that although I have been practicing a lot of vocabulary on duollingo, I have learned most of my Portuguese in my Capoiera class where we sing in Portuguese. This has caused me to be more familiar with more random phrases such as jogo de dentro jogo de fora. Which means play inside play outside. Phrases like these I do not believe will help me speak with others, however, these phrases have helped me understand where and how to use certain words. For example, from this jogo phrase I have been able to figure out that jogo bonita means the beautiful game. This phrase is often said about soccer in Portuguese commentary of soccer. 

It was very interesting to hear international students and other professors share their experiences with culture shock, in the Culture Shock video. The students were describing their first culture shock experience, which was when they first arrived on campus for college, which allowed me to compare and contrast my experiences to theirs. One student mentioned that they were very overwhelmed with orientation because they had to learn in a short period of time everything that people who lived in America learned over the course of their whole life. This provided a new way of visualizing things because as someone who is Korean, but born in the United States, I can definitely say that I felt comfortable with orientation because they just reinforced what I already knew, but I can see how that is different for someone who is new to the whole scene.

As a Korean individual, who grew up in the United States and not in South Korea, I did not experience culture shock by moving to another country. As a result, my first experience of culture shock was similar to the students in the video because it was when I moved to University of Richmond for my college experience. I’d like to admit that this move is not even a huge change because I am originally from northern Virginia (NOVA), which is only about 2 hours away. Although I cannot speak for everyone, I think the tiny details of culture shock that I experienced is how the people in Richmond are so much friendlier than those in NOVA. It may be because people are coming from all different states and countries, but I definitely realized that people tend to be nicer and more encouraging in Richmond. Although I have not experienced a huge culture shock, I think ways that we can cope with culture shock can include having a good community, joining clubs, and having opportunities to explore and not being stuck in the “UR bubble.”

My learning goal for week 6 was to continue developing my learning of the different fields of study/majors. In the previous week, I learned the different types of majors, such as Chemistry, Geography, and English. I wanted to learn about science-related majors especially because this is the type of field that I want to go in. I also wanted to link the majors I learned in week 5 to different types of careers, which is why this was my learning goal for week 6. Through this goal, I was able to learn different career paths, such as pharmacist, geographer, and dentist. I was also able to learn about careers that my family members are currently pursuing. I really wanted to learn about these types of careers too, so that I could have a better conversation with my family about how their career is going and how I can help. It was also cool to learn how to call my learning partner a proper title of “teacher” and/or “tutor.” I am now able to have conversations about different career paths, so I believe that I have accomplished this goal.

Although I am aware of what the greetings and farewells are in Korean, it was helpful to document this action through a recorded artifact because I was able to listen to it again. This helped me identify which words I struggled on and how to more smoothly integrate these ideas. I believe that I articulated the words carefully and slowly, which will allow me to improve my introductions and farewells in conversations with others.

I believe that I have met my learning goals pretty well because I learned about the variety of majors and how to match them to career paths. Although I mainly focused on learning about the topics that relates to me, such as Chemistry, I made sure to learn about the whole span of majors and career paths, so that I can have a flowing conversation with others. My meeting with my learning partner was very helpful because not only did we solidify the majors and careers, we also constructed ways that we can make sentences with these words and related topics. For example, I learned how to say “my major is chemistry” and to link it with “I am a second-year at the University of Richmond.” I was able to incorporate the latter sentence in my introduction section for my first artifact. It was helpful to practice these conversational skills because I can apply this to the actual conversations that I have with friends and family members.

I wanted to work on starting a conversation in Turkish. We started with greetings and farewells and learned a number of each for different situations. While I like learning a variety of greetings and farewells to have things to choose from, for now I will pick the most generic ones that will work in all cases and memorize those. In addition, we learned how to ask people's name and say "my name is". Introductions are important as they are the first step in relationship building.

In the Global Studio, there are lots of travel brochures and small books about Istanbul. I would use these books to help learn some of the travel terminology I would need to get around or to learn about the city so I could recognize things should I ever visit. There are also a few different audio lessons which would be useful but I'd need to find a CD player since my computer doesn't have a disk drive. Mango languages only has one course in Turkish and it is Turkish conversation. While this one video is very useful, it is the only resource I could find for Turkish on the site making it kind of useless after I've finished learning that lesson. BYKI has a good list of vocabulary, but does not focus on the construction of sentences or phrases. The Diigo group has mostly basics and a lot of repetitive information. I'm going to start with the alphabet song!

• Second Artifact:  Show that you can ask and answer questions about identity

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1vpeMq2bJXZ

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

My learning goals for the coming week are to be able to order food at a restaurant, coinciding with my preparation for my second language presentation. In order to achieve this goal I will need to learn about different Korean foods and what they are called, as well as basic dinner vocabulary such as asking about and ordering food. In addition, I want to learn more about Korean table etiquette and basic conversation. This includes phrases like thank you for the food, and I would like to order this dish. I have already learned the basics of introductions and farewells so I am hopeful that I will be able to cover the basics of restaurant terminology this week.

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

Learning to speak a language like Korean requires an understanding of the languages culture and customs, as you need to know not only how to say something, but when to say it, how formal it should be, and what actions you should take while saying it. As I mentioned in my previous post, when someone offers you something it is Korean custom to refuse it the first couple times. This is because when Korea was still developing, many people in Korea were very poor. The Korean people are very proud and they did not want people to think that they were accepting charity. If you were not aware of this custom and you initially accepted a gift people might understand that you are a foreigner and that you might not know this but they might think it is rude. Understanding Korean history and the history of its language can help you learn the customs and peculiarities of the language.

• 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?

I have really enjoyed learning Korean so far. The process of learning Korean has not been entirely what I expected it to be, but I feel like the more I learn of the language the more I am interested in learning more. I initially expected learning to read and write to be the most difficult task, and for speaking to be easier, but I have found the opposite to be true. The Korean alphabet is very simple and intuitive and I enjoyed learning it. On the other hand, speaking Korean has proven more challenging. In order to correctly use the Korean language you need to have a solid understanding of Korean culture. For example, Korea has a very strict age hierarchy and this changes the way you greet different people. Thus, if you want to learn how to greet people, or introduce yourself in Korean, you need to learn several different ways of saying each phrase, with varying degrees of formality. Sometimes this can be as simple as adding or removing a character or two at the end of the sentence but in many cases you need to learn an entirely new way of saying something. In addition, learning Korean requires not only the use of the Korean language, but an understanding of Korean non-verbal communication. Many aspects of communication in Korea are made not just with words, but with gestures and actions as well. For example, when you greet someone it is expected that you will bow to them, with varying degrees of depth based on their age, position, and class. Another example is that of giving or receiving an item, where it is respectful to hand the item to someone with two hands instead of one. Furthermore, there are many language customs that Koreans have that are not present in English. One example of this is that when someone offers you something it is customary to refuse their offer several times before accepting. This custom was created when Korea was still developing and people were very poor, because Koreans are a very proud people and they did not want others to think they were not strong and that they accepted charity. I think Korean culture is very interesting and I am glad that I am getting the chance to explore it in depth. In terms of improving my communicative competence, my long term goals involve developing my ability to listen to and interpret spoken Korean, as well as working on improving my pronunciation and the fluency of my spoken Korean. In order to achieve these goals I will continue to practice speaking Korean with my girlfriend and watching Korean television. My personal goal is to be able to watch an episode of a Korean drama without English subtitles and to be able to understand the general plot of the episode.

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

My family traveled a lot while I was growing up so I thought I had become pretty comfortable with being in new places and experiencing different cultures. However, all of my trips as a child were with my family and I always had my Mom to turn to if anything happened or my brother to keep me company. This all changed when I decided to take a summer course in China when I was 15. Unfortunately I was placed in the wrong program and I ended up spending a month living alone in an apartment in ShangHai, enrolled in a class where the next youngest person was twenty years older than me. I had never traveled alone before and I felt very isolated living alone and without anyone I knew. I'm not sure if it was a combination of jet lag and pollution but the first day I got there I passed out for a second in a mall while I was getting supplies. Once I started to get used to the area and living abroad things started to get better but I don't think I overcame culture shock during that month. I think if I could do it again I would try to enroll in a program with people my own age and potentially go with a friend. Visiting Korea with my girlfriend was a very different experience and I didn't really feel any culture shock. I think its important to have people and things that make you feel at home when you are in a place that feels very foreign.

I have noticed an interesting trend in Ukrainian political music so far. The songs that are being produced and sung are not all in Ukrainian, which is what I would have anticipated, seeing as these songs are overwhelmingly patriotic in nature. I have found patriotic Ukrainian songs sung in English and Russian (in addition to Ukrainian), which at first struck me as odd, but after remembering that Ukraine is a multi-lingual nation with reasons to publish their political songs in languages other than Ukrainian, it made more sense. One of the songs that I found in Russian is called Вставай (Stand up), and not only is the message overwhelmingly patriotic, the music video evokes traditional images of Cossacks and Ukrainian peasants. The song is about the struggle between Ukraine and Russia for Ukrainian sovereignty, and the music video begins sometime in the past in a peasant village. A group of Russian soldiers ride into the village on horseback and terrorize the village, killing young children, implying rape of women, and burning down the entire village in the process. A traditional Ukrainian Cossack comes to the rescue, but is unable to save the entire village. The final scenes of the video take us into present day Ukraine, with the lead Russian soldier from the village (dressed in present day clothes) versus the Cossack (still in Cossack attire). The two fight in the streets, and the Cossack is able to kill the Russian, but ends up dying from a stab wound. A young boy passing by picks up the Cossack's sword, which has a message of "stand up, fight" printed on it. 

Obviously, this is a very strong propaganda song for Ukrainians, as it shows Russians as long time antagonists to Ukrainian sovereignty and way of life. The fact that this very Ukrainian song was sung in Russian was confusing to me at first, but I think it was done purposefully to reach some of the Russian speaking population in Eastern Ukraine, where the fighting is the most intense. 

Vocaroo_s1hvsh6ExNw1.mp3

I really liked how the Culture Shock video talked about culture shock on the U of R campus because it made me feel like I could categorize my experience here. I've definitely experienced culture shock when I studied abroad in Spain, but I knew that would happen and I was prepared to be challenged on everyday things. When I came to Richmond, VA from Bellevue, WA, I didn't think there would be much of a difference. Besides, on a college campus with a population of people my own age, how different could things be? I think for me what was so hard about coming to Richmond was that A) it was really different in subtle ways from home and I wasn't prepared for that and B) it seemed like everyone else knew what was going on or was on the same page except me. 

I really enjoyed all of the cultural presentations done by my classmates! I thought it was really interesting to see which aspects of the target culture people chose to focus on and how that reflected their own interest in learning the language. One of my favorite presentations was about the practice of wearing beanies in the Czech Republic. What I liked most about this presentation was that it showed an aspect of Czech culture that you could only learn by living there. I am really interested in little cultural peculiarities like this because I think they show a deeper understanding of culture rather than just knowledge of a cultural practice. 

Artifact%20%231%20%28Greetings%2C%20Farewells%2C%20and%20Introductions%29.mp3

Angella (Boram) Lee's Artifact #1

Greetings, Farewells, and Introduction

2/25/17

Translation :)

Hello! My name is Boram. I am 20 years old. I am a second-year at the University of Richmond. I like to dance and hang out with my friends. Good-bye!

**Side note: Boram is my Korean name :) 

Artifact%202--%20111%20Brad%20Fischer.m4a

In this artifact, I had a conversation with my learning partner, Thalia. In our interview, we covered the material I am currently learning. I talked about the names of the rooms in my house and other places on the property like the pool, the locations of the rooms in my house using direction, as well as talking about my dogs and where they like to play in my house. 

I thought that a) my pronunciation of the words was good (You can listen to Thalia's pronunciation vis-a-vis mine.) Likewise, I thought my b) accent was decent, if a little bit too strong. And my c) vocabulary is increasingly building and becoming more advance.

In all, I am pleased with my progress.  

• 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 think that I made a lot of progress since the time I started studying Korean. I am more knowledgeable about the different forms to speak to someone: formal and informal. Furthermore, I have cut down on my habit of using slang that only my family understood when I speak to others. I have been better at understanding Korean when I listen to Korean music, watch dramas, and when I talk with my mom.

I think my learning plans and activities are effective. Through my learning plan, I utilize my strongest learning methods: listening and writing. I listen to short video clips and songs every week. Then I use my writing skills to summarize and respond back to what I listened to. I also have phone calls twice a week with my mom where I speak to her as much as I can in Korean. I plan to make one change to my learning plan. I originally planned to buy a Korean translated chapter book every month and finish it. However, I realize now that my skills are not at that level. Therefore, I’ve changed my plan to reading a children’s book instead. I chose to read The Giving Tree, and so far it is more difficult that I thought it would be. I plan to focus solely on this one book, and I hope to build up my ability to read fluently and understand the vocabulary through rereading this book.

Complete Reflection Paper #2 (500 words) and Post to Your Blog in the Ning

• 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?

I think that my language learning has improved since the beginning of the semester. I have been tailoring my learning plan to utilize my most dominant learning skills, such as listening and writing. I have mostly been listening to Korean songs and watching short Korean news clips on SCOLA. I have also been responding to and summarizing everything that I listen to in a journal. Furthermore, I watch Korean dramas to develop my ability to understand normal conversations.Though speaking in Korean is not one of my strong suits, I’ve been trying to develop my speech through speaking with my mom solely in Korean in our biweekly phone calls.

Learning Korean has opened my eyes more to the culture of Korea. I have become more aware of the hierarchy of age. If an individual is older than oneself, the individual must be spoken to in formal speech and treated respectfully through various body gestures. If an individual is younger than oneself, then it is alright to speak informally to the individual and there are no necessary body gestures. Learning about this hierarchy opens my eyes to my previous interactions with older adults and the treatment I received from them due to not knowing how to speak formally to them. I specifically remember one moment when I was in elementary school when I wished my grandpa happy birthday. During a family party, I walked up to him and informally told him “happy birthday” in Korean. He pretended to not hear me, and I remember saying it over and over again. Each time, he did not look at me and seemed to be in a foul mood. In retrospect, I realize now that since I was not speaking to him formally, he refused to acknowledge me. Korean is a different social system than that of which I am used to, so I automatically have the tendency to view this treatment as rude and inconsiderate. In the United States, we do not have a formal and informal speech system. Therefore, with that western cultural background, I admit that I do not like the system of hierarchy of age off the bat. As someone coming from a Western perspective to learn Korean, I am being more and more exposed to social traditions that are different from the ones I am used to in America. However, despite the cultural differences, learning Korean is teaching me how to navigate myself in situations where I need to speak formally. It helps me understand the social behavior necessary to thrive in a Korean environment. As a Korean-American, I realize that learning Korean helps me understand where my two countries clash culturally.

In order to improve my communicative competence, I think that I just need time and practice. I am familiar with Korean, but I think that I just need more practice to better speak and listen in the language. I don’t expect to sound like a native speaker by the time I finish this course. However, I would like to be more well-versed in my ability to recognize the situations I need to use formal/informal speech. Though it’s a difficult concept for me to accept, the hierarchy of age is something that I am trying my best to understand.