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105 Discussion Post #7

Looking back to my PanOpto video, I had created a goal for each of the 4 language skills: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. The majority of what I wanted to accomplish was met except learning about vocabulary related to medicine and the human body. Instead, our group thought it would be more beneficial to learn terms used in weather reports. While reading the article, I was surprised by how many expressions I didn’t recognize. I could describe the weather as sunny, windy, or cloudy, but the advanced terminology used in the articles confused me. Luckily, I was told that the expressions were commonly used in each report, so I just needed to understand those vocabulary terms to interpret the readings. Even though I didn’t learn about it in class, I still was interested in learning some of the organs in Korean, so I used multiple websites to look them up. I never knew that the words for heart (심장) and kidney (신장) were so similar and many of the other parts sounded alike.

 

In class, we discussed about derivational and inflectional morphemes. Before, having that lesson, I didn’t think about how a word might change by adding on a morpheme, but now I am more aware and am able to recognize them in my target language. Discussions regarding language structures helped me distinguish the differences between English and Korean such as how sentences are structured.

 

Language and culture go hand in hand. Language brings those alike together and create a unique culture apart from different languages. An example I can think of is around friend groups. In Korea where it is a collectivist culture, the people that make up a friend group are usually very similar when it comes to personality, interests, and how they dress. In the U.S., I find that the people that make up a friend group are unique from each other and might have different personalities and traits but are bonded with a common thing (whatever that might be).

 

To further improve my communicative competence, I think I need to challenge myself outside of my comfort zone and immerse myself more into the culture. Instead of texting short Korean phrases, attempting to have a full conversation in my target language would help. I would say that I have more than basic interpersonal communicative skills because I can communicate beyond basic exchanges, but I am not at the level of cognitive academic language proficiency.

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Biweekly Journal March 1

Biweekly Journal March 1

            Last week Jenna and I practiced writing letters. During class, I wrote a letter to my parents in Korean. The sentences I wrote were very basic and simple sentences, but I focused on practicing my grammar, spacing, punctuation, and bachims from last week. I wrote around four to five sentences for my parents. Jenna looked over and checked to see my spelling and grammar. She told me how many mistakes I made in the letter and I looked for what mistakes I made without Jenna telling me. This was a great way for me to find my own mistakes and look for what I have done wrong. Although I might have been wrong with some of the mistakes, I thought I made, I was able to find a couple of the mistakes Jenna found. After looking over the mistakes with Jenna and correcting it, I attempted to rewrite the whole letter again using the correct spelling and grammar. For homework for this week, I decided to write another letter to my sister in Korean. I went over my letter with Jenna to see what mistakes I made for this letter. I found a couple of mistakes on my own, but Jenna pointed out a couple more that I looked over.

            Over the last couple of weeks, I found that I have gotten better at grammar and spelling in Korean. Although the sentences are simple, I have been getting better at writing full sentences with correct spacing, grammar, and spelling. For example, my bachims have gotten increasingly better with less mistakes. I think the best practice for me is to rewrite my mistakes and recognize my mistakes. For the next few weeks, I hope to continue to improve my Korean writing skills and recognize my mistakes. I will also continue to read Korean articles on Naver and continue to listen to Korean music. Also, I think a great idea to get better at writing Korean is to watch some Korean drama shows and some YouTube videos. I’ve been watching a lot of sports highlights in Korean and it has been good to listen to some of the vocab words they say. Also, I have been watching Korean news broadcasts. These news broadcasts talk about the weather as well as current news.

            For my next short-term goal, I hope to get faster at writing Korean and be able read Korean faster. I think I should start to read more articles in Korean and understand words through context. I’ll aim to read at least 2-3 articles for next week and write a summary for them. Jenna will be able to read over it and see if I have any mistakes. One of the most common mistakes I am having is the “eu” and “ee” spelling in some of the words. I feel like when I pronounce the words I want to write; I will be able to use the correct vowel of either “eu” or “ee”. This is the one grammatical mistake I will focus on for next week.

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