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My reading in Farsi is still very minimal; so, reading is quite difficult for me. However, the reading I have been doing is often of simple sentences. Moreover, I repeat my readings of the sentences so I can understand them better. Reading in Farsi has shown me how much I still would have to learn in terms of reading, but also has opened me to how I best understand reading in another language--this is mainly due to Farsi's script. 

It is hard for me to quantify exactly how many words I have learned throughout the course of the semester; however, I have learned many words, in comparison to my previous knowledge of Farsi coming into the course. I have not place any set amount of words I want to learn. Some days I learn a few new words, and sometimes I learn the same amount in a week. In terms of setting realistic goals, I have not tried to overextend myself in learning Farsi. I realize that it is quite to difficult to self-learn a language while taking other college courses, so I feel my learning goals are realistic--and being met.  

My first year seminar is focusing on a specific issue in a foreign country. I suggested to my group that we present the prevalence of reconstructive plastic surgery in Korean society today. We specifically are targeting eyelid surgery, which is a huge part of society. South Korean youth has a fixation on popstars in a different way than most Americans - although we may emulate or admire a part of a celebrity, we don't usually want to change everything about ourselves to look like them or act like them. Very rarely does one hear about real obsessions that would cause someone to permanently and surgically change their own appearance with the specific goal of looking like one of the celebrities that we see in tabloids and in music videos. However, in Korea, the industry for Korean pop, or, kpop, is huge. It is not just a type of music, but a lifestyle. And Korean youth - males and females alike - are embracing it to a whole new extent. 

One out of four Korean women have had reconstructive surgery of some sort, and most likely is blepheroplasty, or, eyelid reconstructive surgery. Koreans seek to westernize their look, which means changing their monolid to a double lid. Korean popstars and celebrities are not immune to this fixation - they get the surgery, which is relatively inexpensive due to its popularity, and in turn, the youth that are obsessed with them, undergo the procedure. 

Contrary to Korean belief, I maintain that beauty is skin-deep, and cosmetic surgery is by and large, a way of concealing it. Surgery to look like someone else can have devastating repercussions on one's self-esteem. It cuts away at individuality and is easily the beginning of further experiences with cosmetic surgery. I do not support this vicious cycle, and I am appalled at the prevalence of surgery as an option for children as young as middle school. However, I do recognize that it is a part of the culture and their perception of beauty is different than Americans'. I only hope that it will not have destructive effects on my generation in the future. 

My artifact from last week was an interesting process. You may not be able to tell, but I went through several rehearsals and at least 3 different versions until I deemed it acceptable for public scrutiny. It was very odd listening and watching myself speak, especially in a different language that I'm not accustomed to speaking in, but it was interesting to see how much of a different experience it was making an artifact in Korean rather than English, my first language. 

The aspects I decided to touch on were basic conversation topics and points that would be comfortable to have with a peer in a relaxed setting. It seemed to be a good way to start my documentation and I will have more to build on. I went through the basics such as my name, interests, favorites, and then talked about the weather and time. 

I hope that this week I will learn to polish my speaking skills when I am speaking colloquially, which I seem to have a harder time with. I am more accustomed to speaking formally in Korean because the only time I really speak in Korean is to adults such as my parents and grandparents, and rarely do I speak to someone who informal speech would be appropriate with. I am also going to work on deciphering a Korean song with my language partner in order to work on this skill. 

Next week, I hope to be able to watch a Korean drama and try and pick up on culture and social cues, as well as work on language and conversation. Ultimately, I hope to be able to watch an episode and understand most of what is being exchanged. I am also interested in learning about social issues in Korea, as I have just written a paper about North Korea and was exposed to come current events. I'd like to try reading a Korean website and see how much I can understand, and learn vocabulary that would be necessary to be able to do so. 

After trying to do some reading in Kannada,I have found that I am quite incapable of distinguishing between letters and words. I can only see that the script has spaces in it! But when Aarti reads it to me, I can recognize important words like she/he or "I am" and "they are." While I am still in the beginning stages, it is nice to be able to listen and divine some choice words from a completely foreign text.  Thus far we have learned 54-55 words, which fit into set phrases, or can be used to make sentences based on our surroundings.  Realistically, I hope to learn many more, and to sing a song in Kannada by the end of the semester.

Bethany and I:

• met with Aarti and learned more structured sentences and conjugating certain useful verbs such as "I am" "she is", "they come."
• read a short autobiography of a woman from India involving cultural and life differences
• continued to practice our greetings and phrases outside of class time

It was interesting this week working with Aarti, because as we were pronouncing words, I kept mispronouncing the "t" - I was making it hard like "top" whereas it should sometimes be soft like "the." After researching the Kannada alphabet, it struck me that Kannada has several versions of "b" and "t" and "l" which English does not have:

There is a huge difference between "lu" where you move your tongue against your teeth, and "lu" when you mov eit against the roof of your mouth.  There is also one word that is quite important (very) - "bhal" which should NOT be pronounced "ball" but rather like you are saying "pa" with a "bha" - "bh-al." These minor differences are important, as one could be saying entirely different words! 

One final interesting moment in learning was when I learned the phrase for "I have 2 daughters." Indians wouldnt say "have" - they use the verb "to be." So it ends up being - "For me, two daughters are." I thought in light of the communal culture, it was so interesting that in speech, one would include one's daughters with oneself. Americans would never say - "in regards to me, my daughters are...." - it would be much more individual in terms of seeing the world. This statement says something about the importance of family in Karnataka.

During Week 3, Bethany and I:

• Met Aarti for 2 hours and discussed greetings (both with and without respect), practiced forming sentences with words we knew, and learned vocabulary relating to family.
• Practiced certain phrases by saying them to our friends and each other (for example - "Neevu channda adeeree" - "You are beautiful.") until they felt natural to say.
• Learned about differences between individualistic and communal cultures, and how such practices as greeting with warmth and initiating conversations would be different in India than in America.
• Finished the first section of our learning plan.

I really enjoyed this reading - Figuring Foreigners Out.  After reading about the section on Individualist-Collectivist, I was completing a cross-cultural training, where they had us pretend to have either individualist or communal norms and greet each other. My group had the norms of - not initiating conversation, keeping a personal distance with strangers but being open with family and community, and keeping conversation formal. When the members of the other group came over and shook our hands roughly and stared me down saying hello - I felt uncomfortable for the first time in my life with hearty greetings. I even recoiled when someone tried to hug me in greeting. That wasn't allowed - it was uncomfortable - it was strange to my norms. This exercise cemented the idea of Figuring Foreigners Out for me, because people from other cultures will have different ways of life than I do. For example, their nonverbal head shakes back and forth do not necessarily mean yes. Their silence and distance in greeting does not mean they do not wish to interact with me. If they show up late (or early) it could be that their culture dictates a different usage of time. If an individual will not speak to me, perhaps there is a bonafide cultural reason such as power distance (direct and indirect communication being a factor). Keeping these differences in mind, I learned to not act on my first impulse in new cultural situations, but take my time to observe and understand and consider my interpersonal actions.

Here is my first Hindi artifact!  It is a video of my language partner and I having a formal introduction/greeting conversation, and then an informal introductory conversation.  I also wrote out most of what we said in Hindi, which you will see in the pictures of the written out dialogue.  We did not refer to the written out dialogue while recording the video, so I made a few mistakes that I corrected while speaking.

:)

During this past week, I did the following activities:

• Created a script/dialogue for my first artifact based on a conversation between two people greeting each other, introducing themselves, and then saying farewell.  I wrote the dialogue in Hindi script, and my Language Partner and I are recording it tomorrow -- I will then upload it to the Ning.  [Approximately 8 sentences]
• Listened to 3 dialogues from "Jab We Met" (Hindi movie) and tried to recognize certain words -- this was very helpful based on the similarity of many words to Punjabi.
• I learned the singular --> plural transition of masculine/feminine nouns in Hindi and did grammar drills about this topic (singular/plurals of masculine and feminine nouns) from the book "Introduction to Hindi Grammar" (Usha Jain)
• I read and listened to the dialogues in Hindi in TYH (Teach Yourself Hindi) -- introduction to asking someone about their family and introducing someone else.
  

As my first artifact I thought it was appropriate to begin with a short video recording of me speaking Swedish. In this video I introduce myself and answer the most common of questions: Why do you want to study Swedish? I am also hopeful that looking back this video at the end of the semester will allow me to hear a clearer difference in my Swedish.

So now here it is: https://voicethread.com/share/2710987/

This week I have begun one of my largest projects for the semester and that is to complete the reading of a classic Swedish novel called "Ondskan" or "Evil" by Jan Guillou. This is a classic in Swedish literature and has had a very social and political significance in the Swedish education system. It is the story about a teenager with 'behavioral issues' and history of violence at home and gang violence in school, who is sent to a boarding school as a last chance to 'recuperate' and continue his studies. The novel then reveals a system of student bullying and hierarchy that proves to be as violent, or worse, than his previous experiences. Interestingly enough, this novel was based on a true story, and when information was leaked about the boarding school system, many boarding school were forced to shut down and reform. In terms of my Swedish it has been very interesting to read my first novel, and even though there are many words I do not understand I continue reading and later go back to define new words. I am starting to collect a list of words that I hope to utilize more comfortably as I progress with the novel and begin writing abstracts and summarizing the plot to my language partner.

הנה הרשימה של המילים שלמדתי עד עכשיו

האומות המאוחדות

לסייע

הלבנת

אסד

מורדים

משגשגת

נטע

חאלב

לערוק

עלוואי

כאן המילים שהם קיצורים שלמדתי

בית״ר

לח״י

ביל״ו

סכו״ם

שו״ת

מוײם

מזכײלֹ

הספר שקראתי נקרא רחמים

בנתיים למדתי על המצב הכלכלי של 

זאת שנמצאת בבית החולים

הרבה מהכתבות שאני קוראת בעיתון הארץ הן על המצב הפוליטי בסוריה ומזרח התיכון

This week I accomplished:

* Reading two chapters in my Hebrew novel

* Extending my vocabulary list

* Reading a daily article on Haaretz.co.il

* Writing a summary in Hebrew for my first artifact

* Discussing body language in Israel in Hebrew with my family

Goals for the next two weeks: 

* Read 4 chapters in my Hebrew novel

* Write a paragraph summary of each chapter

* Go through the chapters I've read and define words that I am not familiar with

* Create sentences with the vocabulary I have outlined from weeks #1-4

* Write a page in Hebrew about the current political situation in Israel, both domestically and in international affairs.

Unlike in English there is a definite formality to Kannada. There are two forms of verbs. One denotes respect and the other is for peers or people who are below you in age and or social standing. For example "Nim heseru yenew?" and "Nin heseru yenew?" Both are asking "What is your name?" but the "your" is different based on respect for the person or their position. "Nim" is the respectful while "Nin" is not. In almost every sentence the noun or the verb denotes a person's level. Fore example if I met someone new, even if they were my age, I would use "Nim" if I really wanted to be respectful, but I could use "Nin" after that because it would be awkward if I was that formal with people my age. But with an adult or someone in authority I would always use "Nim" no matter how well I knew them. 

Kannada is found in a written form that looks similar to Hindi. It is however not commonly used. Kannada is a language that is more often spoken than written as Hindi and English are the preferred written languages of Karnataka. Here is an example of written Kannada. 

http://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/JPN-kannada.html

Because the language is not often used in a written form. I'm not going to learn how to write it, but rather focus on speaking =) 

I've attached the learning plan that Dr. S and I reviewed.  The learning plan includes my goals and methods (activities)  SimrunBal_SDLAP_LearningPlan1.pdf.

UPDATE:

I forgot to record my goals for weeks 4 and 5, but I had them written originally in my Hindi notebook.  Here they are:

Week 4: 

• Finalize understanding of greetings by writing out a sample script
• Listen to a dialogue from a Hindi movie (suggested tip from MLC 105) to improve listening comprehension and see how many words (or what type of words) I can understand
• Grammar:
• • Understand differences between marked and unmarked masculine and feminine nouns and how to go from singular --> plural for both marked and unmarked.
  • Conjugations of "hona" (to be)
• Reading:  Read Ch.2 dialogue inTeach Yourself Hindiabout introductions

Week 5:

• Talking about myself using present tense with Present Imperfect Tense and Present Progressive tense (taught with Lesson 4 in A Door Into Hindi)
• Learn question words (interrogatives)
• Create a writing sample of some sort that will utilize the words about family that I learned
• Start learning Post-Positions (tricky)
• Listening:
• • A Door Into Hindi, Lesson 5 (dialogue)
  • Hindi song
    

In terms of the nonverbal aspects of Hindi, I think it is important to look at body language, how people approach time, and the sense of patience within the language.  In terms of body language, the "head nod" is very confusing -- it can mean yes, no, or even maybe!  It is more of a head waver, rather than an actual nod, but sometimes people mistakenly think that the person doing the nod is responding in the affirmative...when actually he could mean yes or no.  Additionally, I perceive body language for men to be different than body language for women.  In Indian, men can hold hands with other men without it being a big deal or without it producing preconceptions about one's gender.  But displays of affection between men and women are definitely discouraged.  With regard to eye contact, in some areas of rural India or in the mountainous regions, continued eye contact between a male and female can be perceived as flirting, even if it was not meant this way.   Another key aspect of body language is the "hands together" part of greeting someone.  When you meet someone, you say "Namaste" in Hindi and clasp your hands together.  Shaking hands is not really frequent there.

With regard to telling time, people usually use three common phrases: half past, quarter till, or quarter after [a certain time].  Interestingly, if you want to say a time like 5:20 or a non-common increment, you say the Hindi equivalent of "After having struck 5 pm, 20 minutes happened."  The key word is "happened" - "ho gaye." 

Since I am not taking MLC 110, I am going through a slightly different process of language learning.  My competency in Portuguese is fairly high right now, but since I am not using the language on a regular basis I fear that I might slowly forget it.  As the saying goes – if you don’t use it, you lose it.   

As such, I plan to set goals that enable me to maintain my reading comprehension and writing abilities, and to improve my speaking abilities.  Luckily, I am taking a Portuguese for Spanish Speakers (LAIS 313) course right now which essentially keeps me on a consistent track.  In place of a long specific learning plan right now, I will list some general goals I have.  While these goals are broad in nature, they are helpful in providing me a sense of the direction I want take.

I would like to be able to:

• navigate between the past, present, and future tenses with relative ease.
• learn 10 new vocabulary words a week.
• learn at least 3 new songs in Portuguese.

For now, I am going to focus a great deal of my language learning on reading skills. Reading in the target language seems to be one of the quickest and best ways to learn new vocabulary and improve comprehension.  Thus, using this strategy will make my goals more realistic and attainable.  

In contemplating the cultural dimensions of learning a language, it was interesting and helpful to read Figuring Foreigners Out.  The reading focused on the differences (spanning diverse cultures) that relate to how people consider aspects of "identity," such as nonverbal communication, personal space, touching, eye contact, and more.  After reading the article, I felt as though when you learn a language, you must not only consider the "linguistic" elements, like grammar, spelling, etc, but also the cultural aspects of where the language is spoken. 

For me, the idea of culture as a part of language learning was initially difficult to grasp when I was learning Punjabi.  As a child, my father would try to teach me the alphabet, phrases, etc, but I never really learned about Indian culture.  Although I was raised in a family with Indian heritage, we lived like a typical American family with regard to personal space, touching, eye contact, etc.  When I went to India for the first time, although I knew some Punjabi, it was so difficult for me to get used to being perceived to be Indian, but having American/Western body language and attitudes about touching, nonverbal communication, etc.  Sometimes, people in India assumed that I understood their nonverbal communication methods because I could communicate in Punjabi and appeared to be Indian.  But it was very difficult for me to get used to having less personal space and the differences in eye contact between people of different genders. 

Thus, in learning Hindi now, I'm focusing also on learning more about the gestures, eye contact, etc -- all aspects of Figuring Foreigners Out. My past experiences, as well as the reading, have illustrated to me how key it truly is not to neglect learning about the cultural dimensions of learning a language.