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After I had given my language learning presentation and heard details on other students' learning goals I was able to formulate specific goals. Although I have attempted to learn other languages such as French, Italian, and Japanese, I did not quite have any specific goals and lost motivation after 2 months. To avoid losing motivation and interest in my language-learning journey I have incorporated diverse methods to learning a language. 

In February, my goal is to have mastered Korean vowels and to know how to write the characters. I have already mastered the alphabet and I can spell basic words in Korean. In the second week of February, my goal is to know how to place vowels and letters to form advanced Vocabulary. I am currently learning basic greetings and also I practice vocabulary and spelling when I meet with my language partner. I am not too concerned about my pronunciation. I know it’s not perfect, but I will continue to practice.

A textbook I found helpful is one introduced to me by Gajin Korean Talk in Korean which I find helpful because of the different levels and lessons in each book. I plan to practice with the book for at least 1 hour each week. I also find it helpful to multitask by listening to  Korean lessons and music while working out. Another goal I have is to learn/memorize at least 20 new vocabulary words each week. After learning Korean for two weeks I am motivated to continue learning more. I know I have a long way to go, but I am eager to master the basic foundation in Korean to advance in Korean lessons.

Currently, this semester is not as busy because I am only taking 4.5 credits and 1.5 are allocated to self-directed language learning. Because I have more time I can allocate more time to practicing Korean and meeting with Gaijin, my language partner. My first experience hearing Korean was at my job. My employers were Korean. They spoke it often and I was very curious and wanted to understand what they were saying. However,  I started learning the Korean alphabet on Duolingo and quit after a week. Later I interacted with a Korean video and clip which led me to watch my first Kdrama Business proposal. I watched one Kdrama after another. I was fascinated by Korean Music food and fashion. I decided that I wanted to Study abroad in Korea at some point, but I also wanted to be able to immerse myself in people by being able to communicate with them in their native language. After reviewing my classmate’s learning plan I decided to make my plan more specific and attainable. 

I organized my language learning plan by first trying to figure out exactly what I want to learn considering I will be visiting South Korea over the summer. Therefore I wanted to learn how to get around by walking around by myself. The first step I took in order to learn Korean was to learn the Korean alphabet. The past few sessions, we have gone over the different characters and recently learned the double consonants. I have been reviewing them whenever I have time to make sure I do not forget them.

My language learning partner, Gajin, had also found various beginner grammar books which have proven to be super useful during our sessions. The first is the Basic Hangul Learning for Foreigners. I use this book to practice and revise my hangul. The second book that has proven to be useful is the Yonsei Korean 1-1. In this book, there are sections with different topics that I luckily wanted to learn which happens to be my second part of my language journey. The first section was how to introduce myself and learn various greetings. Gajin explained to me how walking into a store or greeting someone you are not familiar with, it is important to bow. She explains that it is a polite way of greeting and showing respect to the other person. Not only is learning the language important, but we also have to take into consideration that we need to learn the cultural context too as seen with greeting with a bow.

Alongside the nonverbal communication, she taught various phrases such as hello, my name is Denisse. I learned the formal version of hello, sorry, excuse me, thank you, and goodbye. This will be super useful to know if I happen to go to a restaurant or a store by myself and need to speak to the workers. She also proceeded to teach me how certain endings in a word can turn it from being polite to being informal. That was another cultural context I learned. There are different ways to talk to a stranger and to a friend that I need to make sure to take into consideration so I do not offend anybody. 

I recently also started to use these simple everyday phrases to text my korean roommate in order to practice and retain certain phrases. She was shocked that we were able to have a short conversation in korean. I also began to use the phrases Gajin taught to do small talk in Korean. For example, I learned how to say “where are you going?” I use this phrase whenever my roommate leaves the room. Another fun word I learned was sure, so whenever my roommate asks me to do something I would always 그래. I feel that I am learning a lot and cannot wait to put all this to use when I leave for Seoul over the summer.

I think that the readings engage with interesting ideas about general cultural attitudes. They can reveal different ways that seemingly evident things like time are seen by different groups around the world. This made me think about the conversation we had in class about how language effects the meaning of important concepts. Maps like the one on Hofstede's website show us the diversity in thought around the world and challenge our own conceptions of time, community, gender identity, and other things.

There are certainly some weaknesses with the model, however. These nationwide surveys cannot capture the differences between individuals, impacted by their own personal experiences. Relying too heavily on these findings ignores the complexity of culture on a societal and individual level. In multiethnic countries it is also less useful. Central Asia and China appear as different colors in all of the maps on Hofstede's website but the Turkic populations in the east of the country most likely share a lot more in common with the Turkic groups of the Central Asian region than with the Han Chinese in the Eastern half of the country. This difference is something that can't be picked up by the survey. 

It could help me in my language learning journey because it illustrates some of the quirks within the language. For example, the power distance in Mexico is much higher than in the United States. This is reflected in the culture by the use of usted, which, I believe, is far more common and expected in Mexico than in other Spanish speaking countries. Power distance also tends to be high in Indonesia and the rest of East/Southeast Asia, where it is common to use different pronouns to show respect to 'superiors.' This is something that I should keep in mind while speaking the language, to make the transition as smooth as possible.

In addition to posting your learning plan to the Ning, provide brief commentary describing how you have organized your self-directed learning plan. What have you learned so far? Have you identified resources and textbooks to promote your task-based objectives? How will your studies allow you to investigate your target language and culture more deeply? What first prompted your interest, and motivated you to start learning? What feedback have you received from your classmates? 

So my learning plan was organized around what exposed and interested me in South Korea. I began with League of Legends and the LCK specifically because gaming was what made me aware of Korean as I played Starcraft 2 and watched the professional games from a very young age. So nowadays as League of Legends is very popular in Korea I found that engaging with what I am passionate about would resonate with me. Music and film followed as I met a lot of Korean students at Richmond, and what keeps me invested is my friends in Korea and my desire to be able to communicate with them in their native language. So far I have only learned the basics. I like to say I can impress elderly Koreans, but I am lost in full conversations. For concrete and more academic resources I am utilizing my Yonsei Korean textbooks to review and practice. I want to gain a mastery of this level one material that I used to learn just enough to pass exams, but now I can gloss over things and take the time to properly pronounce and use the vocabulary I am learning. On top of this I have been using Korean streams for League of Legends games, as well as duolingo. I find that during my Kakao conversations with my friends I have found that google translate is my best friend, but I try to always use it for one word at a time and construct things on my own. Eitan and I have discussed how we need to speak to each other more often in Korean. Even if we are only exchanging simple phrases because it gets us used to the sounds and further familiarity with the basics of conversation so they will feel natural when we are watching Korean media and chatting with people in Korean.

Summarize some of the main ideas behind Figuring Foreigners Out and the Hofstede Dimensions of Culture. Do you predominantly agree with these assessments? Are there any statements, generalizations, and opinions expressed in the reading that you find problematic? How do these ideas relate both to your own native culture, and the target culture associated with the language you are studying?

I liked how the reading broke down things into four categories of understanding. I feel like I am too used to seeing only individualist versus collectivist comparisons that often erase other differences like the ones mentioned in the article: indirect vs. direct, internal vs. external, and monochronic vs. polychronic. However, I still take issue with the generalizing notion that these discussions promote other cultures because they are just an aggregate on a population and most people will not fall into the average values or temperament that we expect from their culture. Especially because inside of these “collectivist” cultures they have their own unique terms and subcultures for individuals who express their culture differently. Promoting analysis of these well defined boxes may give foreigners the wrong impression of a culture, and promote ignorance when they travel and engage with the subject culture. 

Despite this I clearly understand that we need to generalize and categorize when researching and interpreting cultures and they have a lot of useful information. I thought that the monochronic and polychronic distinction was particularly interesting and valuable because it doesn’t encourage any understanding of individuals in a culture as a certain way, but does prompt analysis and reflection on your own sense of time. Particularly I thought that the US and Korea do have monochronic understandings despite having more general differences on the other three categories. But I would argue that France is a much more polychronic culture as they have a different relationship with working hours than either the US or Korea. Hofstede does acknowledge that it is a spectrum, and this acknowledgment is key in my opinion to making more responsible generalizations about a culture. 

For my learning plan in Portuguese I will be focusing on gaining a level of proficiency in speaking and listening, with the ultimate goal of reaching A2 by the end of the semester/summer. Since I am learning Portuguese from Spanish, it is these two parts of the language process which will be the hardest for me due to the differences in pronunciation. 

To accomplish this I will first focus on acquiring basic vocabulary by using various online resources, my Spanish-to-Portuguese textbook, and reading some elementary texts in Portuguese. This will give me the base to become more conversational without simply reverting to speaking in Spanish (which is a problem since probably 50%> of the words are essentially the exact same). 

Once I have accomplished this, hopefully around the beginning of March I will be able to hold basic conversations with language partners and begin focusing more on correctly pronouncing words and some other unique aspects of Portuguese. I will try to incorporate TV shows in Portuguese into my study, to keep myself in a Portuguese language environment and hear people speak the language, outside of my meetings with online language partners. I will also be working with fellow students taking Portuguese at Richmond and consult them on what resources they are using, so that I can update my learning plan as the process continues.

Main Objectives:

• To be proficient in Korean up to a level where I can have a basic conversation with a Korean speaker at a semi-fluent pace.

• To be able to understand Korean so I will not be completely lost at watching Korean media without any subtitles.

Topics of Korean Language:

• Vocabulary
  • Day-to-day
  • Sports
  • Business
  • "Slang"

• Grammar
  • Complex sentences ("but…", "however…", "nevertheless…")
  • Formal speech
  • Sentences with more than one verb ("I think eating here is a better option")

Resources to use

• Korean Sports Broadcasting (Preferably Live)
• Korean shows and movies
• Language exchange platforms
• Acquaintances that know Korean (1-on-1 conversations)

My goal is to develop my Korean skills as much as possible by the end of the course to become a tutor one day. I want to learn about difficulties in language learning to define in which way I should approach my learning this month. From next month, I want to learn the relationship between language and culture to better understand the deep meaning inside the phrases and words. I would like to finalize my learning by learning slang and idioms, which native people utilize in their daily lives. I organized this learning plan based on my experiences in learning different languages (Spanish and Japanese). So far, I have learned that depending on language, there are different difficulties I will face. I identified resources I can utilize to practice the language, such as Duolingo, but I have not found textbooks yet. My study will allow me to investigate my target language and culture more deeply as I will be learning step by step slowly. Other tutors promoted my interest like those upperclassmen tutoring other students in their languages. I did not receive any in-depth feedback from my classmates yet, but they said it matches my overall goal.

For this month, I have been scheduling with Isaac and making plans on how to advance my Korean. Because my Korean is at an advanced level, it is becoming harder to grasp what areas I should focus on. The most helpful practices that helped me improve last semester were reading Korean articles and watching YouTube videos. I am planning on getting into Korean webtoons which is a quick but effective way to learn Korean on a daily basis. I have also started the show called Singles Inferno which is a couple matchmaking show streaming on Netflix. The main objective of watching this show is to compare the cultural differences from American dating shows like the Bachelors. Through the way the couples interact with each other, we are able to see what cultural awareness they have when interacting with one another. 

In terms of meeting with my partner Isaac, we have planned to meet once a week to go over some of the articles and have a discussion on the shows and videos I was assigned for the week. Additionally, we are planning on gathering with my partners to have Korean cooking sessions. The main source of instruction for cooking is the YouTube channel I mentioned in one of my cultural posts, Baek Jong Won’s YouTube. A dish that we made is “Bossam” (보쌈) which is boiled pork belly, served with rice and kimchi. 

Another important part of my Korean learning journey is teaching my partnered students Korean. For this semester my students are Amy and Chasey. With Chasey, we are starting with the foundations of Korean. Helping Chasey learn the basics of Korean allows me to pinpoint specific details about Korean. One concept we recently discussed was the pronunciation of “ㄹ”. It is a very difficult pronunciation for English speakers because it is a combination of the sounds “l” and “r”. For Amy, I am providing her with business related articles that would advance her professional skills. This is helping my own language skills as I read these articles before assigning her with the resources. 

I am excited to deepen my Korean language skills throughout this semester. I will be reading other posts for more inspiration on what I could possibly add to my Korean learning schedule. I would also like to find more resources that are used to teach Korean in Korean schools. The textbook that I am using, provided by Yonsei University, has been very helpful and will continue to be used this semester.