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Journal Entry 6

My goals this week is to solidify my understanding of pronouns and possession in Persian, as well as numbers and “question words.” As usual, I am working from my textbook and with Mahshad, but I am supplementing it with a website on Persian numbers that Mahshad recommended and am trying to do basic math problems in Persian, which is significantly more difficult to do than I was anticipating. It is somewhat embarrassing for someone whose passed calculus to struggle with comprehending basic addition.

Culture Post 5

I would like to learn about food and cooking in Persian culture. I would like to know broadly how does Persian cuisine vary depending on region, how similar it is to nearby cuisines, what its influences were, and how it emerged. I do not want to just look up Persian translations of various fruits and dishes, but instead how they are prepared and their cultural significance.

Journal Entry 5

I feel that I’ve met my learning goals for weeks 4 and 5, with the caveat that the second goal of improving pronunciation and reading skills will take likely the rest of the semester (and the start of next semester). With having a conversation in Persian, I feel comfortable with speaking slowly and with a relatively pre-set “script” so to speak, but when straying outside of my area of knowledge, I struggle immensely to parse individual words and structures. I will need to work on improving my ability to speak and respond to spoken Persian.

Cultural Post 4

Persian is usually written in the Perso-Arabic script, an adaptation of the Arabic script that adds an additional four letters to represent sounds not found in Arabic (such as /p/ or /g/). There are several historical Persian scripts used to write Middle and Old Persian, as well as Pahlavi, Avestan, and other Iranian languages. Many of these share a common origin with Arabic, originally coming into being from the early Phoenician alphabet. In the modern day, however, Persian is only written in “non-native” scripts, either the Perso-Arabic script, which is the closest to a native script that Persian has, Cyrillic, with Tajiki, or the Latin alphabet, usually used for transliterations for western audiences. There is no universally used way of transcribing Persian into the Latin alphabet, so the same word could be written multiple different ways. Due to both historical precedent and adaptation, it seems best to work within the Perso-Arabic script; however, I intend to learn Cyrillic at some point in order to have another means of approaching the language.

Journal Entry 4

My goals for these current weeks are to have a solid understanding of Persian verbs and how they work. Persian has a somewhat complex compound verb system and so the goal for this week is to understand how these work together. Additionally, one of my current issues is that I default to a very “Arabic” way of pronouncing Persian, likely because of the Arabic writing system, and I would like to “re-train” how my brain perceives the writing system. It’ll take a few weeks to get out of this habit, but one of the things I’m starting now is listening to BBC Persian. I can just barely understand the most basic concepts when listening to it, but I am trying to get used to the cadences and stress patterns of Persian.

Journal Entry 3

My learning goals this week were to learn the ezafe construction and “to be” in the present tense. Both of these were somewhat odd to learn for me personally since the ezafe, which is a genitive construction, is an Arabic word for a very similar way of linking words together, but they are linguistically completely unrelated. The Persian for “to be” (būdan) is declined in the present tense very similarly to Latin (est in Latin, āst in Persian for the third person, singular, present). I largely learned these from my textbook, with supplemental resources from Jahanshiri and other online resources.

Cultural Post 3

Persian has an extensive culture around what is known as taarof, which is a system of etiquette involving a lot of humility and excessiveness politeness. If you ask how much something is worth in a shop, the shopkeeper might say, “it’s worth nothing” multiple times. Similarly, the polite thing to do is to offer and refuse food multiple times during meals or offer favors. This is something that will take a long time to fully learn.

Journal Entry 2

I am just starting to get off the ground so to speak with learning Persian. It is a bit difficult via Skype because, while the issues with sound quality are not a problem when speaking English, when learning Farsi, the slight graininess and transmission errors makes it hard to understand things like word stress and differences between certain phonemes, like /v/ or /w/ or /s/ and /z/. My work-around for this is to use programs like Mango Languages (and, if it ever develops a Persian component, Duolingo) and Byki (although I have issues with it) to hear pronunciation more clearly than over Skype. Additionally, wiktionary has IPA transcripts and an English phonetic transcription for all Persian words. Hopefully these can supplement my Skype lessons.

Cultural Post 2

Persian is very much a diglossic language with multiple different registers (I guess this makes it a polyglossic, not diglossic language). Tajik, Dari, and Farsi all have a very formal way of speaking, as well as more casual ways of speaking. Persian in Use, the textbook I am using, provides both the formal written, educated form, as well as the more colloquial form of Farsi with a Tehrani dialect. Aside from simplifications in the grammar and pronunciation, the colloquial form tends to cause the vowel /ɒ/ to turn into /u/.

Learning Journal 8: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

Goal: Preterite and Clothes

This week I will be learning to conjugate verbs to the preterite. I will also start learning clothes vocabulary. I want to learn the different words to describe clothing items and maybe a few phrases that I could use when shopping for clothes. I will also be learning to conjugate verbs to the preterite. I have realized that my word bank for words is very limited. I found an online list of 'useful Portuguese verbs', which I plan to review to increase the number of verbs I know. I will follow Babble lessons and review new words and concepts in my journal. This week I also want to practice reading children's books with my language partner to work on my reading and pronunciation of sounds. 

Journal Entry 1

At the end of this semester, I intend to have the ability to convey and understand basic biographical information, ability to convey needs/emergencies/desires as appropriate (e.g. for shopping, restaurants, directions, telling time, etc). I believe this is roughly equivalent to a novice high level (ACTFL). Additionally, I hope to have a better understanding of the core grammatical aspects of Persian, especially in relation to other Indo-European languages, the differences between the various dialects, and the influence of Arabic on the language.

Cultural Post 1

The Persian language (and culture) has a history that is closely related and linked with the two other languages and cultures that I am familiar with, Latin and Arabic. Its position along the silk road means that Persian both influenced and was influenced by languages, peoples, and concepts from virtually the entirety of Asia, especially central and western Asia. Loosely speaking, because I want to better understand and learn the history of the Middle East, I am learning Persian. Additionally, Persian has one of the richest poetic histories of any language (the Shahnamah by Ferdowsi, Omar Khayyam, and Rumi are the most famous in the west, but there are thousands more), which I would like to be able to read and understand. It will take a lot more than one semester to be able to start reading and appreciating Persian poetry, but that is my long term goal and I hope that this will set me on the right track.

Learning Journal 7: 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.

So far I have been following through with my initial study plan. The only things that has not gone as anticipated is the study of sounds. Mastering sounds and identifying patterns of pronunciation while reading is takin longer than I thought I would. This could be a setback for speaking and so I want incorporate more oral practicing of sounds. This might push a few of the items on my learning plan for later. I have realized I could use more exposure to the language to be able to become more familiar with Portuguese sounds and so I have created a music playlist in Portuguese and have made an effort to watch TV in Portuguese. Overall, I think there is a chance I will not get to the last few items in my study plan by the end of April but I think I can still follow it even if I fall a little behind. 

Fourth%20Artifact.m4a

I am going to New York in a couple of days so I wanted to share another recording of me introducing myself for when/if I meet any Turkish people there!

Fifth Cultural Post:  Reflect upon what you have learned about the culture(s) you have been studying. 

Reflection:

The cultures that I have been studying were the regions, dialect, cuisine, the flag, and some customs and traditions. For the language aspect, I was able to get a better understanding of different dialects of native Koreans. I was able to learn ways to differentiate them into the 6 regions in Korea. Not only being able to know the regions, I was also able to learn more about their specialty cuisine (which I plan to taste when I travel to Korea).

Because Lunar New Year had past during this semester, I was able to learn more about the traditions and customs done on that day. For example, I learned how to properly bow to the elders (to get lucky New Year's Money). It was definitely a big contrast to what I am use to. In Vietnamese culture, we don't usually bow as deep as they do in Korean culture, and we also have to give specific words/phrases/wishes to the elders to get the lucky money.

I think what surprised me the most was the meaning behind the South Korean flag. If I had not done research I would have not known the deeper meaning behind each symbol on the flag. For the most part, I understood the ying and yang symbol in the center, representing wholeness and balance. What surprise me the most were the black symbols/characters on the four corners of the circle (you can read more about it in my other blog post).

What I took away most from this project was a better understand of the culture and language. I was also able to see how the culture and language both influence each other.

Cultural Project:

My Cultural Project is about the different dialects spoken in South Korea. Like how each region has their own speciality cuisine, they also have a distinctive way to speak. My presentation will highlight the different dialects and how to listen to the differences. I will also provide examples of the different dialects in comparison to the standard Korean language. 

My Cultural Project:

South Korean Satoori - Teresa Do

Learning Journal 6: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

Goals: Present tense, sounds, body parts

I would have liked to start working on present tense last week but sounds have been taking longer than I had originally anticipated. Therefore, this week I am starting to learn how to conjugate verbs in the present tense. Furthermore, I want to keep practicing sounds, which still need a lot of work. Lastly, I want I will be learning vocabulary for body parts.

As I have been doing, I will use Babble lessons to practice conjugations and body parts vocabulary. I will then add the new words to my journal for review and practice. I will also start writing down any questions I have during the week, to ask my language partner when we meet. This week I want to discuss any questions I might have regarding this week's study and continue practicing sounds with my language partner. 

Learning Journal 5: an assessment of how well you met your learning goals for weeks 4 and 5.

Week 4-5 goals: Sounds, family vocabulary, food vocabulary

Learning new vocabulary goals was simple enough as many of the words were very similar to words used in Spanish (especially for the family vocabulary). The real challenge this week has been learning sounds. There were some sounds that I was not able to master and I need more practice predicting sounds in Portuguese words. Nasal sounds and 'r' sounds are the most challenging for me. Furthermore, some letters have different sounds depending on their placement in the words and the letters surrounding them. For example in the word 'interesante', the first t is pronounced pretty much like in English, but the second t is pronounced more like "ch" due to its placement towards the end of the word.  

This is an image of a Korean dish we made following a Korean cookbook online. 

Learning Journal 4: Document (a) your goals and tasks for weeks 4 and 5, (b) the resources and activities you will use to achieve your goals, and (c) how you will evaluate your success.

Goals: Sounds, family, food

These two weeks I will be working on my Portuguese sounds. I have noticed Portuguese has many sounds that do not exist in English and so I anticipate mastering a lot of these sounds will be difficult. I found a Youtube video that describes the sounds each letter makes in Portuguese, which I will be using to practice. I also plan to practice with my language partner. 

Regarding vocabulary I will be studying words for describing family (week 4) and words for describing food (week 5). I will be using Babble lessons to practice and will document new words in my journal. Babble gives you a score at the end of each lesson, which I will use to evaluate my success. 

Learning Journal 3: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

Goal: Numbers and Colors

This week I am learning numbers and colors. Babble has lessons on both topics, which I have been completing. These lessons normally have matching exercises and spelling practice. I included a list of the words I learned throughout the week and I have been reviewing them. I found that counting in Portuguese while at the gym is a good distraction (I do not like working out, so distractions are good)  and so now instead of keeping track of number and time in English, I use my Portuguese numbers at the gym.

I was also able to communicate with my language partner in Indonesian. After an entire semester, we were finally able to have a brief conversation. In this thread, we are talking about going to eat dinner and at what time. My language partner even offered to pay. 

Reflection

As a language learner and cultural explorer, I find myself, now, more eager to delve into the target language’s culture. I also find myself thinking about a target language’s “big C” and “little c”. As a language learner, I definitely enjoyed learning about the language itself, but also the history of the language and the language culture. I still do find it difficult to completely understand the true nature of a language, but it is still enjoyable when I don’t dwell too deep. Compared to being a language learner, I think being a cultural explorer was more fun and rewarding. Though language is a huge part of culture, I find learning more about the culture of a target language was more interesting and covered unique topics.

For SDLC 111, I focused a lot more on the culture aspect of the language. I think that was very beneficial, in that I was able to understand the history behind certain things like the flag or dialects. It was a different approach then I did last semester, working more on the learning of vocabulary and utilizing them in context. 

For next semester, I hope to be able to combine these two techniques (learning through the standard method-textbooks, and learning a through understanding culture) and become a better language learner. 

Self-Assessment

My learning plan: Korean%20Language%20Learning%20Plan.docx

Reading in my target language has definitely improved as well. I find myself reading every Korean word/phrase/sentence I encounter on a daily basis. Before this journey started, I was able to read very limited words and read them very slowly. Now, I am able to read familiar words/phrases/sentences with ease, though some words may take a little longer, I am still able to read them.

I am now able to write simple sentences, conjugate some verbs, and even some complex sentences. So, not only has my writing improved, but also my grammar.

My understand of culture has most definitely improved, especially as I had to do more research as I delved into the different cultural topics.

Though my speaking skills are still lacking, they have improved from last semester. For next semester, as well, I plan to focus more on the speaking aspect of the language learning process. 

Learning Journal 2: In addition to discussing the resources (see above), outline how you have begun to work on your first language tasks

I decided to begin by learning simple common phrases like greetings and introducing myself. I am creating a list of 'useful phrases' which are phrases that I think I would use the most. I have Benn using Babble and youtube videos to help me with pronunciation as well as the context in which certain words or greetings (formal/ informal) are normally used. I am keeping a journal where I write what the things I learn every week so I can keep track of my progress and use it as reference. 

R2.docx

This attachment is my second (end of semester) reflection paper. 

Here are the notes of how I learned to to self-introduction. We did it in a form of dialogues. And this strategy is really effective.