Blogs

For my 3rd artifact, I will translate a short news paper article.

http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2017/04/19/2017041901526.html

The article is about the new movie coming out, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Last 2014, the whole world was excited about "Guardians of the Galaxy", and this year, "Guardian of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is going to release.

With the release upcoming, the 2nd movie will satisfy those who unfortunately missed the first one in theaters. The movie will release on May 3rd, in around 50 theaters nationwide. Walt Disney Company Korea states that through the rerelease of the 1st movie, audience will be able to enjoy a more complete story at once. The movie is available in 2D, as well as IMAX and 4DX. For specific information, check the CGV homepage. "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" will be releasing few clips soon.

Vocaroo_s1VPHDjS0n8G.mp3

The conversation was:

Hello? How are you doing?

Pretty well, but having a hard time because of work

My friend does a good job at work that he is impossible to catch up to.

For my learning activity, I have decided to do it on counting words in Korean. For this, I am going to raise flash cards of pictures of learning words and they will have to yell out what the counting words will be. This can be played as a game between 2 or more people and can be competitive. There can also be prizes given out for the winners to give an incentive to winning. The flash cards will contain just normal things like pens, books, trees, shoes, and cigarette packs (since there is a specific counting word for cigarette packs). I will also add in some tricky flash cards that share the same counting words as some other words.

I believe that this is an effective way to learn and reinforce the counting words for each different category. 

Because I will be travelling to South Korea this summer, I decided to do my third cultural post on popular tourist spots in South Korea. 

Seoul, South Korea (capital) is the most popular tourist designation for visitors. Seoul has a lot of modern as well as ancient architecture. It also has a lot of historical landmarks and a lot of places to shop. The night life is full of endless street foods, cafes, and gorgeous night views in N. Seoul Tower, which offers great panoramic views of the city. 

Jejudo or Jeju Island is another popular tourist attraction. The island offers a lot of outdoor activities such as hiking on Halla-san, which is the highest peak in South Korea, riding horses, and watching sunsets and sunrises by the ocean.

Haeundae Beach in Busan is a very popular city to visit especially during the summer. There are a lot of beach festivals and concerts and is busy year round.

Seoraksan National Park is located in Gangwon Province. This national park attracts many tourists because of its beautiful scenery.  

Gyeongju is a small city above Busan and this city has numerous historical sites. I read that Gyeonju is the prettiest in the spring because there are cherry blossom trees that line the main streets. 

I really appreciated the presentations that my classmates gave on their target language.  I found it very interesting to observe both the similarities and differences that can be found across cultures.  In particular, I found the presentation about plastic surgery in Korea to be really surprising.  I was unaware of not only how common it was to get enhancement surgery was in Korea, but also the fact that it is almost necessary in achieving success within the country.  In this way, the presentation really highlighted the value that Koreans place on physical attractiveness.  It seemed like another way to keep the rich richer and the poor poorer since wealthy families are the ones that can afford the surgery.  It truly gave me a new perspective on Korean culture.

Prior to learning the structure of the Turkish language, it is important to know some vocabulary, pronunciation of letters, vowel harmony, and pronouns.  Fortunately, Turkish does not have gender specific rules which makes the language a bit simpler to grasp.  In order to acquire the knowledge necessary to understand the structure of Turkish, I will use applications such as Duolingo, Babbel, and Mango to practice my vocabulary.  Additionally, I will used the vocabulary I know to begin forming sentences.  In this way, I can both visually and audibly note the way in which sentences are structured.  With practice through classes with my learning partner and relevant worksheets, I will be able to notice patterns and apply those new concepts to constructing more sentences.  I believe that a reference grammar could be helpful because it would provide me with something to look at when I might be struggling and also offer explanations for rules that might not be self-explanatory on their own.

Prior to enrolling in this course, I could not even say a simple hello or goodbye in Turkish.  Therefore, I would consider myself to be at a Novice Beginning 0 stage according to the Levels of Competence document.  However, by the end of the semester I hope to be able to have a simple conversation including things such as greetings, introducing myself, saying where I am from, providing my age and farewells.  Additionally, I would like to be able to count, briefly describe the weather, and learn the proper way to address people based on how familiar I am with the person I am talking to.  Being that I am interested in someday visiting Turkey and gaining a better understanding of my good friend's culture (who I briefly mentioned in a prior cultural post), I hope that this course will aid me in the first steps in becoming more familiar with the language and culture of Turkey.

This semester I feel that I accomplished a lot of what I had planned to learn. I wanted to focus on learning more vocabulary words that are practical and would be used in common daily interactions. I want to be prepared when I go South Korea for study abroad next Spring semester. My learning partner, Joora, helped me immensely with finding useful sources online where I can learn new vocabulary. It was also interesting getting to learn a little bit about the history of Korea when she provided me with YouTube videos with different historical topics. We learned about the time in Korea when Japan took over and I knew nothing about this even though it was such a major event that happened in Korea not too long ago.

What I don't learn from my parents, I can learn here at school, so I am grateful for all the sources and help I was able to receive. I think I learned a lot more practical material as well as went in-depth on some things that were touched upon last semester in 110. I hope to continue my studies next semester in 112 and deepen my knowledge of the Korean language as well as the culture. 

I will dive deeper into the tourism in South Korea for this cultural post. 

In Seoul, there are many different tourist attractions. 

Gyeongbokgung is incorporated right into the central part of the city and offers many different guided tours. This was a 14th century royal palace with museums and gardens. Tourists from all over the world can enjoy this attraction and can live a day as a royal in the 14th century. There are several different historical features of Korea that guests can experience as well.

Myoeng-dong is known as the most famous shopping district in South Korea. This place has a heavy population of shoppers and tourists from all over the world, especially from around Asia. Going into this district, many different signs in different languages can be seen. There are also guides that help with any questions that any tourists or guests of the area has. On the top of the street, there is also a big cathedral that is also another tourist attraction for people all around the world.

Hongdae is another popular area for tourists. This is popular among the younger generation and has a strong presence of bars, clubs, and restaurants. This place is in front of Hongik University and is known for its night life. Hongik University is one of the top fine arts colleges in South Korea, which leads to many different creative artwork around the area. There is a strong presence of performances and hip cafes and trendy clothes.

Gangnam is another district that is distinct to South Korea. Popularized by Psy, Gangnam is a city that is known for clubs and its night life as well. Gangnam is a district that is widely known for its wealth and high standard of living. It is camparable to Beverly Hills in South Korea. 

My third cultural post will be on travelling and tourism in South Korea. This will also be my topic for my cultural presentation. 

South Korea is a famous tourist attraction known for its food, scenery, and most importantly, its shopping. South Korea is full of different food that ranges from traditional to contemporary. South Korea is most known for its shopping malls and street shopping. The 5 different locations that South Korea is known for are Jeju Island, Seoul, Haeundae Beach, Seoraksan National Park, and Gyeongju. 

The Jeju Island is known to be one of the top honeymoon locations for Korean couples. This island is a volcanic island and is known as the Hawaii of South Korea. Travelers can go hiking, explore caves, eat different specialty foods, or just enjoy the view.

Seoul is the capital city of South Korea and is very urban. This city consists of many different districts with different characteristics for each of them. Although it is a very urban area, there are still some traces of history and homages to Korea's past incorporated into the city. In the middle of Seoul, there are fortresses and traditional gates that is incorporated into the city.

Haeundae Beach is in another major South Korean city, Busan. Busan is a seaport and is surrounded by many beaches. Haeundae is known to be a popular summer vacation destination, filled with many different festivals and events.

Seoraksan National Park is a popular mountain range that attracts many locals and international tourists from around the world. This place contains several famous temples that can be enjoyed as well as the breathtaking scenery.

Gyeongju is a small city in Ulsan. This city is home to numerous historical sites including the Bulguksa temple. This is a very famous temple among the buddhist community.

During these two weeks, I have learned about poetry in Korea, as well as counting words. Poetry is very apparent around the world and exists in every language. Joora helped us to read these poems and understand the motive behind them, as well as the meaning. This was a complex topic since poetry is highly artistic and is not very straightforward. Korean poetry was very difficult for me to understand because of the higher level of intricate vocabulary used and its different syntax. However, Joora made it a little clearer for me, but the meaning was still unclear.

In Korean, there are different ways to count different things. For example, trees are counted with "구루" while books are counted as "권". There are many different intricacies when it comes to these counting words and most of the times they do not make sense. There is a different word to count the packs of cigarettes, and different words to count the individual cigarette. There are also separate counting words for sheets of paper and even how many people. Joora gave us a comprehensive list of commonly used counting words for different things and gave us a test on it. Like the past lessons, these tests helped to give incentives on actually studying and reviewing these words. This gave us an idea of my progress in this language. 

During these two week, I have learned a few vocabulary words about traveling and talking about the weather. One week, we spent the time learning about the traveling. The words we learned were things like tourist attractions, tourist information center, entrance fee, greet, collecting information, and so on. These words will come useful when I visit South Korea and need some information. Joora gave us a background for each word and gave us the English translations after it. This was an effective way to learn, because it helped to keep me engaged with the content and stay entertained. In order to ensure that we retain this information, Joora gave us a mini quiz for the next class. This forced me to study for the quiz and review the new vocabulary words. 

The next topic we learned was about the weather. We learned words such as urban hot island effect, precipitation, dry and cold, humid and hot, and so on. These words described Korea's climate and gave me an insight to how the weather is like in South Korea. This was also taught to us in a similar manner to when I was taught about travelling. There was also a quiz on these vocabulary words, which helped us to receive incentive for our studying.

Before taking this course, I thought that learning Turkish was going to be a daunting challenge but to my surprise I have enjoyed learning the language as well as its rich culture. The more I learn the language the more I am interested in learning anything and everything about Turkey. Over these past few months, I have learned a wide array of vocabulary from how to tell time, how to count, how to refer to family members, tell the weather, and even how to say different countries in Turkish. I have surely come along way from just learning about how to say simple greetings like hello and goodbye. I have also developed an understanding of grammar and the vowel harmony rules. Above all, I do believe that I have reached my goals and even gone beyond. In the beginning of this course my main goal was to gain a basic foundation where I will know the alphabet, simple greetings, and how to ask for things like food, transportation, and goods. Also how to ask for directions, understand directions and be able to find my way around Turkey. I have learned about how to say those things and much more like Turkey’s rich culture. From belly dancing, to women’s rights and the history of Turkey’s secular government it has been fascinating to learn about the many unique and cherished aspects of Turkey’s culture.

The most challenging aspect of this course was just being open minded and allowing myself to be vulnerable to learning something foreign and very different from English and spanish. It was difficult to grasp how to say things properly, also just memorizing vocabulary and other terms like numbers were challenging especially since it was a lot of material being covered in such a short period of time. Above all, I believe that learning the grammar was the most challenging aspect of learning the language and I think that I am just now finally understanding the vowel harmony concepts.

Looking into the future, I hope to continue to build on my knowledge of the Turkish language. I hope to learn how to say terms in economics and government in Turkey. I also have small goals like  learning how to count up to 1,000 in Turkish. I also hope to improve my communicative competence by developing my ability to listen to and interpret spoken Turkish, as well as working on improving my pronunciation and the fluency of my spoken Turkish. In order to achieve these goals I will continue to practice having conversations in Turkish, expanding my vocabulary, understanding grammatical rules, listening to Turkish dialogues, and even watching the popular soap opera my professor introduced me to.

Overall this course was incredibly enlightening, helpful and enjoyable and it showed me that learning new languages can be fun and exciting!

This week we had our cultural project presentations which I found to be incredibly enlightening and thought-provoking. I learned a lot about women's rights in Turkey but also in South Korea. I also learned important vocabulary terms like how to say women in Turkey "Kadınlar", equality "Eşitlik", gender "Cinsiyet", and power "Güç". I was very impressed with how both cultures are very progressive in women's rights and there are opportunities for women to become highly educated and serve as leaders in the workforce. But also, I was very surprised to learn statistics about domestic violence in Turkey, the gender wage gap in South Korea, and educational disparities among men and women as the result of economic status. These presentations opened my eyes to the current gender debate going on outside of America and motivated me to learn more vocabulary related to this topic so that I could have conversations in Turkish about this important issue. 

Last week we learned about how to talk about the family in Turkish. I found two things interesting about this lesson. For one, how you say grandparents in Turkish differs based on whether they are you maternal grandparents or your paternal grandparents. Maternal grandmothers are called "anneanne" and granddad's are called "dede" while paternal grandmothers are called "babaanne". Another interesting part of the family vocabulary is that there is only one word for half sibling and step sibling. Additionally, there are different ways to refer to younger and older family members. For instance, for younger brothers you say "erkek kardes" and you call your older brother "ag-abey abi". Above all, I found it very surprising that the way you refer to a wife is a major sign of respect in Turkey. It is respectful for a man to call his wife, "karim" which is my wife, but it is incredibly rude to refer to a wife as "Kari". 

Overall, the nuances in the family vocabulary directly reflect how Turkish culture, respect for women, paternal and maternal relatives, and siblings impact the way you refer to family members in this language. 

My final cultural presentation focused on the education system in South Korea. I decided to do this topic because my main learning goal for this semester was to learn about the different types of majors and careers in Korea, so that I can have more sophisticated conversations with my family and friends. As a result, I broadened this idea to talk about education as a whole and how it has been shaped over time. Education is important because it help can help us understand the customs and traditions of a certain culture. For example, learning about education in Korea provides us insight about how important education is to Korean culture because there is a large emphasis placed on education by not only parents but also the government system. After briefly learning about the history of education in Korea, I showed my classmates what I learned this semester by showing what different majors were in Korean and how I used what I learned to develop sentences that I can use in conversations with others. 

SDLC%20110---Final%20Cultural%20Presentation.pptx

My last learning goal for week 13 is to develop my writing skills by learning how to write a personal letter to my aunt. I want to accomplish this goal because I am always thankful for my aunt, but I have a difficult time showing my appreciation. As a result, I can accomplish this goal by first thinking about what I want to say to her by writing a letter in English. Then, I can look at sample letters in Korean to help translate what I wrote in English to Korean. I can also work with my learning partner to help fix the tiny details so that I can write a coherent letter to my aunt.

My learning goal for week 12 is to further develop my learning and understanding of Korean news by being able to read and comprehend a Korean news article. I can accomplish this goal by looking up news articles on Naver, which is like a Korean google. There are a variety of available topics to read from, so I can start off with easier to understand topics, then progress into more difficult topics.

My learning goal for week 11 is to develop my listening and understanding skills. I can accomplish this goal by continuing to use SCOLA and GLOSS to become familiar with Korean news through audio methods. I can listen to the news in Korean and try to translate what it says to a fellow friend. At first, I can maybe use the subtitles, but I will try to challenge myself by not using the subtitles and only focusing on using my knowledge of the material. I know this will be quite difficult but I think I can do it!