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   So far, I've learnt the vocabulary from two artifacts. I know some descriptive words to introduce someone's genders, ages, and some common job positions. Also, I'm able to talk about family members and introduce parents and siblings, and all of those sentences involve the vocabularies. Now, I'm working on the vocabularies to describe specific time and time period. For example, 1 am and 1 hour are different and they have different expressions, so I'd like to distinguish them and be able to talk more about time and time period better. 

  Besides that, when I watch Korean dramas and listen to learning lectures from Youtube, I can learn new vocabularies in daily life such as milk, cinema, movie, star, celebrity and so forth. I didn't count how many new words I learnt, but every time watching lectures, there will be less than ten words for beginners to remember. 

  Therefore, as a beginner, I set my goal to review the words I already seen and also continue know more new words. But I find that sometimes one vocabulary needs several times to memorize and I need to keep seeing it in order to have a deeper impression. So my progress of learning new words is not fast. 

My learning goals for this week include going over Lessons 34 to 40 on How to Study Korean online study site. I personally really enjoy using this site because a lot of the information caters to my level and focus. It has a lot of vocabulary words, and I learn a lot of adjectives and verbs through this online study site. I might also continue working on Berkeley's Online Intermediate Korean again, but pick lessons that interest me or will help me with more practical speaking skills. The past few weeks I've realized I learn best by reading sentences in Korean aloud (often speaking with the audio/speaker). This has really helped me with my pronunciation and fluency of words and I plan to continue using this method. 

Introducing myself and my family: 

Vocaroo_s0znC1Yw0uUy.mp3

Translation:

Hello. My name is Vivian. I'm 21 years old. I'm a junior in college. I study Healthcare Studies and Biology at University of Richmond. I was born in Korea, but moved to the U.S. with my parents when I was 8 years old. I'm the only child. During my free time, I like to play the violin and piano. I also enjoy watching movies and eating out with my friends. My dad is a dental technician and my mom works at a small store. We have one dog. His name is Popcorn, and is very cute. 

What I have been working on: I have been working on learning weather terms and practicing talking about the seasons. I have been continuing to learn religious words and signs that I would use on a daily basis.

Statement: I want to speak in multiple complete sentences.

Strategies: I have been practicing with other speakers and watching videos without captions.

Effectiveness: As mentioned before, watching videos without captions is a good way to gauge how much I am learning.

Building on what I have learned: I am continuing to put the vocabulary I am learning into complete sentences. I am also continuing to find resources that can help me learn more words and more about the culture. YouTube is becoming a great resource, especially with finding videos without captions. 

My learning goal for this week is to watch Korean for Beginners II Lecture 1 from MasterTOPIK on YouTube. Each lesson/lecture is about 45 to 50 min long, and I found the Beginners I Lecture series very helpful so I want to continue with the series. The video includes a lot of dialogues and is very engaging. The first lecture went over a lot of grammar structures and common mistakes. When I watched the Beginners I lecture series, I took notes on grammar and tenses. I would also follow the instructor and say things out loud with her to further my reading skills and pronunciation. 

Link to the Video: http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEsB9pxfZl8

I also posted pictures from my trip to Korea last year during winter break! Feel free to check them out under my photos tab on my page!  

For this week, my learning goals are to go over easily misspelled words and common grammar mistakes in Korean. I hope to improve my spelling and writing skills by practicing writing easily misspelled words list from Berkeley's Online Intermediate College Korean. There are 13 listed on the site, with explanations and ways to differentiate two similar sounding characters and words. Although I think the Korean is fairly easy to read, spelling is difficult because there are a lot of silent characters (homograph). So there are many words that sound the same but are spelled differently. Comparing it to English it would be something like: flower vs. flour. Also, in Korean, spacing between words are crucial, especially in writing because it could change an entire meaning of a sentence. There's a classic example of this in Korean where "My dad went into the room" can change to "I went into my dad's bag" by changing just the spacing in the sentence. I'm hoping to improve on these areas by trying to message my parents using just Korean so I can become more familiar with spelling with help of autocorrect. 

For my learning activity, I decided to go over kinship terms for family members. It's slightly confusing in Korean because the terms differ for maternal and paternal side of the family. I had to review a lot of these for myself and thought it would be useful for others to learn. 

Mom: Umma

Grandma (mom's side): whae-halmoni

Grandpa (mom's side): whae-harabuji

Uncle (mom's side): Yimobu 

Aunt (mom's side): Yimo

Dad: Appa

Grandma (dad's side):chin halmoni

Grandpa (dad's side):chin harabuji

Uncle (dad's side): Go-mobu

Aunt (dad's side): Go-mo

For males: 

Older sister: noona

Older brother: hyung 

For females:

Older sister: unni

Older brother: Oppa

For my second artifact, I created a dialogue (with myself), and took roles of both A and B, where A asked questions and B answered questions regarding identity. 

Translation: 

1) What is your name? 

My Korean name is Juwon. My English name is Vivian.

2) How old are you this year? 

I am 21 years old. 

3) Where were you born?

I was born in Seoul, Korea. 

4) Where do you live?

I live in Northern Virginia. 

5) When is your birthday? 

June 12

6) What are your hobbies? 

Playing the violin, drawing/art, origami

7) What is your favorite color? 

Light blue

8) Do you work? 

No, I'm a college student. I'm currently a third year.

I've been using Berkeley's Intermediate College Korean lessons, but some of the lessons were getting way to difficult, especially those pertaining to Korean history. I plan to continue using it, but I wanted to find another source that was a better match for my level and practicality. I found howtostudykorean.com and looked through the site. There are 7 total units including Hanja. After looking through the website, I decided to skip to Unit 2, because I knew majority of the things in Unit 0 and 1. This site goes over a lot more vocabulary words and grammar in a step-by-step fashion, which is helpful for me. I'm hoping this site strengthens my grammar and vocabulary skills. I'm going to continue watching Korean language and culture related videos on Youtube because there are all so interesting and fun! It really makes learning fun!

Vocaroo_s0VSEfnGKmvG.mp3

In this recording, I asked and answered questions about identity in Korean:

Translation: 

1) What is your name? 

My Korean name is Juwon. My English name is Vivian.

2) How old are you this year? 

I am 21 years old. 

3) Where were you born?

I was born in Seoul, Korea. 

4) Where do you live?

I live in Northern Virginia. 

5) When is your birthday? 

June 12

6) What are your hobbies? 

Playing the violin, drawing/art, origami

7) What is your favorite color? 

Light blue

8) Do you work? 

No, I'm a college student. I'm currently a third year.

For my first artifact, I recorded a short clip of introducing myself in Korean. I said (translated): Hello. Nice to meet you. My name is Vivian. I'm 21 years old. I was born in Seoul, South Korea, but moved to the U.S. when I was 8. I'm currently a third year at University of Richmond. I want to become a dentist in the future. 

For evaluation for accent, cultural appropriateness, and linguistic accuracy, I sent my recording to my Korean friend who is a native speaker. I speak slower in Korean in English, but she said my introduction was culturally appropriate (used jondatmal) and had good flow and right choice of words. My friend said that I had a slight accent (probably an English accent) in some of the words, but overall, was pretty good. 

I've also completed my goals for Weeks 4 and 5. I've learned how to converse casually with friends. I went over lesson 4 and 5 and they were both in banmal not jondaetmal so it was easier for me to follow along. The audio for the texts speak pretty fast so I had to replay it a couple of times to hear the correct pronounciation, but I mainly use the audio for listening to the flow of sentences (but I wish there was slower version).

SDLC%20105%20Journal%206.docx

My goals and tasks for week 6 are to complete Lesson 6 and 7 on Berkeley's Intermediate College Korean website. Lesson 6's topic is on Korean/Lunar New Year, which was also my presentation topic in SDLC 105. Most of the lessons include text in a dialogue form, so I think it'll be interesting to learn how to share Korean holidays with others. Lesson 7 is on going to KangWonDo to visit grandparents. This will be interesting and different because the topic and dialogue takes place near the country side instead of the city, which where most topics seem to be on. In the previous lessons, I had some trouble with the additional exercises section because there were a good number of vocabulary words that I did not know. I've been keeping a notebook with a list of new words I've learned with its meaning and I plan to do the same for Lesson 6 and 7. I evaluate my learning goals by completing the 'Additional Exercise' problems after each lesson on Berkeley's Intermediate College Korean website. It's nice because I can evaluate how well I understood each lesson by taking the quiz and checking the answers at the end.

Vocaroo_s0xIyVwt1SGY.mp3

Translation: 

Hello. Nice to meet you. My name is Vivian. I'm 21 years old. I was born in Seoul, South Korea, but moved to the U.S. when I was 8. I'm currently a third year at University of Richmond. I want to become a dentist in the future. 

My goals and tasks for weeks 4 and 5 are to complete Lesson 4 and 5 on Berkeley's Intermediate College Korean website. Lesson 4's topic is on part-time jobs and Lesson 5 is on conversing with friends. I think these two topics are going to be very useful and applicable in everyday life. In the previous lessons, I had some trouble with the additional exercises section because there were a good number of vocabulary words that I did not know. I've been keeping a notebook with a list of new words I've learned with its meaning and I plan to do the same for Lesson 4 and 5. I've been using an online Korean/English Dictionary for definitions and translating purposes, but sometimes Google Translator seems to do the job well. For week 4 and 5 I hope to find something online on Korean slang words and phrases, because I am not familiar with them. I've learned a few from watching Korean dramas, but I'd like to learn more to use when I visit Korea. I evaluate my learning goals by completing the 'Additional Exercise' problems after each lesson on Berkeley's Intermediate College Korean website. It's nice because I can evaluate how well I understood each lesson by taking the quiz and checking the answers at the end. 

https://youtu.be/qptE4TIzVxI ;

For my teaching activity, I taught my friend some basic phrases in ASL:

“Hello.”

“Goodbye.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“How are you?”

“I’m good.”

“I’m fine.”

“Thank you.”

“Please.”

“Sorry.”

The activity went very well. Most of the phrases just involve one sign and even the ones that are longer sentences involve three signs at most. My friend had a slight struggle with “Nice to meet you” because of the positioning of the fingers for the sign “meet,” but she got the hang of it very quickly. Hopefully, she will remember some of them and will be able to briefly communicate with a deaf or hard-of-hearing person if she ever has the chance in the future. 

Effective of learning plan and activities: So far, things are going well. I am continuing to look for resources that can help me, both with the language and with the culture. Watching videos is incredibly helpful and something I plan to keep doing.

Discuss changes: I don’t think I will make any changes at this point to my learning plan. I just need to continue practicing and learning new words and phrases. I only wish I was able to have more interaction with the deaf and those who know ASL throughout the week. It can be hard only practicing twice a week, but the good thing about ASL is that I can speak English and sign at the same time, so I can still practice, in one sense of the word. 

What I have been working on: I am continuing to learn more vocabulary, both religious and basic day-to-day things.

Statement: I want to be able to sign complex sentences.

Strategies: Practicing fingerspelling. Repetition. Watching videos of people signing (without captions).

Effectiveness: It is really helpful to watch videos without captions, because then I can figure out exactly what I do and do not know.

Building on what I have learned: I am just continuing to learn basic signs and learn how one sign can mean multiple things.

I have been reviewing the online lessons on Berkeley's Intermediate College Korean site and it was very helpful and fun. The texts and dialogue come with an audio component so I can practice my reading skills and fluency as I practice out loud along with the audio. Each lesson also contains grammar review and practice exercises which have been very helpful, because one of my main goals is to improve my grammar. I will continue using this site since it works well for me and my current level of Korean. Some of the lessons actually seem a bit advanced for me, but has helped me learn a lot new vocabulary words. I'm also keeping up with a lot of language as well as cultural videos on YouTube, which have made learning really fun and easy to understand.  

Learning Plan

Based on the Levels of Competence and Can-Do statements, I’m currently between Novice High and Intermediate Low in Korean. I can participate in conversations on a number of familiar topics using simple sentences, and can handle short social interactions in everyday situations by asking and answering simple questions. 

My goals: 

1) Use Korean to handle tasks related to personal needs (schedule an appointment, request services)

2) Talk about my daily activities and personal preferences

My goal is to reach Intermediate Mid level where I can use a series of sentences and exchange more information in Korean.