Blogs

This knowledge will help me understand, just as the titles says, “how the brain handles language”, “how we mean”, and “how we analyze meaning”.

After reading the readings, I learned about which part of the brain affects language, speech, comprehension, visual, and motor control. Though it was a lot to take in, I learned some great ideas that will help shape my language learning process.

“Different languages ‘parcel out’ the world in different ways”, unlike in English, in Korea there is a term for your father’s brother (‘keun abeoji’ or ‘jageun abeoji’) or mother’s sister (‘eemo’). Though the words have same biological relationship, the words have different senses. Sense is the meaning of a word within a language.

“Words by themselves do not actually ‘make sense’. Only when they are used within a sentence do they ‘make sense’”. I can take this concept and apply to my language learning process. This will help me when I begin making sentences and connecting words in my language.

The readings have helped me understand ideas behind language grammar and construction that will make it easier to tackle my target language.

My goals for this week were to increase my vocabulary and to continue improving my verbal communication in Korean.

To increase my vocabulary, I constantly used the Korean app that I have on my phone to learn new words, and I am seeking to implement using these words in my talks in Korean with not only my Korean language partner and study group, but also with my parents and my Korean peers. This has helped, and I am definitely starting to see an increase in my vocabulary, albeit a small increase.

Having to dedicate a couple hours a week to speaking solely in Korean during my SDLC language meetings has really sharpened my Korean communication abilities. I get to exercise my language speaking capabilities in extended periods of time, and I have constantly stay focused to be able to understand it. Although this is only the first couple of weeks where I am in the SDLC 110 class, I definitely do feel that it is helping a lot.

To become more advanced in Korean, I believe it's essential for me to know about especially the vocabulary, grammar, syntax and semantic components. Without knowing them, I won't be able to use certain words in sentences correctly at the right time and I will also not be able to understand the true meaning of it in the context as Korean words have multiple meanings for the same word. To expand on Vocabulary, I will need to read and watch more advanced context so that I'm not just memorizing a list of words but truly understand how they are used in real life. In terms of grammar and syntax, I think referring to a grammar book would help because I'm not that familiar with the official rules of Korean grammar. Syntax part of this language will be acquired best if I keep exposing myself to resources that show how words are used differently in different contexts and how meanings change depending on the situations.

My main cultural learning goal for this semester is to learn more about current issues in Brazil, and learn more about Brazilian soccer. To explore these topics, I hope to try and read some new articles in Portuguese or maybe analyze some new segments in Portuguese. For soccer I hope to maybe watch some Brazilian soccer with Portuguese commentary. Through the exploration of these topics I hope to learn more about the current lives of Brazilians and what seems to be pressing issues for them. I also hope to learn more about the Brazilian soccer culture and how that affects how the Brazilian national team plays on the field, and how they interact with their fans.

1. Recording: 

Angella Lee's Artifact #1

2. Translation: 

Hello! My name is Angella. Last semester, I learned about majors and careers. My major is chemistry. I am a 3rd year student at the University of Richmond. When I grow up, I want to be a pharmacist. 

This semester, I am learning about South Korea's geography and about Yonsei University in general. I will be an exchange student at Yonsei University. I have been learning about the different types of buildings at the university. Thank you! 

3. Evaluation: 

I think I did well in pronouncing and articulating the vocabulary, such as majors, careers, and geography. This allowed me to feel comfortable with speaking about the things that I learned. I don't think I had an accent because I am used to switching from speaking in English to Korean, and vice versa, without an accent. I think my overall accuracy was pretty good, but I could tell when I struggled with remembering and pronouncing some of the words, such as saying that I was a third-year student and remembering what exchange student was in Korean. This makes sense because I was working with saying numbers formally in Korean last semester (SDLC 110) and I just learned the new terms dealing with exchange programs, so I can see why I struggled with these types of vocabulary. I can make necessary improvements by continuing to practice and review over both my old and new learning materials. There is no harm in always reviewing because it will help me become more natural with speaking in Korean!

Korean’s language structure, for the majority, is SOV (subject-object-verb). This knowledge can be acquired through reading books on how Korean grammar works, as well as constnatly engaging in Korean to see in which phrases there are exceptions to the structure. For example, when writing “He sang the song”, in Korean, the object, the song, would be placed right after the word “he”. Then, the verb would be placed at the end, and the variation of the word would indicate whether it occurred in the past, present, or future.

Having a reference grammar could be useful, but it probably wouldn’t aid too much. Korean and Japanese have similar SOV structures, but since I don’t know much Japanese, comparing and contrasting for reference wouldn’t be helpful for me. It would be better to just focus on learning Korean, as adding in other languages could complicate the process of learning the language for me.  

• Do some research about the culture of your target language and write about the 'linguistic aspects', e.g., body language, how people talk about time, etc.

Using the Geer Hofstede measure of identifying cultural parameters of Korean, South Korean culture is extremely collectivist and has a high respect for hierarchy that is prevalent in its language. For example, the collectivist culture means that South Korea has high emphasis on the communities and within families. Korean has different words for different members of the family, ranging all the way from cousin-in-law, and different words for each family member based on which gender you identify with. It highlights the importance of each individual family member, a characteristic that does not occur in other languages, such as English. 

Body language, in Korean culture, occurs a lot during introductions. Bowing is a common occurrence, and is expected to occur among nearly every member of society. During conversation, eye contact is considered rude, especially if the one initiating the eye contact is a junior or a lower member of the organization. 

Korean, is a monochronic culture, as meetings and appointments are expected to be on time. There are usually no excuses to when the meeting begins, as one is expected to be on time. However, this rule isn't super strict, as a fair warning beforehand will suffice. 

From the reading "How the brain handles language," I thought it was very intuitive how brain and different parts of our body interacts to accept languages and to transfer it. Different parts of brain are responsible for each body parts and they work together to generate a word, sentence, and meaning. Broca's area is used for a production of language while Wernicke's area is used when we comprehend language. I also learned that the left hemisphere of my brain would be used dominantly than my right hemisphere since I'm right handed.

There are two different theories of "examining the relationship between words and things." Two views are naturalist view and conventionalist view, which are suggested by Plato and Aristotle. Naturalist view supports the idea that there is a connection between the sound and the referred thing. On the other hand, Conventionalist view supports the idea that there is no connection between the sound and the referred one. Additionally, idea that "sense" is how you describe something linguistically as opposed to the "reference" is a physical table outside of language was interesting. To the extension of these, it was also surprising to learn that our thoughts are limited by the languages we know of.

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?          

            It’s important to understand how the structure of the target language compares with the structure of your native language. In my case, I need to understand what similarities and dissimilarities exist between Korean and English language structures. For example, English follows a subject- verb- object pattern, whereas Korean can follow either an object- subject- verb patter or a subject- object- verb pattern. In Korean, as long as the verb comes at the end of a sentence or phrase, the order of the other parts of the sentence can be rearranged in the order the speaker wants to use.

            The knowledge that I’ve acquired so far has come from packets provided in class and some other materials the I’ve been using independently, such as the book Complete Korean and other online resources. Going forward, I will continue to use resources provided by Youngmin to acquire more knowledge, and I will supplement class resources with other books and online sources that I’ve found.

            Before writing this post, I didn’t know what ‘reference grammar’ was. From what I’ve read, the aim of reference grammar seems to be teaching about a language rather than teaching how to use the language. Because of this, I don’t think reference grammar would be particularly useful in my studies. Although learning about the Korean language as a whole sounds interesting, my main focus right now is to learn how to process and produce the language. 

David Crystal's Readings

To be honest, David Crystal is definitely, not my favorite writer. I have had a chance to read his books before, and his writings seemed very dry and hard to read. When I started to read the assigned chapters, I felt the same, however as I went further, I found several pieces of helpful information and linguistic discoveries. 

I liked how he went deeper into speech process and described several parts of the brain. The left hemisphere is the dominant one for language production for right-handed people. The same hemisphere is also responsible for information sequencing, logical organization, analytical tasks etc. I found interesting that all this process is controlled by just one part of the brain. I also read about the theory of cerebral localization and several areas of the brain, such as Broca's and Wrenches'. The last one is responsible for comprehension of speech. Isn't that fascinating how just one area of the brain controls the whole speech comprehension? I also learnt about neurological aspects of the brain as well as slips of the tongue, which, albeit seem just slips, occur because of same grammatical construction or rhythm units. 

I also learnt about naturalist and conventionalist views of Plato and Aristotle and thought about intrinsic and arbitrary relations of the words. Sense and reference of the language part was also intriguing-words exist both within the language and outside the language. Apart from all of these, these readings made me think about lexeme vs. word relations, how some words exist in certain languages and do not exist in others, and sense of several relations among words-synonymy, antonymy, inclusion and incompatibility. 

I think, all these information made me think about language learning process in general and how different our perceptions of the languages are. I will probably start to pay attention on small details of my learning process ,and think about how different my target language is from other languages that I've pursued earlier.

Tea and coffee culture in Turkey.

Turkey is one of the countries in the world, that has a very expressive tea and coffee culture. Turkish coffee is known all over the world, and is served as an exotic drink in many foreign restaurants. It is an unfiltered coffee made by boiling the ground coffee beans with water and distributing into small coffee cups from cezve. This coffee is now traditional in many other countries, including Armenia. After finishing the coffee, we use the "drawings made by the ground coffee beans" on the coffee cup, to predict the future. I bet, Turks do that as well.

Despite the belief, that Turks do drink coffee all the time, they prefer tea far more, and are known as a country offering a very fascinating tea culture. Turks are very hospitable, and they may offer tea even to strangers. They serve tea in special tulip shaped cups thus, making their tea culture even more distinguishable. Tea is also served with every meal in restaurants, and waiters bring you as much tea as you want, without any charges, obviously. I will surely confirm this, since I had a luck to enjoy Turkish tea during my summer trip to Turkey. The strong black tea is the most popular one in Turkey. On a last note, Turks like tea both on hot summer weather and cold winter weather, so do not be surprised to see them drink tea all the time!

Pictures from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_coffee

https://www.turkeyhomes.com/blog/post/the-tea-of-turkey

Formalities vs. Informalities in Turkish

As I embarked on an adventure of learning Turkish couple of weeks ago, I immediately started to notice the differences between the Turkish language and the languages that I'm already fluent in. One thing that immediately came to my attention were the differences between formalities and informalities of the Turkish language. As it turns out, it is extremely important to use formal language in Turkish whenever it's necessary. You have to necessarily use formal language when you do not know the person at all, when you know them a little, when the person is older(even if 1 or 2 years). Besides, you have to use formal language with your older relatives even if you have known them your whole life. As my language partner mentioned several times, it is increasingly important to show respect and behave properly in front of certain people. Turkish people have formal and informal ways of greetings, asking how are you, such as Selam and Merhaba ; Nasilsin and Nasilsiniz, respectively. They also use efendim,  hanimefendi and hanimefendi before speaking to someone older. 

In short, Turkish is a language that gives a major importance to formalities and respect, therefore, if you end up in Turkey one day, make sure to follow this rule.

On an additional note, Turks have a collective culture, unlike the American individualistic culture. They are very hospitable, outgoing, curious  and they like to do everything together and at the same time! Turkish people like to ask questions, take answers and know the details of your life, and although they require formality and respect, they are very friendly and helpful. They also like to stare at people, talk bout them and know everything, so do not be surprised!

Pictures from: http://www.pureleverage.com/clickbyclick/tag/greeting-people/

http://www.fethiyetimes.com/magazine/20836-turkish-customs-might-not-know-part-two.html

Personal interest of the language and future accomplishments

There is a reason behind every decision, and my decisions are not exception of this rule. I had several considerations and reasons before I decided to study Turkish on my first semester at the University of Richmond. Turkish is the official language of the Republic of Turkey and has around 70 to 80 million speakers worldwide. I think it is quite a significant number, is It not? I live in a country that borders Turkey, and has had numerous historical connections, issues and political matters with it. Turkish culture has interacted with mine throughout the history and even now, there are several similarities between them. I think, politics makes everything more interesting, and in that aspect of the things, I thought that having some ,at least basic knowledge of the language will give me a chance to understand and interpret the matters between 2 countries in a better and deeper way. Besides that, Turkish culture has always invoked my interest. Turkey is a transcontinental country, and country's culture is interestingly divided into European and Asian sides, representing liberal, more open culture on the West and conservative and more religious culture on the East. This fact also seemed very fascinating to me and contributed to my interest of learning the culture and language of the country. I also visited Turkey for a short period this summer, and although I enjoyed my overall trip, communication with the local people was quite a challenge, since they didn't speak English in the Eastern part of the country. Turkish people also have compelling religious habits which shape the entire culture in significant ways.

I have quite a few goals for this semester. First, I want to be able to have basic communication skills, be able to introduce myself, ask questions, directions, do shopping, book hotels, order in the restaurants and generally "survive" in the country. Secondly, I would love to be able to read news in Turkish and compare translations of Turkish news to authentic news, and see whether they are politically biased or not. Third, I would want to travel and  explore the country more, since it has ancient history, destroyed cities and interesting architectural combinations of old and new. Last but not least, I am hoping to develop some "love" toward the language, which will inspire me to learn it farther, even once the semester ends.

Pictures retrieved from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/04/hagia-sophia-mosque_n_4386401.html

                                    http://www.alamy.com

Culture is a difficult topic because there is much to cover, discuss and debate about. Culture is not black and white. Culture can be tangible and intangible. Like the article, all culture will have elements of both individualistic collectivism poles.There is a culture within one's family and what makes up a culture. In individualist, you can even say that there is a culture within oneself. How one lives and survive, from their daily activities of brushing their teeth, to what clothes they choose to wear to the expressions and phrases they use. Nation-state culture can generally be summarized similarly but on a macro level. 

Knowing my learning will allow me to set goals, monitor my goals and at the end the semester, see if I accomplished it or not. Setting goals week by week will keep me on track. This is especially helpful because learning a language in this class is mainly self directed there is more responsibility on our shoulders than taking a class with a professor teaching and guiding the language. Knowing how our brain processes language is helpful since we are able to utilize to our understanding and learning of languages. Even though most children have a natural language window around three, and most of us here at SDLAP are either in our late teens or early twenties, it is not too late to imitate how little children learn languages. The video of toddlers able to differentiate sounds in India helped me realized that I need to be careful on pronouncing the sounds. It is usually subtle. It also made me realize that it is okay if I do not sound like a native. Having an accent as long as others can understand me is fine because I already speak three other languages fluently. 

Another thing I found interesting and helpful was the article what we mean. How the synaptax and phrase our langauge tells us alot about a language culture. For instance, many Asian countries I find tend to be more collective and so if reflects that in their communication and language. Another example is that many english speaking countries value individulism more than the collective communities so the language and our structure display that. 

Another example can be that some langauges have more words to describe something that cannot be describe in another language. For example, japanese has mutiple specific situations for describing anger where that can not be translated in english. This is another example how langauge affects what we mean. 

Based on the research on Korean culture and my own experiences, Koreans consider courtesy and politeness to be very important. It is so crucial in their culture that it's even reflected in Korean language. In terms of body language, it differs how you greet someone based on the recipient's age or social status. The bow is a traditional greeting for someone you have just met or someone older than you. Waving to greet someone is acceptable to someone close to you or peers at your age. Koreans also consider personal space very importantly, so it would be considered violation to touch someone who is not a relative or a close friend. It is also considered impolite for employees to look directly at their bosses or for younger people to look at older people directly in the eyes. 

In terms of language itself, the vocabulary, vocab endings and suffixes change depending on whom you are talking to. For example, to ask someone if they have eaten yet, there are two separate words used to address people of different ages. When asking someone a lot older than you, you would ask if they had "jin-ji"and when asking someone of your age or younger, you use the word "bab" even though they both mean meals. Also, you would use "yeon-sae" to ask someone's age if that person is older than you but use "na-yi" if that person is of your age or younger. Social hierarchy is very deeply reflected in Korean language, and therefore Koreans often find it difficult to address someone by calling their first names because that is considered impolite. One interesting fact I found while researching was that calling someone only by the family name which Koreans often do to be polite is actually considered impolite in Germany. Another linguistic aspect of Korean culture is that because it's a relatively more collectivistic culture than others, Koreans say "we" or "our" a lot more even when they are referring to personal property belonging just to themselves. 

Post your first bi-weekly report on your language-learning activities

The task that I have been working on this week is introductions. I think though it is a fairly straightforward subject, I am taking it seriously due to Korean having two different tenses: informal and formal. I do not want to accidentally disrespect someone by using the wrong tense, so I have been trying to focus on this as a foundation to speak and listen in Korean. On Monday, I met with my language partner and we spoke in Korean about ourselves informally. We shared about where we were from, our names, our grade, our majors, and more. I think that I will need to bring a notebook the next time I see my language partner, as I tend to forget the formal and informal ways we talk about. However, for the most part, I think it is a very easy way to learn- by practicing with an experienced Korean speaker.

I think we will go on the internet and look for a formal textbook style of learning this because that is usually how I learn best- from a structured source. I think that by being able to know what to say and what tense to use when speaking in Korean, I think I will be more comfortable with the idea of using Korean more often. It gives me confidence knowing that I at least will be able to know the basics.

sharonlearningplan.docx

Summarize your assessment and goals in a blog post in your learning journal

Based on the Levels of Competence chart, I am in Developing 1 (Intermediate) for Listening, meaning I can understand the main points from conversations, tv shows, radio broadcasts, and so forth. I am in Beginning 2 for Reading, meaning that I can find simple predictable information in various forms of text, such as advertisements and simple personal letters.I am in Developing 1 for interpersonal speaking, meaning that I can go into a situation and likely be able to respond back in Korean without preparation. I am in Developing 1 for presentational speaking, meaning I can generally be able to share my opinion, narrate what is going on, and describe my reactions. Lastly, I am in Developing 2 for writing. I believe I am the highest in writing because writing allows me to be able to conceptualize what I want to say, allowing me to be able to reflect on my thoughts and giving me time to think about the best way to phrase my words.

Based on the Can Do Statements, I am Intermediate middle in interpersonal communication, meaning I can have a conversation with multiple sentences, and I am usually able to articulate what I want to say in Korean. On presentational speaking, I am intermediate low, meaning I can present information on familiar topics with multiple sentences. I would say that I am intermediate high in presentational writing- though I am not very good at spelling in Korean, I can write multiple paragraphs about familiar topics. I am Intermediate high in interpretive listening, contrasting from my results from the Levels of Competence. In general, I am able to understand the main ideas and a few details from conversations. However, I scored myself lower for the LOC because I am not able to do this as proficiently with news broadcasts. For reading, I am intermediate low, meaning I can understand the main idea from short readings if I am familiar with the topic.

My main goals for this semester is learning more vocabulary, speaking more naturally, and learning to write more proficiently. I plan to practice my vocabulary by labelling everything around my room with Korean translations of the object. When I get the hang of it, I think I will ask my learning partner to assign me vocabulary words to memorize. For speaking, I plan to speak with my language partner about conducting our sessions mainly in Korean so that I will practice talking in Korean. Furthermore, I also plan to call my mom on the phone once a week and speak mostly in Korean. Lastly, I hope to write more accurately. I like to think I am better able to articulate my thoughts through paper. However, I still struggle with spelling and knowing when to space out my Korean characters.

Each post should include:

• I was working on how to order food in Turkish. I learned names of dishes, types of tea, tea pot consisted of two parts, and how to order food in a restaurant through a dialogue with my language partner. 
• I wanted to be able to order food in a Turkish restaurant in Richmond. I will visit one of Turkish restaurants in Richmond and order food and a cup of tea in Turkish. I also wanted to learn about dining culture.
• The learning resource was Gokhan's powerpoint slides and the conversation with him. We made dialogues in different versions and practiced ordering food in Turkish. I was a customer and he was a server. I memorized customer's part and was able to accomplish my goal.
• I think it was pretty effective because the visualization of food was easier for me to remember what kinds of food there are and what they are called, and the dialogues were helpful for me to remember what I am supposed to say in a restaurant to order food.
• I will keep practicing the dialogues and make new ones by adding different kinds of menu and asking for different things in a restaurant (like "Can I get a tissue/pork")
• I will also practice with my classmates to improve my listening and speaking.
• It was really fun to learn about words related to food (that might be on menu) and practice a dialogue one to one, which I think it is an advantage of having a language partner. I wish I could practice with more people, so I will do that with my classmates in the future.