For my third artifact, I wrote a letter to my cousin in Korea. I asked her how she was doing and I told her I have been busy with mid-terms and that I was learning Korean from Joora. I also wrote that the weather was warming up and that Spring was approaching in Richmond. I wished her good luck with her studies and told her I will visit her in Korea soon.
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We learned to say the consonants and vowels of the Korean alphabet. This took a while because we were learning how to combine them into an actual words. I am still trying to improve on my pronunciation and my memorization of the vowels. It will help with me being able to tell words faster. I will continue to review with flashcards of the alphabet. Attached below is my first artifact.
Learning a language's history is essential to grasping the meaning behind certain nuances and words that may have cultural connotations or some sort of historically significant origin. I did some research on the Turkish alphabet's history
During the Ottoman Empire, which existed not too long ago, Turkish used the Arabic alphabet. However, after the collapse of the Empire and the creation of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk enlisted a new alphabet (using the Roman alphabet as guidance) and mandated everyone to use it. Ataturk also was instrumental in the part that Islam would play in the Republic. He believed that religion's heavy hand had a lot to do with why the Ottoman Empire did not succeed and he wanted to create a secular state that was not threatened by a doctrine of faith, which is why he switched the alphabet to Latin, instead of keeping it Arabic. He also wanted to make the country more appealing to the EU and the rest of the world, instead of not really fitting in with the Middle East.
I've found that Turkish culture and language are both heavily influenced by their society's expectations of upholding traditions of respect for elders and those you do not know, there is a sort of "old" feeling to the language. I would compare it to Old English. For instance, if you do not personally know someone, you have to use the formal version of the verbs when speaking to them. The traditions, like wedding rituals, coffee fortune-telling, and religion are all so interesting and unique. I think the part that interests me the most is the significance of religion in Turkey, so that is most likely what I will do my Cultural Presentation on. I am really intrigued how the language has changed, as well.
During the Ottoman Empire, which existed not too long ago, Turkish used the Arabic alphabet. However, after the collapse of the Empire and the creation of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk enlisted a new alphabet (using the Roman alphabet as guidance) and mandated everyone to use it. Ataturk also was instrumental in the part that Islam would play in the Republic. He believed that religion's heavy hand had a lot to do with why the Ottoman Empire did not succeed and he wanted to create a secular state that was not threatened by a doctrine of faith. He even went so far as to ban headscarves in public buildings (i.e. governmental, public universities, etc.). If an American president ever attempted to enact such a law, there would be an uproar of public outrage over such a distorted religious perspective. In that way though, Turkey differs from the United States. Turkey's rich history and conflict over religion led to a special circumstance where the people were enthused to see a secular state. Now however, Turkey is reverting to its non-secular ways with the current president placing a bigger emphasis on Islam in Turkey. I am very interested to see how this influences Turkey's future. I think that at this point, there has been too much westernization in Turkey to return to an Arabic alphabet, but it was done once before.
In order to improve my language competence, I think that I need to do more speaking outside of class time. In the past, I have been introduced to languages on a basis of meeting everyday of the week. That has been helpful to me because I do not lose much from day to day. But I think that in a way, that was lucky of me. I think that my vocabulary apps have done me well because I am able to bring words to mind rather quickly when asked a question, however, when I want to form sentences and paragraphs on my own, I hesitate.
This first week we started learning the Korean Alphabet Hangul. We started from learning the consonants. There was a worksheet that provided the actually writing of the consonant and the pronunciation. From there we were quizzed in the next few classes on reading, writing, and listening. The strategy to learning this was to constantly repeat it and write it. It is like the beginning of learning mandarin be pe mo fo. It is something that has to be memorized and after it is memorized it is much easier to learn the rest of the language. I had a lot of difficulties actually remembering the consonant while also remembering on how to write it.
Before taking this class, I did not fully realize how important it was to understand the culture of your target language in order to fully utilize the language in the real world. I have taken Spanish courses before, and although interesting, I never found the attention to cultural aspects of the language to be very important. Through videos such as Culture Shock, I discovered how strange it can be for a someone to be immersed in a new culture, and understanding some of the cultural differences related to a target language allow you to focus more on improving your communication skills. I have a particular interest in learning Spanish from television, and after listening to game shows and news broadcasts this semester I can definitely notice an improvement in my ability to comprehend spoken Spanish. It is still difficult to understand fast speakers, but my comprehension level for average speed speakers is getting better. I have also been working on my speaking skills, but I find it a little more difficult to practice this skill. My friend and I converse in Spanish sometimes, but I definitely notice a difficulty in code switching to Spanish from English since I almost always speak English. It probably won't happen this semester, but if I truly want to become fluent in Spanish I think I need to dedicate time every day where I either talk out loud by myself, or preferably find someone fluent in Spanish that I can talk with on a consistent basis. One of the skills not commonly taught when learning a language is the relevant slang terminology, and I find game shows specifically to be helpful in this regard. Most native speakers do not strictly adhere to the formal way of speaking taught in classrooms, so it is valuable to experience people speaking Spanish in the real world. For me personally I would like to be able to use Spanish when I am in Spain this summer, so I have been looking at some vocabulary that I think will be relevant, such as directional, food, and entertainment terminology. I know I can't learn a large amount of vocabulary that I will actually be able to implement in practice, so I am focusing primarily on what is most relevant to me. I have also been watching some soccer in Spanish, because I have a strong interest in sports and a lot of the terms in soccer are applicable to other sports. Apart from learning the language itself, I am very excited to be immersed in Spanish culture this summer. I find Spanish culture to be fascinating, and the more I learn about it the more I want to improve my Spanish language skills as well.
The attachment is my learning plan for this semester.
My First Artifact is to about greeting, introducing my name and where I am from, and thank you.
It goes like this:
Hello
Nice to meet you
My name is Ziwei Liao
I am 22 years old
I am from China
Thank you very much
I have been able to introduce myself and add my nationality by saying, "My name is Emily. I am from Virginia." I think that my pronunciation of the alphabet has definitely improved. It is a bit difficult with some of the letters that are the same as English but have different sounds. I think I am catching on pretty quickly to being able to communicate without too much thought going into what I am saying. But at the same time, I know that I have an accent that I'm not sure I will be able to get rid of in this one semester.
I learned more vocabulary via my apps and I am progressing pretty quickly in my opinion, although still maybe not keeping up with my original learning plan.
We have not yet gone over family.
The Culture Shock video was not at all surprising, possibly because I have experienced culture shock firsthand and therefore I have a sense of empathy for those experiencing it. Perhaps, if you asked me when I was a freshman at UR about my conceptions about culture shock, I may have had a more surprised reaction. You see it on TV shows and you see it in ethnic enclaves in communities of immigrants where they never fully adapted to the new society in which they live, so they do not learn the new language and they do not make friends out side of their comfortable social circles.
Today, after studying abroad in China and interning abroad in Latin America, I think I recognize that I am in an unfamiliar place and use that as motivation to discover where I belong, if I do, in the new society. When I first arrived in China, I stuck with people who were also international, which was not hard as I was in an exchange program in an international university. But as I stepped out of my comfort zone, and put my language skills to use, I found that there were aspects of the society that I never would have discovered had I remained in my privileged bubble. Because the ability to remain a participating member of society while still feeling secure in a new place is privilege. There are people who are totally thrust into a new place where they do not speak the language, nor do they know anyone. That is culture shock in its purest form.
SDLC 110 Learning Journal 3
This week, I first started to review all the Hangul I learned so far. I met with my language partner Minkyung and we will have meetings with her twice a week. She went through the alphabets with us. I tried to combine the alphabets together to pronounce the words but it was very hard to imagine the sound. Three of us had a competition of pronouncing words. In addition, we learned greeting phrases and practiced conversations with each other. Also, this week I watched the music video that repetitively spoke the phrases we just learned. I found the music video to be quite good and really helped me to remember the sentences.
State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
My learning goal for the second week is to understand weather reports. However, I found it is a really hard task for me. At first, I went to KBS website( which is a Korean News broadcast) to find some clips about it. But, the reporters spoke too fast that I couldn't understand most of the monologues. Thus, I went to search some resources online, and found out some very useful dialogues and learned a lot professional words for broadcasting a weather report. And then, I went back to find the original clips I found on the KBS. This time, I found it became more simple for me to understand. So, I write down one of the dialogues in Korean and translated it by myself or by using a dictionary for the words I didn't understand.
The presentations were really good. I loved learning little nuances about the cultures whose languages we are studying. I think that offers a really unique perspective on the language and peoples' reactions and excitement towards what they are studying is encouraging and makes me feel a sense of pride in our abilities to learn new languages.
Specifically, for my classmates learning Turkish, I think we were able to offer them another insight into the culture and tradition behind the language, just as they offered us.
I really enjoyed the Korean presentations because Korean is a language with such a deep-rooted linguistic history and the Chinese contributions to the language are surprising in a way to me. I was surprised when I recognized some of the characters and they retained their meaning when they transferred from Chinese to Korean.
I think I met my learning goals a little bit. In my last post I noted how I would try to just continue what we are doing. I have memorized nationalities and countries that we were taught. I also have mastered basic introductory conversation.
There are some challenges that I am facing with numbers, but we have played a few different games to help that. I think it's actually a lot more simple than I think and reminds me of an even easier version of numbers in Chinese in a way. Chinese is very unique in that it counts the places and goes by tens, so twenty-five is literally "two ten five". Turkish has words for tens up to one hundred so all you say for twenty-five is "twenty five" which I guess is more similar to English than Chinese for now.
First Cultural Post: What are your cultural learning goals for this semester?
I’d like to explore Korean idioms as well as Korean slangs/expressions during the course of the semester. My parents often used Korean idioms when talking with their friends, and I wasn't able to understand the meaning even by using context clues. Also, I will be travelling to South Korea this upcoming summer and would like to converse and text with my cousins and friends and understand modern-day slangs/expressions.
I expect to explore these topics by watching Youtube videos and finding a list of popular idioms and slangs/expressions used online. By exploring these topics, I hope to further my speaking and interpersonal skills and better understand Korean culture as well as media/shows.
For this week, my goal is to review the consonants from last week and start the vowel letters. They areㅏ ㅐ ㅑ ㅒ ㅓ ㅔ ㅕ ㅖ ㅗ ㅘ ㅙ ㅚ ㅛ ㅜ ㅝ ㅞ ㅟ ㅠ ㅡ ㅢ ㅣ. To help me to remember the letters, I practiced writing them and their English sounds. However, I seem to always get confused with ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅑ, ㅕ because they look very similar. I also wanted YouTube Videos that taught Hangul and how the pronunciations can be related to any English words. Besides that, I also looked up some introduction phrases and practiced to speak couple of them. So far I still write English sounds to relate how they are pronounced because I haven’t gotten Hangeul yet.
Conjugation grammar is something that I think I could spend a whole semester learning. I think that it wouldn't be very hard because it is all compounded, but trying to identify what the root word is when I don't really have an extensive vocabulary is really difficult. I think it is something that I will get more comfortable with as my vocabulary increases and I become more familiar with the language. I will do this by practicing vocabulary, assessing words carefully, and reading critically.
