Attached is a PDF of my Cultural Project, which contains the slides, and the sources that I used.
Attached is an oral summary of my Cultural Project.
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https://drive.google.com/a/richmond.edu/file/d/0B3n1Y5ZSOg6IcklEQ01Mc0ZGUTg/view?usp=sharing
How well did you achieve your goals? What were the stumbling blocks you encountered? How were you able to overcome them? What was most/least interesting to you? What would you like to do next?
Overall, this semester I had a difficult semester after coming back from abroad, but I am proud of the accomplishments I have achieved this semester. I reached most of my goals regarding vocabulary and being comfortable using the language and tried my best to reach more wishful feats such as memorising music in Czech or reading an entire book. Some of the stumbling blocks I encountered was motivation and self-discipline as I had to crave out certain hours designed for the independent study which I have never done before. It was also difficult not having someone to bounce ideas off with and practice on. I was able to overcome them by keeping touch with friends abroad and using it in my daily life. I think music and art has helped me integrate my love for the language and culture. The most interesting thing this semester has been listening to the other cultural presentations because they have taught me so much about Korean and Turkish culture as well as the passions of my fellow peers. The least interesting to me was some of the psychology behind languages. Although I enjoy learning about the origins of languages and how they contribute to our lives, I wasn't too interested in learning how our brain responds to certain things. Next, I would like to continue learning Czech and practicing Korean and hopefully, I will be able to pursue Polish or Russian next because those languages are the closest to Czech in the sense that they are all from central Europe.
Final%20Reflection%20Paper.docx
Here is my final reflection paper.
This artifact was a great listening exercise where we had to listen to a popular pop artist in Turkey and fill in words, related to our parts of the face vocabulary.
This worksheet taught me how to discuss family in Turkish.
Post (a) an evaluation of your First Artifact conversation, and (b) an assessment of how well you met your learning goals for weeks 4 and 5.
My first artifact was when I introduced myself with greetings and farewells. I thought I did ok, but I could definitely sense an American accent because I have not introduced myself in Czech for a long time. There are certain things that feel better when other people are speaking the same language and I think when I was introducing myself, I found myself speaking as though I was an American instead of a Czech person. I think this could hinder my growth because as I mentioned previously, I want to be able to shift my mindset when speaking a new language because it can help me be more authentic when spekaing the language. My learning goals for weeks 4 and 5 have been going well, I managed to converse with my friends from abroad and during my presentation for the CCE, I was able to present in Czech for a few sentences although it was sometimes hard to pronounce a couple of words. Overall, I think I am doing a good job with keeping up my learning journal.
What do you need to know about the structure of your target language? How will you acquire the knowledge you need? Do you think a reference grammar can be useful? Why or why not?
To learn Czech, I need to know more about how the language can be used in daily conversation. I think one of the problems with learning a language is that they are too structured and sometimes too formal. Some of the situations that we learn are not applicable in real life, which is why people struggle to listen and speak the language. They are looking for words and phrases they learned in the textbook. While I do think it is very important, children do not learn the complete structure of their language, they learn what they need to thrive in society. To acquire the knowledge I need, I need to integrate myself with more Czech media such as newspapers, articles, tv shows, movies, and music. I think a reference grammar can be useful, but I think becoming dependent on a reference is bad because in their mind, the person speaking the language might take too long to conjugate the verb.
Reflect on the readings. How does this knowledge help you shape your language learning process?
The readings this week revolved around one central theme: how does the brain take in information and how are languages analyzed through the brain. I think this subject is very interested because even in a class of twenty students, they will all be a different places in the language. Some may have previous experience with the language or some may know a language that is similar to the language they are studying, while some may have only known one language their entire life. I think the people that succeed with progress the fastest are not those with the biggest brain or the highest GPA, but those that have the ability to see the connection between their native language and the language that they are learning. While many people think language and culture divides us, it actually brings us together and the articles emphasize the fact that all of us start out with the same brain.
I mentioned in my 105 reflection how I felt like I learned a lot of vocabulary this semester, however, I wish I able to learn more grammar to be able to structure more complex sentences. My biggest challenge this semester was finding adequate time in my day to sit down and practice Korean. Overall, I feel as if my Korean has definitely improved but not to the extent I had planned at the beginning of the semester. I had high expectations for myself, but if anything I was able to learn how difficult it is to learn a language.
This week my goal was to expand my vocabulary on certain everyday activities and being able to describe what I usually do throughout the day. This task was pretty straight forward and I just followed up my task with my language partner afterwards as usual.
My learning goals for this week is to review everything I have already learned halfway into this semester. I went by accomplishing this task by looking over the worksheets my language partner provided us and reviewing vocabulary and basic grammar I learned throughout the semester. By doing this I was also able to practice and improve my reading speed as well as my writing.
I have learned a lot of vocabulary these past several weeks more than anything else. I’m not sure if i’ll be able to complete all of my learning goals because I feel the need to back and review everything I already learned so that it’s all ingrained in my mind permanently. I think that would be more beneficial than trying to go for new content. I am not entirely satisfied with the progress I have made so far. Time is definitely a challenge I am facing right now and it’s becoming more and more difficult to find time to sit down and study Korean as the semester progresses.
My learning goals for week 6 consist of me learning about general compliments and refining my use of honorifics in everyday speech. I went by accomplishing this task by looking up the vocabulary for various compliments and incorporating that into sentences that I would be able to tell people. I followed these up with my language partner to make sure my grammar was correct. With the honorifics I went online and looked up additional ways I can be polite in my speech that didn’t already include greetings/introductions/farewells. I did this by talking to one of my Korean friends who gave me a quick rundown on the different ways I can be formal in my speech.
My tasks for week 4 and 5 consists of me learning about the time/date and asking for those numbers as well as learning about food and how to order some. I had no knowledge on the number system in Korean aside from the fact that I knew there were 2 different number systems. My main goal from learning time was to learn the numbers in Korean. I did this by googling the different number systems and how to pronounce/spell all numbers. I followed this up by practicing with my language partner and other friends that knew Korean. I was already familiar with Korean food so it was not new to me learning the names of difference Korean dishes, however, I wanted to take a step further and learn how to order food at a restaurant. I went by learning this task by looking up several videos on youtube on how to structure my sentence for learning how to order food. I confirmed my teachings by following up with my language partner.
My learning task for week 3 was being able to identify and talk about my family members. To begin with this task, I was already familiar with some of the basic vocabulary for members of my direct family, however, I didn’t have any knowledge of incorporating that vocabulary into sentences. I also didn’t know any vocabulary for members of my extended family such as aunt, uncle, cousin, etc. I went about accomplishing this learning task by watching youtube videos on how to address my family members, and later on by practicing this with my language partner.
I was already pretty familiar with greetings and introductions in Korean so learning them wasn’t anything new. I had to refresh my memory on the different ways of saying goodbye because there are two. There is one form of goodbye for when you are leaving and when someone else is leaving. However, these are only used in a formal setting. Korean introductions are fun because when speaking casually, hello and goodbye are the same word (안녕)
One recurring theme I noticed among the Korean culture presentations was the competition/academic aspect of Korean youth. Among high schoolers, an enormous amount of stress are placed on student’s to get accepted to one of the SKY schools (Seoul, Korea, Yonsei). The competitive aspect of academics are far more rigorous and extreme than what we see in America. This competition carries on even after college when Korean youth try to find jobs. It’s very difficult for a native Korean to find a job and the unemployment rate of Korean youth is rather high as a result.
When doing research for my own cultural project, I was both surprised and not surprised by how popular dramas were in Korea and internationally. Korean dramas have definitely contributed the Korean wave or the spread of Korean influence and culture across the globe. I have gained a lot of respect for actors, directors, and screenwriters that work incredibly hard to get the dramas aired every night.
My language task this week isn’t so much learning new Korean words or grammar but focusing more on my typing abilities in Korean. I feel like this is an important task because of the technological age we live in. Almost everything is usually typed or ends up typed so I felt that it was an important skill to have as my Korean develops. Originally, I intended to get a keyboard cover that I could put over the keys on my laptop to help me memorize the placements of all the Korean letters but I wasn’t able to purchase the cover online. Instead, I just practiced through the keyboard on my phone which improved my texting speed.
