Blogs

Learning Journal 7:  Reflect upon your progress to date, consider the effectiveness of your learning plan and activities, and discuss what changes--if any--you will make to finish the semester.

My progress at this point, in consideration of my learning plan and activities, has fluctuating. One day, I will be having a great conversation in Czech with my friend from abroad, but another day, I will be hard-pressed to find a situation where I can use my Czech. I think one of the biggest struggles of learning a new language is having no environment to practice. I tried my best to try and find people to speak with, but it has been difficult to try and find an appropriate time to focus simply on the language. I think one of the things that I would have changed would have been having a language partner, or being more active about reserving a time to speak with another person. I have skyped and face timed with my abroad friends, but during that time we barely used any Czech because they wanted to practice their English. Overall, I think the fluctuation could have been minimized. 

I think I accomplished a good amount of my goals that I set out for this semester. I reached many of my goals in the learning plan. One of the stumbling blocks that I encountered was figuring out where to start for one of my main goals, which was to learn more vocabulary. The Korean language is massive and I wanted to learn practical phrases and words that would be used in day to day interactions. Thankfully, Joora, my learning partner, helped guide me on where to begin and what kind of topics would be the most practical to learn. The most interesting thing that I learned for 111 was the history of Korea during Japan's invasion. It happened so recently, but I knew nothing about it and it was such an impact in the country's history and culture. For 112, I hope to put an emphasis on learning more things about the culture of Korea and its history. 

This week, my goal was to start a new section in uTalk. I started learning directions and travel. Starting a new section has made me realize that I want to learn a variety of subjects like food and restaurant words which are equally as important and if not even more practical when traveling. Overall, I find that I get excited but also overwhelmed when I start learning a new topic because I want to use it but I also want to learn more. The more I learn, the harder it is for me to recall as quickly or sometimes I'll recall the wrong word. This is going to take more repetition practice. 

안녕하새요!!! 

Here it is!!! 

It's my final cultural presentation!!! 

For it, I'll be talking about Christianity in South Korea! 

The main focus of my time this semester with learning Korean was learning about the culture of the Korean Church so I'm very happy and excited to share with you information about it! 

I'll also be sharing my own personal experience of Christianity in South Korea too!  I hope y'all are as blessed as I was when I was studying abroad in South Korea, experiencing my faith! 

Korean 111_Cultural Project

This week, I worked on rewriting the words and phrases we have learned so far. The hard part is not being sure of which vowels are supposed to be making the sound I think I am hearing. Again this has to do with listening and being able to recognize and distinguish sounds which is still hard for me. I think that by writing out the words, hopefully I can better understand the distinction between the sounds and the vowels that are making them. 

My goal for this week was to start listening to more Turkish. The way I practiced this was by looking up Turkish songs and their lyrics online. Then I would listen to the same song a few times to see if I could recognize any of the words. If I thought I heard one I recognized, I would find it in the lyrics and then try to look it up to remind myself what that word meant. I obviously don't have enough vocabulary to be able to figure out what the song means but I think this exercise also helps me with my pronunciation.  

This week, my goals are to be more confident in using the limited Turkish that I do know. I Skyped with a friend this week and he was at a Turkish restaurant and I was like "oh! I know a little Turkish!". I think that the hardest part of actually using the Turkish I know is being able to recall words and construct phrases on the spot. For this I realize that my practice should be a lot of repetition so that I don't have to think about it so much when I want to recall something to be able to use it. Flash cards are a good way to practice words and repetition, but in terms of constructing phrases I haven't found a particularly efficient way to practice this. 

For this semester, I planned to learn Korean Alphabets (Hangul), to ask simple questions, and to introduce my family and myself. In general, I am pleased with my learning result, as I met most of my learning goals and the learning sessions with language partner were very effective and fun. I also found useful resources for me to continue my self-learning of Korean. Through the meetings with Minkyung, I was practicing my spoken Korean in a real room setting, which helped with my listening and pronunciation. I also learned many useful sets of words including vegetables, directions, number, family members, and animals. Because of my interest in Korean culture, I can also learn from listening to k-pop and watch k-drama once I have laid a foundation this semester. I wrote a more detailed reflection in my reflection paper if you are interested in knowing more about my learning experience.

One of my main goals was to learn Hangul, which is the alphabet system in Korean. After this semester I would say that I succeeded. I can read and write many words in Korean. However, my vocabulary is still very limited. I can introduce myself and my family in Korean, which is a significant progress for me. On top of that, I can now make basic conversation with my Korean friends. I can ask simple questions like “Do you want to eat?”, “Where are you from?”, “Is it delicious?”, etc.

Some of the biggest challenges for me were learning the different forms of the vowels in the alphabet system (when 2 vowels are combined to make another sound), sentence structure, and grammar. When the vowels are combined into one, some of them sound exactly the same but different length in the sound. It was really confusing for me because it really depends on the word. The Korean sentence structure is also really tough because the structure is completely different than English and Indonesian (my native language). Lastly, grammar is also another area I have been struggling in, such as adding suffix in the end of a word to make it grammatically correct. However, as a beginner, this shouldn’t really be my focus because I can still say a sentence (constructed from words without being grammatically correct) and Korean people can still make sense of it.

Learning Korean has been a great experience so far. It has been a very long time since I learned a new language. Last time I attempted to learn a new language was probably 10 years ago when I tried to learn Mandarin. However, I decided to give up after 2 years because I didn’t feel the need to learn Mandarin. On the other side, learning Korean this semester was definitely a different experience and it was a positive one. One of my main goals was to learn Hangul, which is the alphabet system in Korean. After this semester I would say that I succeeded. I can read and write many words in Korean. However, my vocabulary is still very limited. Thus, I may be able to read or write words, but do not know the meaning of them.

The main goal for me to learn Korean was to make basic conversations with my Korean friends and also Korean elders. As mentioned many times, honorifics are greatly emphasized in the Korean language system. I would say that I have not been too successful in learning the formality in the Korean language. First of all, it would be too much for me to learn both formal and informal ways of saying things. Second of all, it wasn’t really the main focus in my learning progress because I was trying to understand the meaning of the words and constructing sentences. Therefore, if I were to continue my learning, I will put more focus into learning the honorifics.

Some of the biggest challenges for me were learning the different forms of the vowels in the alphabet system (when 2 vowels are combined to make another sound), sentence structure, and grammar. When the vowels are combined into one, some of them sound exactly the same but different length in the sound. It was really confusing for me because it really depends on the word. The Korean sentence structure is also really tough because the structure is completely different than English and Indonesian (my native language). Lastly, grammar is also another area I have been struggling in, such as adding suffix in the end of a word to make it grammatically correct. However, as a beginner, this shouldn’t really be my focus because I can still say a sentence (constructed from words without being grammatically correct) and Korean people can still make sense of it.

Having to do the artifacts definitely helped a lot in constructing sentences because you have to be able to put together the words that you have learned. Also, the 2 articles about bilinguals are very interesting. As a bilingual myself, I would want to agree with the New York Times article that argues that bilinguals are smarter. However, there is some sort of bias in their argument of being smart. What does it mean to be smart? And there are other variables outside of the argument that can affect kids’ intelligence besides having the ability to know one more language. So I definitely want to learn more about the effect of being a bilingual on intelligence. 

*I also attached my final learning plan that shows self-assessment

Angella%20Lee%27s%20Final%20Learning%20Plan.pdf. 

    I had a really fun time taking SDLC 105 and 110 for the first time this semester by learning the language of Korean. Since my parents and family members are Korean, I did have some previous experience of learning this language. However, I was born in the United States, so my first language was not Korean. As a result, having a self-directed class was helpful because I was able to plan out my own goals of what I wanted to learn and achieve. As an autonomous learner, I was able to structure my learning to target the topics that I still do not know. For example, one of my main goals this semester was to learn about the different types of majors and careers in Korean. I wanted to learn this because I wanted to overcome my struggles of talking about my college life with other family members and friends. I am happy that I was able to achieve this goal first because now I can have better conversations with others about not only my major but also those of others.

     As I am stronger in speaking Korean than reading or writing, I have definitely struggled with trying to fully comprehend news articles in Korean. However, I continued to work on this goal by developing  a gradual way to achieve it. I tried to first familiarize myself with the vocabulary used in news broadcasts by looking at helpful links. Then, I used SCOLA to look up news videos, which is easier to understand because it is auditory. Afterwards, my learning partner and I worked on reading a news article and translating it from English to Korean! It was nice to see how far I developed with comprehension, which I can always expand upon by listening to more videos and reading more articles.

     For SDLC 105, I really appreciated the readings that dealt with bilingualism because I am a bilingual speaker with English and Korean. I have definitely heard arguments about whether bilingual speakers are smarter or not, which is why it was interesting to read about two different articles that talked about the pros and cons of the same topic. I think it would be nice to expand upon this topic in the future because it opens up a question that is always debated, so it can lead to thoughtful discussions.

     For SDLC 110, I am really glad that I could plan out and implement my own goals for learning Korean. Since I have previous experience, I will not be actively learning in a lecture-structured classroom setting because I would already know the material. As a result, as an autonomous learner, I was in control of what I wanted to learn, which actually helped me a lot to focus on the specific things that I struggle with. For instance, along with majors and careers, I also struggled with learning about family relationships because there are very complicated ways to address relatives from your mother’s side vrsus those from your father’s side. My other goals were also very specific to what I wanted to learn, so it was a great experience to work with a learning partner to target the specific topics that I wanted to focus on.   

So far, I think that my techniques have been pretty effective to help me learn Turkish. I would like to be able to dedicate more focused time to reviewing what we learn in our lessons and maybe rewriting them would help to cement them. In addition, I would like to be able to spend some time on my own in a quite place practicing listening and pronouncing out loud the new words I've been learning. The applications and programs are good but it is hard to find a quiet spot to practice out loud. I'll have to work on that. Overall, I think that my learning plan has been effective. In addition, Sezgi has been teaching us other basic topics that are not part of my learning plan but will probably be useful. Things like the weather that I never really considered learning as part of a basic practice. I enjoy learning these things with her since I wouldn't have thought to learn them first even though it might help to just generally strengthen my vocabulary and comprehension skills.

My goal for this week is to improve my pronunciation. I still sometimes get tripped up on the difference between the "o" and "ö" sounds, the "u" and "ü" sounds, and the "i" and the i without a dot sounds. Overall, I think I just need to listen to them being said more in words and practice repeating them. I like that some of the programs I've been using let you slow down the word when they pronounce it so you can more clearly hear the individual sounds. I also have been practicing recording myself saying the words to compare the pronunciation with the pre-recorded ones. 

   This semester, we will be focusing on the reading and writing of Korean Hangul system. I am very excited because by learning the Hangul system, not only could I be able to write Korean words, but my ability of reading and listening will be greatly improved as well since I will be able to link the pronunciation with the letters.

    We learned the 14 basic consonants this week. Most Korean consonants come in three versions, unaspirated (without a puff of air), aspirated (with a puff of air) and tensed (stressed). Unaspirated consonants exist in English too, but never alone, for example,  the sound of 'p' in "pot" (aspirated) and "spot" (unaspirated).I found it helpful to pronounce a little "m" in front to 'stop' the puff. While Tensing isn't really found in English,  pronouncing the consonant quick and hard could be a good way for tensing consonants. 

    Also, I found a very useful video to self study Korean alphabet: http://korean.cuk.edu/en/. There are many different levels of Korean language learning lectures. Level 1.1, 1.2 are the introduction of consonants and vowels and the pace and structure of the lectures are very good for beginners.

In the past two semesters, I learned Korean food, political, and social culture such as women's status in Korean, Korean military service, Korean housewife culture, etc. This semester, I would like to explore the drama and k-pop culture in Korean. Although these seem to be the entry-level knowledge for Korean culture lovers, I chose to explore the k-drama and k-pop at this stage rather than at the beginning because I want to be able to really understand the lyrics and simple lines rather than reading the English subtitles. After self learning Korean for two semesters, I can now understand most of the simple dialogues and can read simple lines in k-drama. I feel great when I could really understand the Korean singers introducing the songs and emotions in Korean since there is always a translation difference. Therefore my goal for the Korean culture learning this semester is to watch more Korean dramas, concerts, interviews, and TV shows and try to read the Korean subtitles rather than English subtitles. My goal is to explore how and why Korean entertainment companies could make so successful pop songs and dramas and make them popular all over the world. I also would like to explore the synergy and commonalities between k-pop and hip-pop.

SDLAP_learning%20plan112.docx

Presentation

Cultural Presentation about Tourism in South Korea

Since the file is bigger than 7 mb, the link above will lead to box.

The presentation is about growing tourism in South Korea, along with some popular tourist attractions. Tourism in South Korea is growing with an increasing number of 11,100,000 foreigners visiting in 2012. This makes South Korea 20th most visited country in the world, and 6th in Asia. The recent popularity of South Korea can be attributed to the "Korean Wave", where fans of KPOP are visiting Korea. The domestic tourism expenditure for Korea was around 14.4 trillion won.

Seoul, Myeongdon, Hongdae, Pangyo, Gangnam, Bukchon, and Jeju Island are some of the most popular attractions in South Korea. Some of these are visited for the unique food, shopping, or just the scenery. 

South Korea is a diverse peninsula with different characteristics based on where you go. The food is diverse, and the shopping is unbeatable. Because of these reasons, South Korea is known for its tourism.

Summary of Cultural presentation:

My cultural presentation focused on the gender inequality issue in Korea.  Even though South Korea is the 11^th largest economy and a developed country, gender inequality still exists in many aspects of society. It is ranked 117^th out of 142 countries in gender equality.  In workforce, employers fear that women are more likely to quit working certain stages of her life. Therefore, they prefer to hire men than women. There is also society’s expectation on women’s physical appearance.  It is especially true in the entertainment industry. Cultural reason is still the main reason for gender inequality.  Confucius culture assumes different roles for each gender. However, Korea is changing and more women attend higher education and hold higher job positions than ever.  

Sources: a reference slide is included in the powerpoint.

Korean%20Cultural%20Presentation.pptx

For this week, I want to learn basic conversation about my semester and major. To achieve success in making conversation, I must pay attention to the grammar structure in constructing sentences in Korean. I plan to understand the basic sentence structure in the Korean system and combine words to make the sentences. I think the Korean system uses the SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) system when constructing most of the sentences. I plan to accomplish these goals with my language partner, who has helped me a lot in learning Korean. 

This week I plan to learn on learning to text in Korean. I want to be able to text in Korean with my suitemates. For example, I want to be able to ask if they’re going to D-hall in Korean or saying “what are you doing” in Korean. I have learned some of the words before, but I haven’t tried writing them in Korean. So this week, I plan to practice on my writing skills using the Korean alphabet. To accomplish these goals, I will practice them with my language partner and use google translate to see the correct spelling.