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My%20Learning%20Plan.docx

I have designed my learning plan focusing on improving my familiarity with the language rather than learning any particular skill. Because I have some background knowledge on my target language, I wanted to improve on applying in real life and expand its range of usage by improving on fluency. I did learn some new Korean slangs that could allow me to have better conversations with native speakers.

Rather than using a lot of textbooks, I decided to use many online sources where I can visually see better as I am a tactile and visual learner. Some grammar works will be done with textbooks, but most of the exercises will involve analyzing videos and actively speaking and applying in real conversation. I have included some cultural activities such as eating at a Korean restaurant and watching movies to gain more cultural experience while learning my new language. 

I am self motivated to improve on my own Korean skills. I grew up with my parents speaking informal Korean in my house. However, it wasn't enough to fluently speak outside of the house with other native Koreans. Once I visited Korean once, I noticed how foreign I was to the native people. I wanted to regain my roots again and improving my Korean skill will improve my relationships with my Korean family members. 

The “Figuring Foreigners Out” article identifies several ways that cultures differs: individualist vs. collectivist, nonverbal communications, monochromic vs polychromic, etc. The notion of individualistic versus collectivist identities that are found within all cultures, though no one single culture is exclusively individualist or collectivist, I can see how countries such as the United States places an emphasis on individualist more. This manifests in the form of self-autonomy, First Amendment rights, etc. I predominantly agree with the article’s various arguments on how different cultures have general trends in personality but not everyone within the community act the same way. This reminds me of anthropology’s definition of culture, that it is shared yet contested, meaning that each individual interprets cultural rules and values differently because we have different experiences, desires, and needs. The experiment conducted by Dr. Hofstede attempts to categorize countries base on different dimension and rate their inclination or the lack thereof respective to that dimension. Based on this map, it shows that my native culture, China, as well as my target language culture, Korea, is very collectivist focused whereas United States is completely on the other end of the spectrum, very individualist focused. I think the most interesting I found looking at these maps is the underlying historical circumstances that has prompted the various developments of cultural norms and values.

For this semester, the learning plan for Greek for Daniel Kunath will be organized like a very basic grade school course.  Beginning with the simplest tools and developing into more advanced vocabulary and usage as the semester progresses, it should bring me up to an almost conversational level of Greek proficiency by December.  It includes some weeks set aside for understanding the Greek culture, in the past and present, to grow a greater understanding of Greek life and people.

For this semester, the learning plan for Greek for Daniel Kunath will be organized like a very basic grade school course.  Beginning with the simplest tools and developing into more advanced vocabulary and usage as the semester progresses, it should bring me up to an almost conversational level of Greek proficiency by December.  It includes some weeks set aside for understanding the Greek culture, in the past and present, to grow a greater understanding of Greek life and people.

Claire%20My%20Learning%20Plan.docx

My learning plan focuses on speaking and my goal for this semester is to learn basic everyday conversations. I have detailed objectives listed in my learning plan, including learning a K-pop song, understanding Korean drama and writing short paragraphs. My language partner and I agreed that we should start with vowels and consonant. Therefore, we set up goals to learn basic vowels and consonants in 3 weeks and then we would proceed to sentence composition.

My interest in learning Korean starts with the popularity of K-pop culture. I love to listen to K-pop songs and watch Korean dramas. Therefore, I want to learn Korean, so I could be able to understand them. Learning Korean could also help me to understand more about their culture, and how it is developed over the years.

After reading the feedback, I think I should make the plan more detailed, so I could keep track of my own pace every week. I decided to keep a weekly journal after I learned basic sentence composition. The journal could help me learn more vocabulary and grammar rules, and help me with my language learning process.

I organized my self-directed learning plan to suit speaking a language rather than trying to learn a language. I've always thought of language as a formula and a puzzle; however, after watching the TED talks video, just speaking the language will be much more efficient in getting fluent. I've learned a lot of Korean slangs so far, and it is really interesting to see ones that are so creative! I found interesting books to aid me in my studies. Learning more and more about Korean will allow me to understand the lifestyle Korean students live, which will ultimately lead me to my study abroad in Korea. I really wanted to study abroad in Korea, and that motivated me to really learn the language deeply.Goals%20paper.docx

AzinB_LearningPlan.docx

I have absolutely no knowledge of the Turkish language. Despite that, Turkey has such an interesting culture and language that I am very excited to look into. My goal in this program is to create a solid basic foundation of the Turkish language, one in which I will be able to navigate a trip to Turkey comfortably without being too overwhelmed. I also want to be able to comfortably speak with a Turkish pen pal.

I want to separate my learning program into 2 parts: the first focusing on the fundamental basics of Turkish language, and the second on immersion into the language and a deeper understanding of it. My tasks start out focusing on the first part of my program, but slowly delve more and more into the second part as the program and tasks progress.

The biggest tools I can use to achieve my tasks are my language partner, the textbook she provided, the textbook I have borrowed from the Global Studio (Turkish Grammar: For Foreign Students), other books available in the Global Studio, this great website for learning the basics of Turkish (https://utos.yasar.edu.tr/portal), Turkish to English dictionary websites (http://www.turkishdictionary.net/ and http://tureng.com/en/turkish-english/), and the Turkish music available on Youtube.

SDLAP_learningplan.docx

Overall, I am proficient in listening, intermediate in reading and speaking, and weak in writing. I can comfortably start a conversation without much thinking and express my opinions and feelings to a certain extent, but conversational topics are limited to casual everyday chats. The most I can read are short passages. Anything longer and more complex, it becomes difficult to keep up. Writing is a struggle. I can send text messages and write short statements, but that's about it.

Since I grew up hearing Korean all my life, I’ve been speaking it intuitively without actually learning grammar and vocab. So, my ultimate goal is to expand my vocabulary and learn actual grammar. I've always wanted to learn in a classroom environment, but since that is not available here, I want to improve my reading and writing skills by using textbooks. I want to be able to read chapter books for kids and also want to be better at spelling. For speaking, I want to be able to speak comfortably in formal language with people other than my family because I tend to only use casual speech. Essentially, I want to just gain a strong foundation in the language.

As I continued to take the Japanese class here at UR, I happened to wonder about one day becoming better at Japanese than Korean. Yes, it is great to improve in another language, but as a Korean American, I want to be more than just okay or good in my parents' mother tongue. I want to become fluent, and become truly bilingual or someday even trilingual. Also, after realizing how learning a language in a structured course was effective for me, I want to be able to learn Korean in a similar manner.

Because I want a solid foundation in reading comprehension, writing, grammar, and vocabulary, I will learn Korean through a structured manner, so my tasks and activities will mostly be based on textbooks.

MyLearningPlan_KellyBreakall.docx

This semester I am focusing my learning around the very basics of Hindi - almost the "survival" skills. I am focusing a lot on the basics of sentence structure and vocabulary for interpersonal communication because that is mostly what I plan to use Hindi for. I organized my plan by what I found most useful when I was studying other languages, and by what I've found are important cultural differences between India and America (who knew I was apparently being rude by shaking my future father-in-law's hand?!)

So far in Hindi I have been starting to learn the alphabet and how verbs/nouns are formed. I've also used Mango to learn some greetings and comments on the weather. I do have 2 textbooks at home (which are identified in the Learning Plan) and a few other resources at the Global Studio that I'm going to look into.

My motivation for learning Hindi is that I am moving to India soon and, although most highly-educated Indians speak English fluently, I would like to show respect by speaking the native language when possible. I also need Hindi to speak with my fiance's family, as they are from a more rural area.

The feedback I've received about my plan is mostly good. My Hindi-speaking friends are almost too quick to tell me how easily I'll pick up the language. I guess we'll see! (Here's hoping I can learn to distinguish between all the different phonemes soon) :-) 

SDLC%20Learning%20Plan.docx

This semester I want to primarily focus on my Korea speaking skills. In order to do so I have designed three tasks I want to accomplish by the end of this semester. I want to comfortable enough to speak in Korean with other native speakers. I will have conversations with language partner, and she will teach me common vocabulary and phrases that I can use. She will also work with me to improve my pronunciation and help me understand the meaning and context of certain words in Korean culture. Once I learn basic vocabulary, I want to learn how to read and write in Korean. I believe this will help me to improve my communication skills when interacting with naive speakers. I will consult with textbooks in the global studio to learn new words and grammar rules, and I will also use language apps to work on my writing skills. 

I wanted to learn Korean because I wanted to better understand the culture -- I wanted to understand conversations my friends were having and also be aware of pop Korean culture references. Initially I was planning to just work with language partner and learn how to carry out basic conversations in Korean. Now that I know about all the different resources that are available in the global studio, I plan on using the Korean textbooks, utilize different websites, and also watch videos/recordings in Korean to make myself more familiar with the language and the culture.

LearningPlan_Islam.docx

Korean%20Learning%20plan.docx

In reaching my goal of being able to hold a conversation in Korean with my parents, I have divided my plan into 10 tasks in which the primary ones focus on speaking. These tasks include being able to introduce myself, describe my and other peoples' day, know basic vocabulary, basic questions and answers and talk in the correct tense. In this way, I will be able to gradually lay the foundation of casual conversation in learning the basic aspects. In order to achieve this I will use Korean vocabulary apps to learn basic vocabulary and phrases as well as Korean textbooks to learn the correct grammar and sentence structure. I will also use videos, an online Korean course and Korean dramas to learn correct pronunciation and casual conversational topics as well as to immerse myself more in Korean culture. I will also use these methods to learn how to read and write. I will also begin to incorporate words that I've learned into my daily conversations and texts in order to enforce my learning. 

In preparing this learning plan, I've learned how self-learning a language does not necessarily have to be learned in such a rigid, organized structure with only textbooks and paper assessments. A lot of learning can come organically when you immerse yourself in the culture of the language you're learning whether it be social media, movies, or hanging out with people of that language. It is a fluid plan which depends on how much you practice actively and intentionally as well as your own motivation. With this plan I am able to flexibly learn Korean so that i may be able to communicate in the language that I've grown up understanding but never speaking. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18AX1zCARN-xxu9tcUYDwYk6tGoF9GT7BUJqxwQv7xMI/edit

So far, I have learned a list of Korean slangs, and a few common Korean grammatical mistakes and how to fix them. The resources we identified so far are youtube for video clips on daily conversations using slangs, and a list of slangs so we can learn and memorize them for future uses, and we will receive more resources as we learn different tasks later on. This will allow me to investigate my target language and culture more deeply by exposing me to an everyday life of a Korean, as if I am gaining something I lost before. I was motivated to start learning because I felt as if I was losing the sense from my root- where I'm from, the people I grew up with. And later, when I am proficient enough, I want to share this with others as well. I've received feedbacks from my classmates, most of them said that my plans were good, but some said that I needed to be more specific with my resources and the step-by-step routine, which I do agree on. My instructor and I have planned our classes and the tasks we will approach, and we plan to be more detailed as the class goes on. I will be detailed in what I learned about in my bi-weekly journal, and hope that the rest of the semester goes smoothly.

My%20Learning%20Plan.docx

I have organized my self-directed learning plan like how a beginning learner will do it. My language partner told us that the Korean alphabet is the easiest part to begin with because they form different sounds in the composition of words. Therefore, my learning plan will progress with familiarizing myself with all the vowels and consonants first, and then from there, I can learn how they make up words, to how they fit together (grammar rules), and then by writing down words and speaking them comfortably. So far, our language class have been learning how to pronounce the different syllables and we have located some videos and podcasts such as Mango and the textbook, Talk to me in Korean. These tools, along with language partner’s instruction, will allow me to learn the language quicker. In addition, our language session has set up a goal to discovering Korean culture, especially contemporary popular culture such as learning songs and watching movies, this will allow to me further grasp the current trends in Korea. My first interest in Korean began with watching a lot of Korean movies, because I really like watching movies that tells stories about humanity and public policy. What I found particularly interesting is that Korea actually changes their laws and public policy because of a movie’s controversy. For example, “Confession of Murder” prompted the murder statute of limitation to change from 15 to 25 years. I am really peculiar in how a movie can have national impact like this. Feedbacks from classmates have made me adjust my plan to be more speaking-oriented at the beginning stage and focus on reading/writing later on, because speaking is more critical to understanding.

Over the course of this semester, I would like to study two aspects of Korean culture: celebrations and the presence of religion in society.  For celebrations, I will look into New Year's, Chuseok (their celebration of the 8th full moon), and weddings.  I would like to learn about the different traditions, food, games, decorations, and historical significance for these events.  I suspect there will be heavy emphasis on family and ancestors.  In the religious sector I want to see how much prevalence Christianity, Buddhism, and Confucianism has in daily activities as well as special festivities and how they have changed over time.  To explore these topics, I will research them online, watch videos of the celebrations, and ask my language partner about each topic.  It would be wonderful if we could take a day to go over vocabulary for the celebrations.   

This was my first foray into the subject of the neuroscientific underpinnings of language, and I found especially interesting the connection between movement of the mouth and the "scanning ahead" of the brain for upcoming muscular direction. This connection between the sounds desired and the physical movement of the mouth to produce this sound is likely why a lot of non-native speakers of a language have a hard time getting their accent to sound natural. Because pretty much every language has sounds (and close-together progressions of sounds) that are distinctive to it, it takes a lot of practice to get these muscular progressions of the mouth to follow how the speaker intends them to sound.

The quote from the second reading, "different languages talk about the world in different ways", highlights the importance of learning a language with a native speaker for me. The way people make sense of things happening to and around them, is tied into - or contrasts against - things from their own lives, their family's lives, their national and local identity, their ethnic background, and their interactions with outsiders of these groups. Thus it takes immersing oneself in the culture of the language being studied to understand and appreciate the way people use the words and phrases they choose to represent meaning.

Last week, we had our first group lesson in Bahasa Indonesia with Julie and Thalia. Julie, who was leading the lesson, started out by discussing our previous experiences with the language and our goals for the semester. Then, she hopped right in and began teaching us nouns related to objects in our immediate surroundings and prepositions related to the objects' locations. I enjoyed this approach to the lesson, as it led to us speaking in Indonesian almost exclusively throughout the lesson. I was surprised about how much of the pronunciation I was able to model accurately after Julie's examples, which is a testament to my auditory learning style and my long-term exposure to Bahasa Indonesia last summer.

As I am one of three students in the group, it is very useful to have two native Indonesian speakers participating, as it gives us an opportunity to hear Bahasa Indonesia in an informal, conversational setting. This will likely be the style of language with which I will be interacting the most during my future research in Java. 

The article about the function of our brain is a really interesting topic for me. I always hear people saying cerebral localization which means that each area of the brain to respond to a single behavioral ability. However, I have never known what the behavioral ability is related to. These parts must work together for speech including thinking the utterance and until finally speak loudly. Moreover, the article today makes me reflect a little on how I used to define the left brain and right brain. The left brain is related to logic, sequencing, linear thinking, mathematics, facts and thinking in word; right brain is related to imagination, holistic thinking, intuition, art, rhythm, nonverbal cues, feelings visualization and daydreaming. I always consider me as a math person, which means my left brain might be more powerful. By the way, I know that the left brain is connected to our right body and our right brain is correlated with our left body. Most people are right-handed. This somehow could be an explanation that Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area are usually located in the dominant hemisphere which is the left hemisphere in 97% of people.

Another interesting part of the article is tongue slips part talking about how these little errors we make becomes one evidence. I tend to make a lot of mistake during the speech or even daily conservation. It is the first time I know that the tongue slips are not random but are largely explicable to reference to certain basic constraints.

They talk about how we analyze the meaning and how we mean. I am fascinated by the part talking about people cannot easily find the distinction between sense and reference. It talks about there is no single word for ‘mother’s sister’, for example. But in other languages, like Australian, it is called ‘ngunytju’. It reminds me that there is a Korean word, but there never have an English word for it. The closest English explanation could be ‘pretend to be cute’. I always use flashcard when I memorize words. One of the bad habits when I memorizing new word is that sometimes I got confused with the meaning. I will memorize the new word with a known ‘conception’ or ‘sense’. This part is really interesting and helpful for me to think about how each word is defined and what they really mean, especially in the real world.

It is extremely interesting to see that this goes in deeper than what I've learned in psychology. In psychology class, there's like a way to detect someone lying by watching the direction they look to. The left hemisphere is dominant in language and comprehension of speech. You process meaning through the sounds you hear from your ear, then, this is understood by your brain. Although there are words that sound similar, we understand the meaning through the context. There are some words that mean so many different things, and in a foreign language, this becomes even harder to heard since you are not used to the language.

My previous apprehension of brain structure is rather simple. I understand that there are 2 parts of the brain: left and right. Each of the parts manages different functions. In the reading provided, however, I find that the brain structure is much more complicated and understanding it could help us generate new methods in language learning.

Broca's center, named after its discoverer Paul Pierre Broca, is an area in the left frontal lobe that is essential in language and speech. The hippocampus, that exists in both hemispheres, plays a strong role in memory and storing knowledge, therefore, affects comprehension of speech. The book also introduces language structure by levels. Semantics examines how certain meaning is expressed and understood. Grammar relates to sentence composition. The medium of linguistic transmission focuses on how the communication is processed between people.

I think our language learning process could also process by levels. First, we should understand the language itself, the culture behind it and its origin. Second, we should understand the rules of words and sentence composition and by analyzing basic sentences, we could learn the sentence structure of this language. The last step is to practice conversation and use real-life scenarios to improve language application.

From the readings assigned for this week, I learned a lot about what areas of the brain are used in the process of communication, and in the process of comprehending that communication. In the first article, a largely anatomical approach was used, where it pretty much just stated the physical parts of the brain that were used in producing speech (Broca's area) and to understand or analyze it (Wernicke's area). It gave a detailed overview of how our physical brains worked during even the most natural, and seemingly effortless, conversations we might have.

The philosophical approach to the question of whether words have meanings attached to them, was an interesting question that I had honestly never considered before reading that article. I personally conceptualize or process meaning through context and depending on my situation. A word as simple as "interesting" could have several different meanings based on who I was talking to, or what I was talking about. My language learning process could go much deeper and I could become significantly more immersed in the process if I kept all of this information in mind. While one word having many different meanings could just be a natural interpretation in my native language, when learning a foreign language, this could be a difficult hurdle to overcome. However, with these articles in mind, and an understanding that it is possible for me to overcome hurdles like this, and even more difficult obstacles, I'll be able to approach learning Korean with more confidence and also more enthusiasm.