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1. Slides + Sources:
Angella Lee's Cultural Presentation
2. Summary of Presentation:
My cultural presentation was about the education system in South Korea. I chose this as my topic because my main learning goal for this semester was to prepare for my study abroad experience at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. Therefore, I want to learn about how education is shaped in South Korea.
I briefly talked about the common structure of elementary schools and high schools, but I focused on college life, especially with Yonsei University. Your major in South Korea is quite important because college students are known to primarily associate with those within their major, which is different from how it is here in the United States, at least for me. At the end, I applied what I learned this semester by talking in Korean about my first day at Yonsei University. I also spoke a brief intro and outro in Korean as well.
Summarize your work this semester, the progress you made and the difficulties you encountered.
Because I just began studying Korean this semester, I had to start from the most basic of the basics and establish a solid foundation first. While making my learning plan at the beginning of the semester, I underestimated how difficult it would be to start learning a language of which I had almost no prior knowledge. The pacing of the schedule that I initially outlined was much too fast, especially for the early phases of the semester. For instance, because I haven’t had to learn a radically different writing system since beginning Japanese in my junior year of high school, I had forgotten how long it takes to become adequately familiar with a new alphabet. I spent more time working on identification, writing, and pronunciation of the alphabet than I would have wanted to, but once I had a firm foundation in reading and writing the alphabet, I was able to learn more quickly.
In terms of grammar, I had a leg up coming into Korean with a background in Japanese. Because of my understanding of the Japanese language, I already understood fundamental elements of the Korean language, like different types of particles or basic sentence structure. For instance, both Japanese and Korean use a particle to denote an objects location (‘O’ in Japanese and “ae” in Korean) and both function in a similar way, so it was easy for me to learn how to describe location because it was just a matter of swapping out Japanese words for Korean ones while the grammar structure remained the same.
I also already knew some Korean vocabulary thanks to cognates between the two languages; however, I found learning vocabulary very difficult. I had to build a completely new vocabulary, and I also had to resist my involuntary reflex to use Japanese words in place of Korean ones. Sometimes, I would unconsciously use a Japanese word when I didn’t know the word in Korean, or I would use Japanese pronunciation when speaking. For example, for ‘coffee’ I would say the Japanese ‘ko-hee’ instead of the Korean ‘keopee.’
Overall, I think I learned a good amount this semester. I started off knowing very little about Korean and finished being able to read, write, and converse in basic ways.
My relationship with the Korean language has been a love-hate relationship ever since I was a child. Initially, I grew up speaking French and English. However, family friends began trying to force the Korean language onto me and my siblings, emphasizing the importance of embracing our roots. Because I had no interest in Korean culture or the language as a child, I dreaded the “home-school” type of Korean classes. It wasn’t long after that I quit and was back to being distant with my Korean roots. While I could speak some basic Korean to my parents and siblings, I did not begin speaking Korean to other students until my freshman year of college. At UC Irvine, I was surrounded with many Korean students who lived in the same dorm as me. My desire to properly learn Korean stemmed around this time when I kept failing to express myself or even fully understand the Koreans around me.
Up until this semester, I had no such learning plan or schedule to improve my Korean. I would just watch a few Korean shows or movies every once in a while and pick up some words. It wasn’t until going through SDLC that I realized how slow my learning process up to this point. I decided to take SDLC because I figured if I combined my desire to learn with Korean school work, I would be forced to progress faster. Creating a learning plan gave me goals to chase, and I believe that was the biggest factor in my fast learning progress this semester.
I enjoyed meeting with language partners because it gave me a chance to speak Korean in a natural way and practice expressing myself. I realized that practicing and consistently speaking the target language was truly the only way to improve. I began texting in Korean as well as reading in Korean. Reflecting back to September, my reading and writing has improved dramatically as well- consistency was key.
I found myself relating my Korean learning process to lifting weights at the gym. In order to get bigger and stronger, one needs to set realistic goals and stay consistent. The same method applies to learning a new language- set visible goals and keep at it. Sooner or later, one looks back and realizes how far they’ve come.
I’ve discussed a lot of cultural differences and history with my language partner, making me realize the fact that I lack quite the knowledge on Korean history. We have discussed the general ideas and barely cracked the surface, always running out of time. Therefore, for the next few semesters I hope to go more in depth on Korean history and culture, preparing myself for a possible study abroad trip to Yonsei University.
Post Final Reflection Paper (500 words):
Reflect on your learning experiences this semester.
(a) What insights have you gained about yourself as a language learner and cultural explorer? What did you find difficult? What have you enjoyed? How will you continue your learning?
(b) Which readings and learning activities did you find most useful? What would you like to learn more about?
I had a great language learning experience this semester. The combination of SDLC 105 and 110 classes gave me valuable cultural and linguistic insights. As a language learner, I found that learning a brand new language in older age can be difficult, but it is not undoable. I had a great experience in exploring my interests in terms of culture and language. I had learnt the languages I know at an earlier age, therefore starting a new one at 19 was an experience I won't regret. I found out that I am not very interested in how morphology or syntax work in the language, but rather I am more prone to practicing the language and slowly understanding its logic and the way it works. I also believe learning about the culture helps a lot in terms of understanding the language itself, since some phrases you hear from the target language have no direct translations. Reading texts, listening to music, or TV series everyday conversations are also very helpful when pursuing a language. I truly enjoyed working both alone and in a group with my classmates and language partner. I also loved to use several resources and eventually picking the ones I find the most useful.
I also enjoyed having classes with other language learners, although the difference of the languages we all learnt made it challenging to relate the concepts and the concepts to all of us. I enjoyed reading about bilinguals and the best ways to learn languages, although at the end, I believe most of us already knew which methods work the best for us personally, I also loved talking about culture shock and communicative competence, since those gave me some insights about how to understand my target culture better. I did like having presentations where we all reflected upon our interests and passions about certain languages and cultures. I believe my Linguistics class not only helped me understand my target culture better, but also helped in understanding other linguistic and cultural insights from a number of other languages.
I liked talking abut the basic structure of the languages and the cultural heritage of the languages that are on the verge of extinction nowadays. I found it a bit challenging to relate all the discussions to Turkish, but it was still interesting to hear about other languages. Professor's example from the Russian language helped me understand some concepts better, as Russian is my second language. This class motivated me to do research about the language and culture that I have been learning. My presentations helped me gain extremely valuable insights about Turkey and culture.
It was challenging to keep the track of all the journals and blog posts that I had to write, since some of the questions were repetitive, but I managed to not leave everything for the last minute.
Overall, both my courses were useful and helped me in my learning goals. I am hoping to visit Turkey in summer and use my knowledge in the country I have been learning about so much.
For my final project, I researched and delved into the presidential scandal with Park Geun Hye. I decided to do this topic because it was very interesting to me and was what got me interested into Korean politics. I research on Park's effectiveness as a president, her criticisms as a president and the scandal with Choi Soon Sil.
The Turkish alphabet is similar to the English alphabet except for a few letters.
This fact helped me to quickly learn to read and write in Turkish. Some of the new sounds were familiar to me from the other languages that I am fluent in. I am able to read a Turkish test almost with no mistakes, although my pace of reading is not very quick yet, as I am unfamiliar with most of the words that I am reading. I am also able to type in Turkish, though I prefer to write in my notebook. When practicing sentences or expressions, I have usually taken notes in my notebook starting from the very first days, therefore, I am familiar with writing as well. I often write words and expressions just because the moves of my hand and later glancing at what I have read helps me memorize things better. This has been one of my personal practices ever since I was a kid. I try to used Turkish when sending messages in the group chat, although very often I type in English letters instead. I have added a Turkish keyboard to my phone, since I use google translate quite often when I see an unfamiliar words. It has been a great experience to be able to read and write in a language that I have just started learning!
Summarize your work this semester, the progress you made and the difficulties you encountered.
When I first decided I would start pursuing Turkish, I did not think I would learn as much as I actually learnt this semester. I think pursuing a totally new language at an older age is quite challenging, but I am glad I decided to take the challenge. I chose a number of online resources at the beginning of the semester, but realized later on, that my language partner is the best resource. I learnt the alphabet, which was fairly easy with lots of resemblance to latin alphabet. I continued with learning the vowel harmony of the language and quickly progressed to learning greetings, gratitudes, apologies and other polite expressions. Later on, I was able to speak about myself, do a proper introduction, say my name, age, speak about where I am from and where I live, speak about my studies, work as well as ask relevant questions to other people. I also learnt numbers, places, professions, days of the weeks, months, colors, family introductions, frequency adverbs, questions, verbs, some animals and food etc. I learnt conjugations, simple sentences. I also learnt to ask questions about oneself and understand the answers. I used my online resources as well as the help of language partner and classmates. I practiced writing, listening and speaking skills and tried to find a balance between all of those practices. We ideally combined the language learning with cultural insights and learnt about Turkish family relations, traditions, interesting expressions and phrases, biggest Turkish cities and major archeological sites. We played monopoly several times, watched movies, heard songs, expressed wants and needs and directed our studies the way we found the most useful and interesting. We had speaking practices with my language partner and other Turkish speakers. Now we are able to speak about ourselves, our families, work, hobbies, age, where we are from, etc. We also learnt about Turkish cuisine, Turkish government, the history of Turkish language and culture, as well as dressing and time attitudes.
I believe, as a beginner I accomplished a lot in terms of both learning the language and getting to know the Turkish culture. I am also able to read simple texts and somewhat understand them. My online resources, and most importantly, my language partner were the greatest help for me this semester!
I think the cultural presentations in my class were very interesting. My classmates mostly spoke about South Korea and Korean politics, history, robots, K-pop, time and birthday practices in Korea etc. I also had a chance to hear about Israel and some of the religious practices in Israel. I have always thought that exposure to other cultures, traditions and ways of living makes person smarter, therefore was delighted to be able to hear or watch the diverse presentations of my classmates. I truly valued their effort in making those presentations and preparing their talks. I learnt a wide variety of things, especially about Korea. I also heard about Turkish cinema, which was very interesting for me as a Turkish learner. It was an overall valuable experience for me as I enriched myself with cultural insights. I have been curious about time practices, religious holidays, and politics of other countries, therefore I was impressed with some of the presentations as those gave answers to some of the cultural aspects that I was curious about.
My second cultural presentation
I am presenting about authentic Turkish cultural words, expressions and phrases.
- State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
A part of interactive activities that we did this week included playing monopoly and learning vocabulary that was useful . We learnt how to say who something belongs to, did some reading practice when reading the cards, counted and used Turkish numbers throughout the whole game when rolling a dice. From the cultural aspect of the things we learnt about several neighborhoods of Istanbul, the biggest city of Turkey. We looked up pictures and asked questions to our language partner.
I tried to memorize some weather vocabulary myself as well as revise how to introduce myself and my family.
Besides, we watched a high ranked Turkish movie Babam ve Oglum- My father and my son. It was about a "family of a left-wing journalist is torn apart after a military coup in 1980's Turkey." This movie gave a good insight about the 1980 coup in Turkey as well as family relations. I think it was a great cultural practice. We planned to watch another movie later on. I have, meanwhile, been watching the TV series "Kara Sevda" in Turkish with Russian subtitles. Continuously hearing Turkish language helps me improve my listening skills.
- State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
My this week's goals included learning all the family vocabulary and be able to make sentences about my family members as well as ask relevant questions. I used quizlet to memorize the family words, as well as some of my other online resources. Turkish family vocabulary is more complicated than the English one, as it has separate words for uncles, aunts from mother's or father's side, elder or younger siblings etc. We used my language partner's family tree as an example to create sentences and identify the siblings, parents and other relatives. We made a number of sentences as well as practiced sentences about our own families. We tried to incorporate some hobbies, professions as well when speaking about our family members. We did practice speaking skills with a native Turkish speaker studying at the University and it was a fun session of asking questions and learning new words. I also tried to make some sentences expressing what I need or what I want. I think this week was helpful in terms of vocabulary, speaking, listening conjugations, use of suffixes when creating sentences etc.
Reflecting back to my learning up to week 8, I initially thought my familiarity with Korean culture was decently good. However, looking through the presentations, I realized I lacked a great deal of knowledge on Korean history, politics, and the corporate world. While I was already familiar with the social culture, hierarchy, and the relationships among people, I still learned a more in-depth perspective on those topics. Language wise, I realized Hangul was more complex and "deeper" than I had originally thought. The parts of the language that I already knew was just the surface of Hangul. Speaking with my language partners, I began to realize all these slangs and more complex vocabulary. I believe I still lack a lot of knowledge in both the cultural aspect as well as the language. I hope to break past the basics and start to converse more naturally with some native Koreans.
- State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.
This week's goals include learning and revising the adverbs of frequency and making sentences with the adverbs. I am also looking at how to ask questions about one's daily routine, profession, age etc. In order to accomplish this goal, I started with learning the frequency adverb vocabulary. I used quizlet and youtube videos to memorize these words. Apart from this, I practiced asking about time and understanding the answers. This was also a good way to revise numbers. My language partner and classmates were my primary practice resources. We used notecards and made random sentences using the vocabulary that we've learnt so far. I believe this week was very productive in terms of my language learning goals.
- Seventh Cultural Post: Attitudes about Family in the Target Culture
Turkish culture is a collective culture, therefore family plays an immense role in one's life. Family's opinion is very important for Turks and they consider their families as their number one treasure. Unlike English, Turkish has separate words for uncle and aunt from mother's or father's side. It also has words for elder sibling, elder brother and sister etc. There are also a lot of authentic expressions that show how close Turkish families are. Ciğerimin köşesi-“The corner of my liver” is used when referring to someone very dear, Nazar de ğmesin -“May you not be touched by the evil eye” is used when wishing someone to eb protected from the evil; Allah analı babalı büyütsün-“May God let him/her grow up with both a mom and dad” is used when wishing a newborn a happy life etc. I think these expressions reflect how close families can be and how dearly each family member cares about the other. The negative thing about families, however, is that family members like to "get their nose" into other family members' businesses. They like intervening in each other's personal life, they like to talk about everything their relatives do etc.
Nevertheless, close families are a part of Turkish culture, and this closeness ahs been praised by Turkish people for centuries.
Post your sixth bi-weekly report on your language-learning activities.
These past two weeks, we learned how to say things related to our daily schedules.
I am proficient at hearing and understanding Korean. However, one struggle that I have encountered is that I am not very good at recalling and saying what I just heard. For example, my mom could be telling me to eat dinner and to come eat, and I would understand. However, I would not be able to say the words she said even though she just said it.
I mention all of this because that is how I am about daily activities in Korean. I can understand when they are being said to me, but I am not very good at saying the phrases due to not remembering them.
Evelyn started me off easy by quizzing me on the differences between AM and PM. If it is AM, I have to say 오전 before the time. Similar to 9 o' clock. For PM, I would use 오후. We started off by just using those phrases to describe our days.
The next following classtimes, we began to incorporate more phrases and vocabulary. We got more specific, and we learned how to say breakfast time, lunch time, and dinner time. Furthermore, we also began to learn about the various activities done during this time. During breakfast time, I make my bed (이불을 개다). During lunch time, I go to class (수업). During dinner time, I do my homework (숙제).
I have become a bit better at describing my day and knowing how to describe the different time intervals things happen in. In addition, I have also become better at describing what I do.
Post your fifth bi-weekly report on your language-learning activities
These past two weeks, we continued with learning how to say correct sentence structures by studying 이/가.
I personally struggle with using these words because they seem so small, and I tend to forget to use them.
Evelyn told me that I needed to work on incorporating these words into my speaking because it sounds better and helps facilitate better conversations.
From my learning, I have come to understand that these words are used to help with the flow of the conversation. It helps to characterize which noun is being talked about, and what action is being done to the noun.
With that being said, I will first start off with 이/가. 이 is used when the word before ends in a consonant. For example, when I say in Korean "Sharon is ---------," I would say "샤론이" before, adding the 이 to my name "샤론" to add some fluidity. The 이 in this case is used to describe who is the noun in the sentence. I would say it's kind of like an emphasis on the noun. In English, I would say the equivalent would be similar to a conversation like this:
Who took the cookie from the cookie jar?
Sharon did (이)
Sharon
Contrasting from English, it is necessary and must be said. However, the role of these characters is to emphasize and bring to light the noun being mentioned.
I chose to talk about Korean robots and how they impact the Korean education system, or more specifically, the English learning process. Learning English is considered a very good skill to have in Korea, and many try to learn the language. However, outside of the capital city of Seoul, there is a shortage of high-quality English teachers. Therefore, the Korean government combined their advanced technology with their education to find a more efficient way to have quality English available to everyone around the country. Engkeys are English teaching robots that is remotely controlled by a human teacher on the other end, usually from Australia, Canada, US, Phillipines, or Great Britain.
Attached is my presentation slides.
My learning process this semester has gone a lot better than I expected. Although my learning plan shifted from wanting to get better at writing and reading faster to better understand conversations and slangs, I made a big progress. While making progress at the conversing aspect of Korean, I also worked on the initial goal of mine, to write and read faster. I went from having to translate sentences on google, to just typing whatever I'm thinking without having to verify online. Admittedly, I still get a few typos and mistakes, but reflecting back to where I was in September, it is a bit scary to see how fast somebody can pick up a new language. My conversing has improved significantly and I sound more confident when speaking Korean. I hope through SLDC 111 next semester, I will progress even faster and explore the aspects I haven't been able to cover this semester.
I learned about Korea's myself generation, dialects, politics, immigration, gangs, hip-hop, families, and education. I also learned about some aspects of Turkey and India. I realized that all the presentations on Korean culture related to each other in one way or another. For example, my presentation was about the impact of robots on the English learning process in Korea, which Jessica emphasized on as well. Hip-hop also related to the immigration, while dialects related to families. After seeing all these components that make up the Korean culture, it showed how different my Korean roots are to my American lifestyle. I also found it interesting on how I can live and belong to more than one culture no matter how different they may be.
