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In my personal learning time, I have learned about 20 words so far. These words were complex and were words that even native speakers got mixed up from time to time. I wrote down the word and the definition of these words in a list. Then I covered half of page containing the definition and tried to remember all the definitions first. Then, I covered the other half and tried to come up with the word using only the definition. I repeated the process until I was able to do both.

My goals for vocabulary is to learn more complex words in Korean since I can figure out most words in Korean by recognition and context.

Languages go extinct once the last of the speakers die off without passing it onto the next generation. This happens usually in declining populations or with languages that are obsolete and far too difficult to learn. The language itself may have been very inefficient at communicating and therefore became unreliable. 

The language of Silentz, in the US has almost been eradicated due to the last of its speakers being so few in number. However, with the interest of Ms. Johnson and many others, the language saw a sudden revival of the language due to its captivating nature.

I believe that preserving these languages is important because not only are languages important in preserving culture but it also tells us about the history of mankind. Tracing the language to its roots can help linguists narrow down the possibilities of a group of people and their interaction with others. This means that it is important to have organizations that continue to support dying languages in their struggle to spread its culture to the next generation of people.

So far, I have learned around 20 new words in Korean. I learned the words by watching a show or reading a book and writing down new words that I do not know. My Korean mentor would then explain what the word meant and I would keep a book just for new vocabulary words. In my everyday life I would try to incorporate the new words into my daily vocabulary in order to memorize it. Once I have it memorized and have it used in everyday conversations, I would be able to recognize it in any readings and really get comfortable with spelling out the word. Then I would use the word in writings. This method really helped me to memorize new vocabulary words ever since I was a kid and was trying to learn basic vocabulary from my parents. Watching shows and listening to Korean music really got me motivated to continuously use new vocabulary words in hopes of one day becoming conversational in Korean. 

SDLC Journal 2

SDLC Journal 1

My goals/objectives for these past two weeks:

• Complete chapter 6 “Mencari Pekerjaan” in Indonesian Grammar In Context;
• Complete chapter 7 “Keluarga Fata” in Indonesian Grammar In Context;
• Meet with my language partner to work on my reading, writing, and speaking skills; and
• Create a learning activity to teach someone else something you have learned in your language.

These past two weeks, I have completed:

• Complete chapter 6 “Mencari Pekerjaan” in Indonesian Grammar In Context;
• Complete chapter 7 “Keluarga Fata” in Indonesian Grammar In Context;
• Met with my language partner for four hours to work on my reading, writing, and speaking skills; and
• Created a learning activity to teach someone else something I have learned in my language.

Reflection:

I spent about 4 hours each week completing a chapter.

I finished Chapter 6 in Indonesian Grammar In Context. I learned the following:

• The function of the verbal prefix ter-;
• The conjunction sehingga; and
• The stative function of the verbal prefix ter-;

The chapter included a variety of activities: Oral tasks, written tables and charts, and writing exercises. In addition to these activities, I took grammar notes and listed new vocabulary words.

I finished Chapter 7 in Indonesian Grammar In Context. I learned the following:

• Classifiers;
• The conjunctions sambil, sementara, and padahal; and
• Intransitive verbs with the meN- prefix.

Both chapters included a variety of activities: Oral tasks, written tables and charts, and writing exercises. In addition to these activities, I took grammar notes and listed new vocabulary words.

In addition, I met with my language learning partner for 4 hours -- 2 hours/week. Our time was spent on engaging in oral conversational activities like role play and dialogue chats, as well as going over new grammar points and vocabulary.

Learning Activity 

Since this is level three, I presumed the person to whom I am supposed to teach this activity has taken at least level two Indonesian. 

I decided to use the normalization of verbs using -nya as the subject for this activity because making nouns by adding -nya to verbs is very common in colloquial conversation. While this activity is rudimentary, I think it is effective in driving the pattern of the subject at hand across. What follows is an outline of this activity:

Background: Thalia ke Denpasar. Lima hari sesudah dia pergi, Thalia bertemu dengan temmanya, Brad.

Thalia: Saya pergi ke Denpasar.

Brad: (Berangkat -- the verb to be transformed into a noun by adding the -nya prefix) Berangkatnya kapan?

Thalia: Berangkatnya lima hari lagi.

Brad: (Pulang) Pulangnya kapan?

And so on.

During my 6th and 7th weeks I had a goal of being able to express feelings, speak and write about winter break, using past tense and future tense, make sentences about wishes and needs, ask questions, revise animal and fruits vocabulary as well as get familiar with the most famous historical sites of Turkey. I intended to use online resources, two of which I discovered a few weeks ago and found really useful( http://turkishbasics.com, https://www.turkishclass101.com). I also was hoping to use Quizlet for vocabulary revision and ask questions to my language partner.

In order to develop speaking and listening skills, I and my language partner spoke about winter break using different tenses and asked each other questions about our plans. I also got to learn and conjugate more verbs when we were creating sentences. I was able to express some of my wishes such as I want to do this/that in the future or I want to have coffee etc. and ask questions. As planned, I used Quizlet for revising the animals and fruits and made a few sentences of shopping for fruits. I also learnt to express negative and positive feelings when asked how I am or how I feel. These past 2 weeks I did a lot of speaking and listening practice both online and with my classmate. As part of our class, we also got to read a small children's book and tried to translate what we read. It was quite challenging with a number of unfamiliar words but also very useful in terms of reading and pronunciation. My language partner also spoke about the famous Turkish historical sites and told a few interesting stories about their architecture over a cup of Turkish coffee.

Below are some of the sentence.vocabulary artifacts that I used during the past 2 weeks.

This week for my cultural learning Youngmin and I have been going over the Korean royal palace Gyeong Bok Gung(경복궁). This was prompted by a gift from Youngmin that she brought from Korea of a build-it-yourself cardboard model of the palace and grounds, but I was especially excited to learn more about the place

because I had actually visited there on my last trip to Korea. We decided that it would be a good learning exercise to build the model together and then use it as part of my final presentation, with her giving me the instructions and part numbers in Korean, and me following her instructions. It was really helpful to get some practice using the positional vocabulary we had learned and using numbers in a real life situation.

After we finished each building or section she would tell me the name in Korean and then we would read about the history of what we'd just built. We built models of and learned about  structures like 광화문, the great southern gate of the palace which was built in 1395, which I was planning on including a picture of us in front of but Isla vetoed the picture because she didn't think she looked good (which obviously isn't true), but here is a picture of us in front of the museum entrance with Isla attempting to hide from the camera. 

We've covered a lot of new vocabulary and grammatical structures recently and I was really proud to be able to translate a chapter dialogue from the textbook from Youngmin's spoken english to written Korean without any help.

The dialogue was between two friends discussing weekend plans, travelling to school, and playing sports together. It also incorporated new grammatical structures like the different types of negations, doing things together, and positional descriptions. 

In my fourth artifact I read a dialogue written in Korean out loud while attempting to use proper inflection and situational timing. While I know all the vocabulary and understand the material this can still be tricky for me because my reading can be a little slow and its hard to keep the timing fluid and natural. I would say that I can definitely work on my pronunciation and in the future I would like to be able to read at a faster pace. 

Artifact 4

AO_Artifact_4.mp3

Reading a textbook dialogue written in Korean without preparation. 

1) How have you organized your learning plan, and what have you learned so far? 

It is a lot easier for me to “process input” in Catalan than to “produce output.” So, I made a learning plan to “equalize” the gap between my language skills – listening/reading vs. speaking/writing. I have been learning most about pronunciation and how to differentiate Catalan from Castellano. I know how to read out loud in Catalan now (with some help from my LP :) 

2) What challenges or difficulties have you encountered?

I think the biggest challenge is the novelty of it all: learning a new language at an “older age” (compared to when I started learning English); not feeling sure about the pace of the progress; and the flexibility and autonomy in this course.

And I mentioned several throughout the semester how messy my mind would get with all these languages: I would answer my LP unsure if I was speaking in Catalan or in Castellano – or worse, if I was just adding an accent to my Portuguese. Today, talking to someone from Brazil, I thought “Porque” and typed “Because!”

• Third Cultural Post
• Teach someone using the activity you created in Week 9; reflect upon the effectiveness of the activity.

I tried teaching my roommate how to read Korean using the learning activity I developed and it worked with surprising success! The Korean alphabet is pretty simple and intuitive, and while some of the pronunciations can be hard to distinguish, learning the basics can be very intuitive. I taught my roommate Jake the basics of the alphabet and then asked him to match simple Koreanized pop culture names like Batman and Spiderman to their pictures, and he was able to sound out the words with the occasional assistance of the alphabet sheet very quickly. I'd say the exercise was effective and I think incorporating fun activities like this can make learning a new language more engaging and fun. 

For the past 2 weeks my language learning goals combined revision, grammar, vocabulary and cultural activities. I planned on revising the future tense, speaking and writing about my spring break plans, learning new actions verbs, going over times vocabulary(since it is a bit harder than it sounds) and briefly going over the past tense along with speaking about Turkey's current political situation, possibly going over a few news articles etc. 

Firstly, me and my language partner went over the future tense again and created a few sentences about my possible spring break plans, such as where I will be going, who with, what I will be doing etc. Secondly, we went over the most common Turkish verbs and worked on conjugating those in present and future tenses. Next, we did some revision of time vocabulary and how to ask what time it is and answer. Me and my language partner got to speak about Turkey as a country in terms of economics and politics and how those factors shape the culture. We also spoke about Ottoman empire, 1915 Armenian Genocide, its history as well as some common cultural habits present both in Armenian and Turkish cultures. Lastly, we briefly went over the past tense and conjugated 2 verbs just to get the idea of the tense and how it works. 

There was a lot done this week and I felt challenged at times in terms of memorizing vocabulary and being on top of the grammar rules learnt during these past 5 weeks, however with the help of my language partner, classroom discussions and exercises with my classmate, I was able to overcome the challenges and memorize at least 80% of the vocabulary and the majority of the grammar rules. I also took lots of notes during these past 2-3 weeks to make sure my writing, reading, speaking and listening skills were equally developed.

How to say times: Example:

Present tense conjugations: 

Past tense conjugations:Future tense conjugations: 

For my third artifact I went out to a local Korean Barbecue restaurant with my girlfriend. It was really fun talking to the waitress in Korean and ordering food in Korean, even though the waitress seemed significantly less impressed with me than I was feeling. Isla and I tried to speak in Korean as much as possible throughout the dinner, and stick to Korean customs. I told the waitress, 이인분 차돌바기  주새요, 도 갈비 돌솥비빔밥  주새요, which means can I have two orders of chadolbagi, and also an order of galbi hotstone bibimbap? Chadolbagi is my favorite type of Korean barbecue, its this very thinly sliced beef that comes rolled up and raw. When you drop the meat on the hot grill it starts to sizzle and then slowly unrolls. Bibimbap is a classic Korean dish, and this version had rice, chunks of galbi, and plenty of vegetables, cooking in a very hot stone bowl. Isla also descibed the side dishes that they traditionally serve you at Korean barbecue restaurants which she told me are called BanChun, and which can vary widely between restaurants. My favorite BanChun is called Gyu Lan Jjim, and which is like an egg souffle with green onions. 

• In your learning journal, 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.

I think my studies are progressing well and I have learned a lot and become more confidant in my listening skills. My goals of learning practical vocabulary and terms for finding my way around Korea and using public transportation have come very far and I feel confident in my ability to understand and even give basic directions and understand transportation names. One thing I would like to learn more about is the different levels of formality, as we have mostly been learning the informal tenses and I think it would be helpful to learn the formal tenses as well for my goal of talking to my girlfriends parents. 

Recently we've learned how to talk in the past tense in Korean(숙제 했어요, which means I did my homework), how to talk about and describe food (i.e. 갈비 짜요, which means Galbi is tasty/savory), grammatical words like 이게 and 저게, which mean this and that,and 도, which means also, amongst others. 

My learning activity was to teach someone how to read Korean, or at least to learn the Korean alphabet and be able to sound out words. I did this by teaching them the basic consonants and vowels and then trying to get them to sound out words like 바투만, which sounds like batman. I've used this tactic of typing english using Korean characters to practice my reading and writing skills while texting my girlfriend. 잍서  걸에잍!

How would you qualify or describe different aspects of your target culture? Reflect and your own experiences and expectations of the culture in question.

Unsurprisingly, the Spanish/Catalan culture is more similar to my Brazilian culture than American culture. First, our languages are more closely related. And – risking to fall too much into stereotypes – we generally tend to be Catholic raised, soccer loving, outgoing people with a very flexible notion of time…

Another reason I was interested in studying Catalan: during my freshman year, there were more than ten exchange students from Spain, but after a while, I noticed a few of them were closer to each other and spoke in a different tone. This was my first personal contact with Catalan people, language and culture. I was curious to how/why these guys related differently than the students from Madrid.

Interestingly, in this past year, my first personal connection with a student from Spain ended up being with a Catalan student. My international friends always meet the exchange students and that’s how I get to meet them early in the semester… I would strike up a conversation, not knowing where the person was from, and when that subject came up, Ta-dam: “I’m from Barcelona.”

Maybe my mind is playing tricks and looking for connections, but I would rather see these as signs I am meant to visit Barcelona soon :) 

Artifact 2

AO_Artifact_2.mp3

Demonstrated new vocabulary covering introductions, numbers, transportation, food and grammatical terms. 

We've finished reviewing the Korean alphabet and have been working on learning to count in both the sino-korean number system and the korean number system. The hard part for me has been learning when to use each system, as at times it can really seem arbitrary to me. For example, you use the traditional korean number system when you're saying your age or stating the hour, but you use the sino-korean number system when stating the time in minutes and talking about distances. I can now say 저는  스물둘살  임니다 , which means I am 22 years old. If I were to say 저는  이십이살  임니다 it would be grammatically incorrect Isla says people would laugh at you. We're learning how to count to even higher numbers and it is relatively simple in the sino-korean number system, where you just have to memorize the numbers for 10, 100, 1000 and so on, and then you can use the numbers 1-9 to make any number by combining them. 

We have also been learning new vocabulary from the textbook and new grammatical structures. We've been learning about methods of public transportation, like 차, which means car. I've learned a lot of new grammatical structures and vocabulary like from and to, so I can now say I take the bus from home to school. You could say, 짐에서 학교가지 버스로 가요, which means I use the bus to go from home to school. I've also been working on typing in Korean, but it has been a bit of a challenge learning the mapping as my keys don't have the korean alphabet on them.  

How does your culture reflect various qualitative Hofstede dimensions of culture explored in class, e.g., body language, how people talk about time, etc.

One challenge in using the Hofstede analysis tool with Catalan culture is that the website only allows you to select a country. So, when I met with my language partner, we evaluated Spain and discussed how he thought it compared with “his” culture – because my LP identifies as Catalan, not Spaniard.

One of the points where I could not completely agree with my LP was his opinion on polarization – in the “Masculity” dimension. According to the website, “polarization is not well considered.” That seems very much in line with the current separatism issue unraveling between Spain and Catalunya: The idea of separation (and the underlying polarization fueling it) is not well received in Spain.

Now, my LP argued that polarization was not that big of an issue. His argument was that despite him being the only exchange student openly supportive of Catalan independence, this was not a barrier to his friendships with other students who might have differing opinions. As much as I was glad to hear that (for his sake), I could not help to note that he also said they avoided discussing the subject. So, I wonder if they are really tolerant of the divergence in opinions or if they just ignored it for the sake of cordiality…

Youngmin and I discussed different sayings in Korean and English and it was really interesting to see the similarities and  differences in sayings that shared common meaning. It was very interesting to learn about the culture of lending and borrowing money in Korea. I was really surprised by one saying she told me, which roughly translates to "if you have good enough words you don't need to pay your debts." I couldn't figure out what that meant at first because there is no english version of that saying, but in Korea it is apparently common for people to lend money to their family and friends, and then if they say the right things, like for example "I will always be there for your family," then apparently there is cultural pressure for the lender to forgive their debts. This apparently happens to the point that many people go bankrupt from lending money and then having to forgive the debt. 

I talked to my girlfriend about it and she said that from her perspective its not that people are pressured into forgiving debt, its that when people lend their friends and family money they do that prepared to not get the money back. She said this was because Koreans are just good people, but I think she might be a little biased.