Blogs

This week I want to learn how to order food at a restaurant. In order to achieve this goal I will need to learn what different foods are called and how to describe them, as well as vocabulary relating to ordering food. I have been studying the names of different types of traditional Korean foods, like 갈비 and 삼겹살, two of my favorite types of Korean barbeque. With my language partner I am practicing discussing and ordering food, and describing its flavor and taste. I also watched a few episodes of a Korean drama called Pasta which is about a restaurant and has a lot of vocabulary about food and ordering food.

My learning goal for this week is to learn about talking about my day. To that end I will have to become more familiar with relative time words and will also need to learn new vocabulary describing activities like waking up and going to classes. In order to achieve this goal I will study the vocabulary that I will need to learn and then work with my language partner to practice using the verbs correctly and talking about my day. I will work through a helpful worksheet that my language partner gave me last time and practice speaking with my girlfriend.

During this week I learned about the number system in Korea and how to talk about time. Korea actually has a very complex number system, or two be accurate, has two different number systems that are used for different purposes and occasionally together. Korea has its own traditional number system that only really works for small numbers, but Koreans also use a chinese-based number system for larger numbers. When doing things like talking about your age, counting things, or stating the hour you would use the traditional Korean number system, but if you wanted to talk about money or even the minutes in the hour you would use the chinese based number system. Even though you count things in the traditional number system, when you start counting above one hundred the part of the number that is at and above one hundred becomes the chinese based number, while the smaller part stays traditional. The reason that the time system is so complicated in Korea is because in the past people couldn't tell time more accurately than the hour so there was no word for minutes, but with the creation of clocks people needed words for more accurate times, and at around the same time the Chinese based number system was becoming more widely used so people used it for the number of minutes.

• Post (a) an evaluation of your First Artifact conversation, and (b) an assessment of how well you met your learning goals for weeks 4 and 5.

My first artifact is a recording of a practice conversation with my girlfriend. In the conversation, we exchange greetings and then she asks me what my name is. I respond in the formal version and then she asks me how old I am, to which I say that I am twenty one. We then exchanged farewells, with her saying goodbye like she was leaving, and me saying like I was staying. At week 4 and 5 I was making a lot of progress on basic introductions and I learned a lot about how you address different people and about the Korean age hierarchy.

SDLC 110 Learning Journal #13:

My learning goals for this week were to practice speaking in solely Korean for at least fifteen minutes. I plan to call my mom later today to hopefully accomplish this. I know that I have a limited range of vocabulary outside of topics that I normally am used to talking about. Therefore, I think that I will stick to the more familiar topics. However, I do plan to still be creative and hopefully utilize what I’ve been learning in my Korean classes into my conversation. Some topics that I think will be challenging to talk about but I’ll still attempt to converse about are my future career plans, more complicated emotions that I’ve felt, and the random things I did in my day (for example: describing actions that I normally do not do normally such as building a fort under my bed). If I am not able to describe exactly what I am trying to say, I am going to try my best to not resort to English. Rather, I hope that I have made enough neural connections to creatively come up with a response that is somewhat along the lines of what I am trying to convey. I hope to do this for fifteen minutes, but I think that if I am unable to, I will try again in a future phone call with my mom again. It is one thing to learn about a language. It seems to be another applying what I have learned into a real-life conversation that is meant to be fluid and natural.

SDLC 110 Learning Journal #12

I wanted to familiarize myself with the vocabulary used to describe the weather for my learning goals this week through incorporating weather vocabulary into my daily lifestyle. When I talked to my mom, I was sure to mention the weather changing from cloudy (흐린) to sunny (햇빚) in Korean. In addition, I also talked about how it was supposed to be warmer (따뜻해) this weekend in Korean. I also changed my phone language to Korean for a day in order to familiarize myself with the language used to describe weather. Furthermore, I drew pictures of what the weather was going to be like with the Korean vocabulary word for it under to make it easy for me to look over and make the connection between the two without trying too hard. I wanted to naturally implement weather vocabulary into my life without it being too rigid. I think one thing I have difficulty with is that I am not sure which words are and are not usually associated with the weather. I can say that the sky is dark or is gloomy, but I am not sure whether the words I am using are usually associated with the weather or if I am indirectly personifying the weather by giving it vocabulary words that are only used with humans. I hope that through my phone calls with my mom, I will be better at distinguishing which vocabulary word is acceptable in the correct context.

Second Artifact:  Show that you can ask and answer questions about identity

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The pictures are the conversation I had with my Korean friend. I asked her to practice this task with me to show that I am able to ask and answer questions about identity. The translation is as below:

Me(A) / My friend(B)

A: Hi! My name is Yuchi.Wu. I am Taiwanese~

B: I see~ Hi~ My name is Yerin.Lee, I am Korean.

A:Yeah~Nice to meet you! Where are you studying now?

B: I am studying in Taiwan now! What about you?

A: Wow! Really!? I am studying in Virginia as an exchange student.

I will go back to Taiwan next month. Do you want to go traveling together?

B: Really!? Sounds great!

A:Ok! I will contact you when I go back.

B:Ok~I will wait for your messages.

SDLC 105

Post Learning Journal #10 on Your Blog in the Ning

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

I think that I am terrible at reading and writing in Korean. However, I have improved in my reading skills this semester, and I have been working on stressing the right sounds in order to make the sentence make sense. Quite frankly, I am very mediocre at writing because I have not had any formal training in it. I know how the alphabet sounds like, and I attempt to piece those sounds together in order to form words that I am trying to say. However, I will often make mistakes when doing this because there will sometimes be consonants that I did not realize were in the word, or the word is spelled slightly differently than how it is pronounced. In terms of reading, I am slow, but I have been working on it. I have a difficult time reading and understanding what I am reading at the same time. I have to read the sentence multiple times in order to say it correctly as well as understand what the sentence is trying to say. As a child, I remember having a textbook that I would read stories from for Korean school. Though I would be clumsy at first when reading the stories, I would eventually get into a groove and be able to read with more and more ease. In retrospect, I think that I am still the same way. Once I get into the habit of reading more than a few sentences, I am better able to shift into reading the words more fluidly.

I thought that these readings were quite interesting. Though I am not fully bilingual, it was nice to read about how being bilingual offered many benefits such as more neural connections, delayed onsets to Alzheimer’s Disease, and heightened awareness abilities of the environment. It encouraged me to pursue being bilingual even more. One thing I found interesting when reading these articles was that one side effect of being bilingual was having a limited vocabulary. I related to this very much, and I was slightly relieved to know that there was a reason for why I couldn’t think of what an object was called. I have many instances where I would be talking to someone, and I wouldn’t know what word to use to describe what I was thinking, and I end up having to pantomime what I am saying. I thought it was also interesting how bilingual babies were able to be more aware of their environment. I would have never thought that a mental ability of being bilingual would also translate into physical abilities. The babies essentially demonstrated what they had to do in their head (switching from one to another) into actions in real life.

This week, my objective was to focus on learning political termanology in Czech to better communicate what I am studying and any current events. For example, one event that I wanted to focus on was the impeachment of South Korean President, Park Geun Hye. To do this, I had to learn the words for impeach, president, politician, government, political party, etc. I asked and conversed with my Czech friends and utilized online resources to learn the words and form sentences. "Dobry Den, videl jste obžalobu z prezidenta Park Geun Hye? Delala Spatne Veci a mluvila se jeji pritelka o dulezity politicke veci." Hello, did you see the impeachment of president Park Geun Hye? She did bad things and talked to her friend about important political things. 

Trying to learn another language is never easy. I think that my experience in learning languages has definitely benefited me through this experience because I surprisingly can speak pretty well. Writing is something that I have not spent very much time on this semester. I am not sure that was really in my learning plan though because I knew that this is a rather short-term commitment for me, with graduation around the corner. Mainly I wanted to be able to speak on basic terms in case I visited and also because I do know quite a few people who speak Turkish.

In terms of reading, I have gotten the sounds of the letters down, so I can effectively pronounce words and if the words are in my vocabulary, I can understand. One thing I have struggled with recognizing is the conjugation of verbs. In Turkish, words are often combined to conjugate them and I have found a little bit of struggle in being able to tell what the root of the word is.

I can effectively talk about the weather and talk about the day/night, including:

• Date
• Time (morning, daytime, evening, night)
• Sunny or cloudy
• Warm or cold
• Rainy

I am still pleased with my progress and I am interested in how to see how I can communicate the weather and dates with my friend who is a native speaker. He was very impressed with how well I was grasping the language so quickly. 

We also listened to a Turkish pop song by Edis called Dudak. This is a song where we also learned about body parts on the face to be able to follow along because "dudak" is the word for lips. To challenge us, Sezgi had printed out the lyrics of the song and as we listened to it, we tried to fill in some random blanks that were words that we have learned. This was helpful because it gave me a little bit of confidence that I actually could recognize some words.

This week I would like to watch the upcoming Champions league in Portugese. I hope that when I watch the game I will not need any clarification as to what the announcers are saying. I hope that through my soccer vocabulary I will to be comprehend the necessary information from each sentence the announcer says.

When trying to read in Portuguese I feel as though I have progressed a lot. Due to my expansion in vocabulary I feel as though I have gained a much stronger ability to read in Portuguese. Mores specifically I feel I have improved alot when reading about soccer. I have a pretty good sense as to what the article is trying to express. In terms of writing I really cannot write anything in Portuguese as I am still unable to conjugate verbs or formulate sentence structure. 

This week, Joora and I learned about the different dialects (satoori) in South Korea. I specifically wanted to learn more about the Busan dialect, because my dad's side of the family lives in Busan, South Korea. This was a really fun lesson because Joora and I watched Youtube videos that compared and contrasted the different accents of different regions in Korea, which to me, sounded awkward and funny (Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCchIPz_pBs; Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPZa-Zge5ak). It was really interesting to see how the same sentence ended up sounding so different. The tones and the speed of the words varied a lot between the different dialects as well. For example, Busan satoori is has more variations between tones and Chungcheong-do satoori spoke very slowly. I grew up hearing the standard Seoul dialect from my parents, but I have noticed that my mom has a slight dialect when she speaks with her family and friends back in Korea. After watching the videos, we read more into the different dialects of Korean online (https://www.dramafever.com/news/the-different-dialects-of-the-korean-language/). 

I also learned how to refer days, such as day before yesterday, the day after tomorrow, etc. My parents would always use these words to describe time and events and I always had to ask them which day specifically they were referring to because I would always get them mixed up. This lesson was extremely useful and practical and I think it'll definitely come in handy when I need to schedule something or refer to a specific day/event. 

일            월            화            수            목            금            토            일
 그끄저께    그저께       어제         오늘         내일         모레        글피       그글피
    -3            -2            -1             0             +1            +2           +3           +4

This semester, I worked on a range of topics from writing diary entries to reading Korean myths to applying to jobs. Even though the things i worked on are disconnected, at first glance, they proved to truly build off of one another. The grammar structures I learned along the way could be applied to all of the activities I worked on from reading to writing. Furthermore, I learned a lot of useful vocab along the way, especially vocab related with work. Learning this vocab was essential for reading job opening posts and understanding requirements for applications. Furthermore, learning job related vocab made writing my resume and cover letter much easier. 

I wish my semester was not so hectic so I could have devoted more time to daily Korean study. Often, I found myself cramming my study in when I had a few open time blocks on the weekend or evening but I wish I could have studied in a more relaxed way. 

Regardless, I feel that I made a lot of progress. I am able to read job listings now with ease and read most things much faster than before. I feel that my reading and pronunciation practice with my language partner has really made it easier for me to put more difficult sounds and sentence structures together. Also, I feel that working my language partner has helped me better identify my weaknesses and problem areas. 

Of course, I experienced many difficulties. Being in an intermediate level can feel very frustrating because beginner feels far away but advanced seems impossible. I still required a lot of help in terms of editing my cover letter, resume, and other documents. While I was able to get across my main points, I still need help to come across professional or stylistic in my writing. However, those goals seem far out of my reach. Another problem is that in this level I start to learn grammar points that have the same meaning yet a very nuanced difference. As in, one sounds more "natural" than the other in some situation but the situations are conflicting and hard to really understand. At this level, some grammar stop having an answer to "why" and just become "because." Future learning should revolve around speaking situations and learning what is "natural" in which situation. 

Reflect on your learning experiences this semester. 
(a) What insights have you gained about yourself as a language learner and cultural explorer?  What did you find difficult?  What have you enjoyed?  How will you continue your learning?

I have learned a few things about myself and my learning style over this past semester. One thing I learned is that I work better when I have a textbook or complete language learning resource. Using an online service was often too little for me and left me having questions and wishing I could cross-reference things but that is often not possible online. Furthermore, using online resources can be distracting due to the ease of accessing a different website and just procrastinating. Also, I can retain information much better when I make time daily to study Korean, however, my schedule this semester has rarely permitted that so I have found that to be frustrating. In the future, I would set aside 30-1 hour a day to just focus on studying. However, I’m not sure how possible that will be once entering the workforce. I would say that this time restrain was the most difficult part of my learning process because I would often have to spend a lot of time refreshing the last lesson before moving forward with a new element. Also, I have felt my speaking get much worse since leaving Korea simply because I don’t use it as often as I used to. In Korea, I would have to practice speaking prompts often so that I could prepare myself for ordering food, asking for something at a store, etc. In terms of culture, this semester I spent a lot of time listening to Korean news and reading Korean cultural articles. I think that this has really helped me understanding Korean life better because these topics simply aren’t discussed in English. I listen to the daily Korean news every evening while doing homework so it has been nice to see the daily progress of new events and be able to discuss these events with my Korean friends. I hope to continue studying this so that I can understand Korean daily life and culture better.

I will continue my learning by continuing with the books I ordered and reading articles in Korean. I often use the app HelloTalk to find new people to practice Korean with, especially people whose English is not so good. It’s nice to speak with a range of people and get exposure to different style of Korean texting and casual speech. Since, I have accepted a job in Korea recently, I hope that will further push me to learn more and I hope to take some night classes while living in Korea.

(b) Which readings and learning activities did you find most useful?  What would you like to learn more about?

I found the cultural presentations the most interesting just because they push us to fully flesh out our interests but also because you can learn about things you didn’t consider before. For example, I never really considered the lower school system in Korea but it was nice to learn about it. These types of projects are nice because it is nice to learn about other people’s interests. Furthermore, I enjoyed the readings about dying languages and how to save them. I have never really considered the concept of language preservation and what that entails.

WorkinKorea.pptx

For my presentation, I discussed the goal of my semester which was to find a job. The goal of my presentation was the highlight the differences between the job hunt in Korea and America. Also, I wanted to make people aware of the challenges that native Korean applicants and foreign applicants face when applying for positions in Korea. Often, foreigners have a perception that finding jobs in Korea is easy simply because finding teaching jobs in Korea is easy, however, it is anything but. 

I didn't rely heavily on outside sources for this presentation. The presentation highlights a lot of my own experiences while job hunting. These experiences range from attending interviews in Korea to applying to and replying to positions via email.

For my final artifact, I am submitting the document that I worked on to prepare for my interview. This artifact shows my thoughts both in English and Korean and reflects a lot about myself and my ability to express myself in Korean. I ended up passing the interview and receiving the job thanks to my preparations. 

 Possible%20Interview%20Questions.docx

This week, I had an unexpected interview come up with a Korean advertising agency. The interview was the final step of my review process and if I passed the interview, then I would be able to join the company first as an intern and then segway into a full-time position. Because of this interview, I refocused my language goal for the week so that I would just focus on preparation for the interview. The interview took place on Wednesday night (Thursday morning KST). 

Since I wasn't sure whether this interview would be in Korean or English, I decided to prepare interview answers in both languages. Therefore, I first created a document of possible questions which I came up by asking my Korean friends about the interview questions they typically experience. The purpose of including the questions themselves was to make sure I could recognize the question that should trigger my answer. For example, "Explain your career goals? And how this company relates to your goals?" is roughly "경력 목표를 설명하십시오. 그리고 이 회사는 당신의 목표와 어떻게 관련이 있습니까?" in Korean. From there, I created my English responses and began translating some responses to Korean. I met with my language partner to translate more difficult passages and go over grammar points.

This turned out to be a challenging assignment because I had to imagine the full course of a conversation, the needed formality level, and how to keep the conversation conversational yet still professional.