Blogs

안녕하세요! 

The first month of learning Korean was good!  I think the hardest part at the beginning of the semester was learning how to balance all of my school work this semester with three jobs on campus.  I definitely felt the gap of being abroad for a whole year and just returning to finish off my undergraduate career.  

Joora and I were able to start this semester with learning how to pray in Korean!  We did a regular prayer and a food prayer so you'll be able to hear it in my artifacts post.  

As a spiritual person, it was nice to start learning Korean off with a prayer.  It seemed really fitting to just cover my semester learning with thankfulness and admire for a language that isn't my own, but that I can hold an intimate moment with! 

For now, I know basic Korean words, and I learned them in several steps. At first, I try to memorize them through writing and through various apps. Writing out the words helps me remember the spelling. Plus, word app has become a popular tool in language learning because it is more convenient to carry a phone instead of a dictionary and because the combination of pictures and words realize easier memorization. After memorizing the words, I always take quizzes or play games to deepen my memory. Then, I watch Korean drama and movies, trying to recognize from conversations those words I memorized. Next, I find chances to say those words so that I do not forget them. For instance, I can learn tongue twisters that include those words. In order to build my vocabulary, I try to make connections between new and acquired words. In the future, I hope to know around 2000 Korean words for daily communication.

안녕하세요! 

정말 미안 해요 교수님! 

I'm so sorry Dr. Scinicariello! I did not fully keep with the syllabus and did not arrange a meeting with you.  But I hope you know that I have kept well with all of my work, it's just been a hard time remembering to post everything.  As a senior too this semester has been quite difficult, so I hope you can extend some understanding! 

Although we did not meet to speak about my progress, Joora and I have met for every week, twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays.  And we've kept to all the things I wanted to learn this semester as well, so that's a plus!  We didn't always do it in order because sometimes I found my interest to lie in a different week's schedule.  So that's the only thing that we really changed, just when we would go over certain things. 

I've been able to be successful with all my learning tasks because Joora has been a great supporter of my learning and growth!  She's so awesome! <3 

And because what I'm learning (Korean church culture) is something I dearly want to continue learning, I've had a lot of fun taking initiative to learn it! 

Artifact 1

안녕하세요!!! 

This was the first artifact I did for the semester!  It's so bad!  Re-listening to it, I could tell that I was so super nervous and I had probably tried my best to do a few takes, but I feel like frustration got the best of me! ㅋㅋㅋ ㅠㅠ

Speaking has always been my weak point with Korean.  The funny thing is that with all the other languages I've learned (Arabic and Spanish) speaking was never a problem.  I've reflected on it and I think it's because I have a more personal bond to Korean that makes messing up while speaking that much harder for me (?) maybe haha. 

Anyways, I think for my very first artifact of the semester it was alright.  Because I was super nervous, I know I misspoke about my family.  But overall, I think my accent is not too bad.  

Improvements would be nerves as I'm recording myself.  Maybe there are tricks to fooling myself that I'm just speaking and not recording.  The biggest way to improve would be to continue practice speaking each day so that hearing myself speak Korean doesn't sound so foreign to my own ears.  I think allowing myself to hear myself speak Korean will help break down the wall I have with having a hard time to fully explore speaking Korean, without fear of mistakes.  Because it's really only once you allow yourself to mess up from speaking that you really grow deeper in the language.  

I'm excited for the day I can do that with the Korean language!  It will have been a long-time in the making because of the self-directed language program!  So this victory will be all the more sweeter! 

안녕하세요!!! 

It's been such a super busy semester for me!  Thank you for being understanding, that while my posts are late, I've definitely been meeting with Joora and have had an awesome semester learning Korean! 

 잘 부탁드립니다.

I've posted my Learning Plan and having reviewed it, I'm always so amazed how flexible self-directed language learning is!  This semester I focused on more Korean language and culture surrounding the Church. If this wasn't self-directed language learning, I don't think I would have been able to spend time learning this aspect of the Korean language that I'm personally invested in.  So I'm really grateful for this flexibility! I love how even at my basic novice learning level, I can still learn about this, even if that means I have to stretch myself out of my comfort zone! 

Most of my learning activities have been super engaging and it's been a really great time together with Joora!  From taking time to read and dissect Scripture to learning a church song, I've had a fun semester with all the dynamic things we've been able to do together! 

I remember at the beginning of the semester, I was really shy and hesitant with speaking Korean because it had been so long since I had spoken it with someone.  I think I was also frustrated because my comprehension is better than my speaking ability.  It's always annoying when you can understand well but you're stuck with not being able to express yourself properly.  I also know that at the beginning of this semester, I had not gotten over my barrier of fear of messing up when it comes to speaking Korean.  To be honest, I don't think I've fully been able to break that wall.  Where I am right now is a lot better at just speaking, but it's so hard!  I've always loved and admired the Korean language and I just want to be able to speak it perfectly.  Making mistakes speaking Korean is so scary for me!  But definitely re-looking at the progress I've made (even if it's not super significant) the progress makes me happy! 

Hello! 

It's been such an awesome final semester as a senior learning Korean as a novice beginner! 

I've had a blast continuing to learn and explore more of this language and its rich history and culture with my super amazing language partner Joora!  

Attached below is the learning plan I made from the start of the semester.  Looking through it, we have been able to hit all of the things I was hoping to learn this semester!  That's so encouraging and so cool!  

Reflecting on this learning plan, I definitely feel more empowered with self-directed language learning!  While progress may be slow and at my own pace, it's super cool that I can say I have learned how to do these specific tasks!

 Korean 111 Learning Plan

For our last class we reviewed parts of the face. I learned how to say eyes "guz" in Turkish as well as "dudak" for lips, "agiz" for mouth, "burun" for nose, "kulak" for ears, "yanak" for cheeks, and "kas" for eyebrows. And then we applied this vocabulary in a fun and interactive way by watching a music video by a famous Turkish pop star who reviewed some of these terms in his catchy song. We were then given a worksheet of his lyrics and had to fill in the missing vocabulary words by listening to his song. This was a great way to learn new vocabulary and also practice listening in Turkish to improve my comprehension of the language. I look forward to learning about the family next week, and I think it would also be great to learn vocabulary about the parts of the body to build on this lesson. 

For our last class we reviewed parts of the face. I learned how to say eyes "guz" in Turkish as well as "dudak" for lips, "agiz" for mouth, "burun" for nose, "kulak" for ears, "yanak" for cheeks, and "kas" for eyebrows. And then we applied this vocabulary in a fun and interactive way by watching a music video by a famous Turkish pop star who reviewed some of these terms in his catchy song. We were then given a worksheet of his lyrics and had to fill in the missing vocabulary words by listening to his song. This was a great way to learn new vocabulary and also practice listening in Turkish to improve my comprehension of the language. I look forward to learning about the family next week, and I think it would also be great to learn vocabulary about the parts of the body to build on this lesson. 

Following the other cultural post I decided to research more on hierarchy. i found that in Korea with age comes more respect. They have a lot of honorifics that the younger have to use when talking to an older person. In addition, this reminded me of some of the cultural presentations that people did in 105 last year. For example, the ones about drinking and how the young who pours the drink has to use two hands and when drinking look away. It is very interesting to see that even though I am from Taiwan we do not have that intense of a hierarchy in our country. 

1 Introduction

3 Myself

For me I find reading in Spanish to be much easier than writing, listening, or speaking in Spanish. You still have to know vocabulary and understand the structure of the language when reading, but you need to really have the rules down if you want to produce writing yourself. It is easy to forget little things like accents or vocabulary words in general, so I would say reading is the first step in language learning, with writing as the second. You also have more time to process the language when your are reading and writing versus listening and speaking. My reading and writing abilities in Spanish are solid, so I personally have been focusing on listening and speaking more. 

Reflect on your experiences of (trying to) read and write in your target language.  

From my experience of learning Korean, I think that I am better at writing than my reading. The writing part is based on sending messages to my Korean friends. By sending messages to them in Korean, I will try my best to express what I want to say in simple Korean, and if I write something wrong, my friends will correct me immediately. So, most of my writing practices are by sending messages, and it really helps me improve a lot when someone can correct me immediately or teach me another way of expressing what I am trying to say. However, I am not really good at reading. I think most of the reasons come from watching the dramas. By watching dramas, I am used to listening Korean but not reading them. Also, there are no many chances that I will read Korean in daily lives. Although, when my Korean friends will also message me in Korean, yet, they know my Korean level and will send me in the easiest expressions, so my reading really does not have improved that much. Thus I think to be better at reading, I will push myself to read more in Korean in the future by trying to find some lyrics of songs or stories, and try to read and understand them as much as I can.

Respond to the readings

I agree with the idea that the bilinguals are smarter. Although I am not a bilingual since birth, however I can understand and agree with what the scientists talk about in the readings. Although, some people say that learn a second language since a baby would have bad impacts on their learning, yet, I think the same way as the scientists told" it would make them smarter and react quicker than other children." From my experience, I speak mandarin and Taiwanese as my mother languages. Later, I have learned English, Korean, a little bit of Spanish and Japanese as well. From these learning experiences, I feel that I would think one thing in different ways. Like when I see an object, I might express my feeling in Chinese or English or even Korean, and three of them sometimes would give me different emotions as well. So, by learning more than two languages, the ways of thinking would be different as well.

Another thing is the logic of learning. From learning more than two languages, the bilinguals have to understand the logic of learning those languages. Such as the logic of the structure or the grammar, or they will find them very confused if they don't know how to organize them and use them in the correct ways. Thus, I think the bilinguals might be good at the logic of learning a new thing. In conclusion, I totally agree with the idea of bilinguals are smarter than those who are not according to the above two reasons.

How many new words have you learned in your target language?  How did you learn them?  Do you have realistic goals for your acquisition of vocabulary?

First of all, I really have no idea of how many new words I have learned in this semester, but I could tell how I have learned those words. The basic way to learn them is from the class. In the class, the teacher would teach as some conversations or listen to a song and learn the lyrics, from these materials I have learned a lot of new vocabularies which are very practical as well. Another way is from the dramas and the TV show on the internet. From these two resources, I have learned a lot of new words and know more about making conversations. My realistic goal for my acquisition of vocabulary is that I can learn as many daily words that Koreans would use in everyday life as possible. Yet, if I want to engage some business there in the future, I would like to learn financial related vocabularies as well.

Respond to the reading, reflecting on what is lost when languages die.

I think the most essential things behind a language is its culture. Thus, when a language dies, the history and the cultures behind it would lost and disappear. From a language, we can know how the people who use the language react to their daily lives, that is in another words, their cultures. Such as the language in the reading, teacher has showed us that this culture has many ways of naming "basket". From this, it is apparent that this culture puts a lot of emphasizes on the baskets, maybe because different kinds of baskets have different usages. Thus, a specific name for a specific basket is important for them. Another example is the languages between the northern countries and the south. In the north, people have many ways of calling different types of snow, some are wet snow, and some are dry, and they have many different adjectives to describe them. However, in the south, people don't even have snow, so they would only call snow as "snow", no other special adjectives to describe because they don't need them at all. Thus, from this, we can see that knowing the  language of the specific area is very important because it can tell us the history and the culture of that area. In conclusion, when a language dies, its cultures and history would be lost as well. Thus, it is very important for us to preserve those dying languages so that we can record the history and the cultures behind it.

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

Knowing the target language's history can help me a little bit on learning it. As I have learned a little background of Korean language, I could tell that Korean has been affected a lot by Chinese language and cultures. Since the begging of Korean language, it is said that Korean people could only communicate by speaking at first. Later, some scholars learned Chinese characters from China and spread it to the high social status people, and it was until then could the Korean people communicate by writing as well. Although, the Chinese characters were replaced by the Korean characters we see nowadays later, we could still see a lot of words that have similarities with Chinese vocabularies. By knowing this, sometimes it would be much easier for me to memorize some vocabularies than other students because I can speak mandarin as well. Thus, knowing the history of the language is very interesting and sometimes can help the learners know how to use or memorize some words much easier as well.

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

This culture shock video basically talks about how the international students at U of R feel or react to the cultural shock they have faced in the campus. For me, as an exchange student as well, I have experienced almost the same as they had. Such as the different teaching styles between here and my home university. Here, the professors in the class would expect all the students should participate a lot in the class, however, at my home school, all we do in the class is listen to the professors and take notes. Thus, when I first came to the class here, I felt nervous and depressed because I was not used to it before. Another interesting culture shock they have mentioned in the video is the greetings and the "small talk". Here, when people meet friends on the streets or the cashiers in the stores, when they see you they will always say " how are you?' as an opening, and it basically just another way to say "hello". However, when I first heard that, I was surprised because those were the people I just met and they cared about how was my feelings? So, I happily replied back and expected more information from them and they just left in a second without even replying me. I felt weird at first, but later a friend explained all the meanings of this, I found myself really funny. Thus, I think culture shocks are basically from all the small things in daily lives. For me, I can always expect the "big shock" before I experience them because they are supposed to be very different. However, those "small shocks" would really make me feel shocked at first, but after I understand them, I will find them interesting and kind of enjoying the differences.

I created a learning activity to teach my friends about how to tell time in Korea, and I created a powerpoint to help me with the illustration.  

I will first explain the difference between English and Korean ways of telling time. Korean uses the native numbers for hours and Chinese style numbers for minutes. I attached the powerpoint below. I taught them how to say native and Chinese based numbers. I gave them examples of telling time during the day. 

I think the powerpoint is an effective way to show them how to tell time because it listed 1-12 o'clock with pronunciation and corresponding arabic numbers.   

Time%20Korean.pptx

One personal goal for me was to be able to speak with my girlfriend's Korean family and be able to have a basic conversation with them. Last weekend was Isla's grandmother's birthday and we facetimed her and sang her happy birthday in Korean and then I talked to her briefly about school and classes in Korean. While I get to talk to Isla in Korean it was really cool to get to use the language in a non-practice setting and to be able to communicate with someone who I wasn't able to understand before.

This week I am doing a lot of review as recommended by my language partner in preparation for the language presentation. I have been going over old vocabulary and grammatical structures, focusing on greetings, introductions, and farewells. In terms of greetings and farewells I've been going over the formal and nonformal versions. For introductions I have been reviewing the descriptive vocabulary about things like jobs, hobbies, family, locations, and activities. I've been having practice conversations with my girlfriend a lot and she helps me speak more fluidly.