My goals for week 4 and 5 are to master the greetings and introductions. Introducing yourself and greeting someone are the first basic steps to any linguistic interaction and so by mastering these I can attain the necessasry initial knowledge to having a conversation in Turkish. Merhaba, Adim Costas, Adin ne?, and Gorusuruz are the basic key words with variants like Gule gule and hoscakal available for use if I wont to change the farewell part of the conversation. Obviously saying "Hello, My name is Costas,asking for the other person's name, and then saying goodbye" is not a natural conversation but it is an important beggining that I can build off of.
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I find it interesting that the Turkish alphabet utilizes the Latin alphabet. Normally, languages that utilize the Latin alphabet are Indo-European. But Turkish is a Turkic language that used to utilize a writing system that resembled more Persian or Arabic script. I know the change to the Latin alphabet occured under Kemal Ataturk in the early 20th century. I find it fascinating that letters in the Turkish alphabet sometimes are not sounded out anywhere near their European equivalent. For example the letter "C" makes the sound "J" in Turkish which from what I know is not found in any other languages that utilize the Latin alphabet. Of course I'm not a linguist so I could be wrong.
My learning goals for this week were to make sure I understood how to say and properly pronounce the words "Hello" and other basic words like "student" that we learned in class. The key will be memorizing these words. The pronunciation is sometimes difficult because of the differences between letter pronunciation in English and Turkish despite the fact that the two languages both utilize the Latin alphabet. Unfortunately DuoLingo has a certain group of words it exposes to begginers and most of the words I learned in class are not included in the DuoLingo group of words. Nevertheless, some practice and repetition should help me memorize the words or at least ost of them.
Presentation Summary
My cultural project was about tourism in Turkey. It was based on the background of the tourism in Turkey that how it became one of the top 10 tourism attraction in the world in 2014. Historical and cultural sites are famous to tourists and there are also health therapies that they can enjoy. I introduced two of the tourist attractions, which were Pamukkale and Oludeniz. Pamukkale means "cotton castle" and it is famous for its white terraces. People have bathed in its hot spring for thousands of years. Oludeniz is located in Mediterranean and is one of the top 5 beaches in the world. I also highlighted some concerns of tourism in Turkey since it is declining because of terrorism.
Sources
Feridun, Mete. "Impact of Terrorism on Tourism in Turkey: Empirical Evidence from Turkey." Applied Economics 43.24 (2011): 3349-354. Web.
Morris, Hugh. "Is Turkey Safe for Tourists and Can I Cancel My Holiday?" The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 18 Feb. 2016. Web. 22 Apr. 2017.
"Turkey Travel Warning". travel.state.gov. Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State. 3 September 2015.
U.S. Department of State. U.S. Department of State, 28 Mar. 2017. Web. 22 Apr. 2017.
Powerpoint Slides: Tourism_in_Turkey.pptx
I have bookmarked two great resources to help me reach my language goals in Turkish. First, I have saved the website DuoLingo which helps me work on basic words and sentences. The application allows me to not only read and type Turkish to answer questions, but it even has a speaking function where I can answer questions by speaaking the answer. The application then responds by stating whether the answer is correct and then says the answer with proper pronunciation which allows me to here how the words are meant to be sounded out.
The other online resource I bookmarked is a Youtube channel that has episodes of the Turkish show Ezel. The show has subtitles so I can understand what is happening, while picking up on pronunciation and proper speaking speed. Also I will be able to figure out more and more words as I learn the language through the class and various self-directed learning activities.
It has been a great semester in terms of my self-directed Korean learning experience. During the process, I developed better skills of self-learning, time management, study planning. This class is different from any other classes I’ve taken at UR because it requires me to make a study plan myself and design my learning goals. In that way, I have to take charge of making progress instead of others pushing me for progress. In this paper, I will first talk about the weekly daily routine and how it helped with my learning of Korean. Next, I will reflect on the problems I encountered and how I deal with them. Finally, I will talk about my learning result and what I can improve in the future.
Every week, I met with my language partner twice, and each session last fifty minutes. In addition to the learning sessions, we complete homework outside of class. I really enjoyed these classes. There are four beginners in our learning session. I felt more involved when learning with peers. Our language partner combined visual tools and traditional learning techniques. In addition, we practiced conversion with each other in every meeting. At the same of learning speaking and dialogues, we also learn the Korean alphabets. Combining the two elements laid a solid foundation for us beginners. Through the meetings, I was practicing my spoken Korean in a real room setting, which helped with my listening and pronunciation. The most fundamental material is, however, Korean alphabets. By mastering all the alphabets, we are able to pronounce all words in Korean. To help with the learning of Korean alphabets, we had competition almost every class to pronounce Korean words by combining the syllables. We also watched various videos. Some were k-pops that contained the words we learned that class, and some were learning videos to help with our understanding of grammar. Overall, all the techniques helped me with my listening, writing, speaking. Outside of class, I have been watch Youtube Videos that teach Korean through some popular culture. The YouTuber I often watch is called “Alice Wonderland”. She can fluently speak Korean, English, and Cantonese. She often teaches grammar, sets of words, or phrases under k-pop context. In that way, one can learn words and phrases from song lyrics. I found it to be really fun and helpful to watch. Overall, I think practicing dialogues with my peers to be a very effective method of learning.
There are also some difficulties I encountered during my study of Korean. The first is the pronunciation. While alphabets themselves are easy to pronounce, once they combine to become a word, it is hard for me to imagine the combined sound of the word. In the future, I will spend more time in practicing speaking words by imaging how to combine the alphabets more. It will require lots of practices to master it. Also, grammar is particularly hard to learn because the sentence structures of Korean are very different from English. One word has many forms depending on the place it is in a sentence. Even if I know the word, it changes form in a sentence and I no longer recognizes it. I will need to learn more grammar to know how to use single words into sentences.
I also learned a lot from the cultural presentations. I learned from my cultural presentation that there is still huge gender gap in Korea. Women get more than 30% less pay than men in average and have fewer opportunities at work. However, the situation is changing as more women get higher education. For the presentation on Turkey's gender equality issue, even though women's status is still low, it has progressed a lot and the percentage of women holding leadership positions are even higher than many developed nations. I learned from Yuchi's cultural presentation about the trainee system in Korea. The entertainment industry is one of the largest industries in Korea and its popular culture spreads around the world. It has a very systemic way of training future k-pop stars. I learned that trainees start at a very young age, and their daily lives are controlled by their companies and they are usually not allow to rest during their promotion period even if they are sick. It is a cruel system but still very competitive.
In conclusion, I am pleased with my learning result, as I met most of my learning goals and the learning sessions with language partner were very effective and fun. Once knowing the alphabets, it is easier to learn new words and write them. The classes laid a solid foundation for me to continue my self-study in Korean after graduation.
Artifact%204%20Days-months.m4a
Days/months
Members of the family
Counting to 20
When I first decided to enroll in the self-directed language course, I had very little knowledge of not only the Turkish language, but also Turkish culture. I honestly could not locate the country on a map or simply greet someone with a friendly hello in the language. Therefore, I was a bit nervous to start completely from scratch in an area so new to me. However, with my experience of previously learning to speak Spanish I figured that I had already developed many of the skills that would be necessary in trying to learn another new language. At the start of the semester, I knew nothing. But, as we approach the last week of classes I have completed close to all of the tasks that I originally set forth for myself. Currently, I am able to greet others, introduce myself (name, where I am from, age), count, briefly talk about family, ask questions such as “who/what is this/that?”, describe the weather, and indicate the names of the week/month/season all in Turkish. In addition, I have gained an understanding of the Turkish culture in regards to the Turks most important values and ways of life.
Although I am proud of the progress I have made thus far, the road to getting where I am today has not been an easy one. Teaching myself a language has challenged me in ways that I could not have imagined. Self-directed language learning requires a lot of self-discipline and motivation. Therefore, I found it much easier to attend class and review new vocabulary and grammar rules with my language partner than I did watching Youtube videos and trying to teach myself on my own. However, the more I practiced independently, the easier it became. I think that the most difficult challenge for me was pronunciation. While memorizing words and rules about sentence structure required a lot of mental effort, pronouncing words correctly required more of a physical effort. It was very frustrating at times because I would know what a word is supposed to sound like but I struggled with shaping my mouth and moving my tongue in just the right way to produce the proper sound. With lots of practice and continuously watching Youtube videos, I learned to improve my pronunciation and Turkish accent.
One thing that I really enjoyed this semester was having the SDLC 105 course in addition to the SDLC 110. The SDLC 105 course really allowed me to not only demonstrate the progress I was making in speaking the Turkish language, but also gave me the opportunity to delve more into the culture of Turkey. Additionally, the course exposed me to other cultures that my classmates were studying like Korea, the Czech Republic, Brazil, and Spain. The juxtaposition of each of these cultures really emphasized their uniqueness and changed my perspective on the way in which we should view others who may be different from us. Taking both of these courses has opened my eyes to the importance of learning about other cultures. It brings us together and provides us with an understanding of where others come from. By continually spreading awareness of different backgrounds we can truly make the world a better place.
- Learning Journal 14: Summarize your work this semester, the progress you made and the difficulties you encountered.
- I think I learned a lot of different topics in Turkish. Sezgi's class helped me to keep up the learning schedule and allowed me to review the stuffs in my own time. I think I should have tried to go to Turkish restaurants but I had no chance to do so. I think there is a lack of opportunities that I can experience Turkish culture in Richmond.
- I learned a lot from my research on holidays and tourism in Turkey. Sharing thoughts and teaching people about Turkish culture were a great experience to nurture my understanding of the culture.
- I accomplished most of the original learning plans, but there were some changes on my learning plans. I added more materials that were covered in Sezgi's class and omitted some goals because it was hard for me to find structured learning guidelines for the topics.
- Learning Journal 13: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
- My goals were reviewing stuffs that I learned during the past week and prepare for the final examination.
- I reviewed vocabularies about body parts, families, different suffixes, and putting "at" at the end of the sentence.
- I listened to a popular Turkish song, Dudak by Edis and reviewed vocabularies by filling the blanks in the lyrics. I think learning Turkish with songs is fun and effective.
Fourth Artifact: Edis_Dudak
VivianLeeLearningPlanFinal.docx
I learned a lot this semester, and basically hit on every task I wanted to accomplish. Joora was a great language partner, and having a native speaker to practice and converse with really helped with my fluency and vocabulary. Also, I learned a lot of popular Korean slangs, expressions, and idioms, which were all really fun and interesting. We also worked on every task I wanted to learn from my learning plan this semester, which was great.
I also enjoyed finding online resources and watching YouTube videos and lectures for learning Korean. There were a lot more than I had expected, and although I found more for sources for beginner level Korean, there were quite a few resources that catered towards my interest and current level of learning. I personally liked watching YouTube videos to learn because it was more interactive, but audio textbooks were also helpful in developing my listening and speaking skills as well.
- Learning Journal 12: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
- I planned to learn about families (how to call family members and how to talk about the numbers of families that I have).
- I learned mom, dad, mom's mom, dad's mom, grandfather, sibling, (younger/older) sister, (younger/older) brother, dad's sister/brother, and step mom/dad.
- Ben is I
- My is "-m", "im"
- Bir kiz kardesim var means I have a younger sister.
- I practiced speaking and listening dialogues about families with classmates.
- Learning Journal 11: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
- My goals were learning vocabularies related to body. I wanted to learn how to change verbs depending on the subjects.
- I studied how to call eyes, lips, ears, nose, cheeks, and eyebrows.
- I learned "I" use "im", "you" use "sin", "he/she" uses nothing, "they" use "ler/lar" and "plural or formal you" use "siniz".
- I also learned how to use "at". For example, I am at home is okuldaim. Okul: school, da: at.
The past two weeks I learned Korean slangs/abbreviations with Joora. We went through about 20 Korean slangs from this website (https://www.90daykorean.com/korean-slang/) and Joora taught me a few popular slangs that was also popular in Korea (see below). To practice, I made short phrases and sentences using these Korean slangs. Joora was really helpful and was great at coming up with situations to help me understand when it was appropriate to use certain words. Because I didn't grow up in Korea, many, if not all, of the slangs were quite confusing and new to me. Watching Korean shows and dramas taught me a couple, but there are still a lot more that I'd like to look over and learn.
쩐다 amazing, lame
아놔 you say this when you're annoying or something bad happened
지못미 = 지켜주지 못해 미안해
정줄놓 = 정신줄 놓은 사람 crazy person
넘사벽 = 넘을 수 없는 4차원의 벽 something you can't overcome or someone you can't outrun
깜놀 = 깜짝 놀람
고딩 = 고등학생
레알 = real
손발이 오글오글/오그라든다 = 닭살 돋는다
완소 = 완전 소중한 something very valuable
엄친아/엄친딸 = 엄마 친구 아들/딸
열공 = 열심히 공부
My cultural presentation is on Korean idioms and proverbs. I will be talking about popular Korean idioms and expressions and their meaning and their English equivalent. I will be focusing on 3 types of idioms: 사자성어 (4 character idioms), 고사성어 (Old stories/advice), and 속담 (Expressions/idioms/proverbs/sayings).
For example, there's a Korean idiom, "제 눈에 안경이다," which literally translates to glasses in the eyes. This idiom is used to suggest that the way people see beauty is different (glasses we see with are all different). This is somewhat equivalent to the English idiom/saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
The Korean idiom of “꿩 먹고 알 먹는다” literally translates to “If you eat a pheasant, you also eat the egg.” This expression is used to describe a situation when you get two benefits at the same time from one action. This is equivalent to the English expression “Kill 2 birds with 1 stone.”
The Korean proverb of “뜻이 있는 곳에 길이 있다” literally translates to “In the place there is a will, there is a way,” which is equivalent to the English expression of “where there’s a will,there’s a way.” Both expressions is used to describe situations where if one is determined, even through hardships and difficulties, they will find a way to achieve their goal.
The Korean proverb of “누워서 떡 먹기” directly translates into “Eating rice cake while laying down.” This expression is extremely similar to the English idiom of “A piece of cake,” which is used to express how easy something is.
Lastly, the Korean proverb,“남의 떡이 커보인다” which directly translates to “another person’s rice cake looks bigger,” is used to describe envy and when people are never satisfied with their own situation and think others have it better. This is very similar to “The grass is always greener on the other side.”
For our learning activity, Emily and I wanted to teach the SDLC 105 class how to count in Turkish. Unfortunately, with the little class time we had at the end of the semester we were unable to however attached is the PowerPoint we intended to use for our lesson. Below I will list the plan we had for teaching Turkish numbers:
1. Introduce the numbers from 1-10 and have the class repeat after us for pronunciation.
2. Repeat 1-10 for clarity on pronunciation.
3. Introduce each of the tens places (20, 30, 40, etc...) and how to add on to each up to 100.
4. Repeat the tens places for clarity on pronunciation.
5. Test the class! From here, we wanted to provide numbers in English and ask the class how they would say each in Turkish. Example: 88=seksen sekiz
Please refer to my combined final reflection/self assessment for 105 and 110.
Turkish%20Wedding%20Traditions.pptx
SUMMARY:
In my presentation, I wanted to focus on the wedding traditions in Turkish culture. First, I began my presentation by talking about the different types of marriages that existed in the past and then introduced the two main marriage arrangements that currently exist today in Turkey: arranged marriages and love marriages. While arranged marriages are those set up by the parents of the prospective bride and groom, love marriages are those in which the prospective bride and groom choose each other without the input of their parents or family members. From there, I explained the traditional phases of marriage: the agreement, the engagement, and the wedding. Although each of these phases are considered separate from one another, the purpose of each is to bring the bride and grooms families together to celebrate the newly formed relationship between the bride and the groom. Additionally, these phases emphasize the importance of the transforming bride as she prepares to leave her own home and family to join the groom and his.
Resources and vocabulary are provided in the PowerPoint presentation attached to this post.
