Typing in Korean on my phone is easy because of the Korean keyboard that I can switch to. However, once it comes to typing on my laptop, the Korean letters aren't visible on my keyboard obviously. Although I remember where most of the letters are placed, I find myself pressing on a few keys in a certain area in search of the letter I want. Therefore, to get more efficient at typing in Korean on my laptop, I got a Korean alphabet keyboard sticker. Although it is a very simple artifact, it allows me to type without error and without having to guess where the letter is. It definitely got me typing faster and will help me get used to typing with multiple fingers instead of just my two thumbs on my phone.
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For week 13, I just wanted to learn more about the different cultural components of Korea, India, and Turkey from my classmates' presentations. The presentations were on languages, dialects, food, technology, cities, and politics. It was nice learning about different aspects of my target language, but also those of other countries as well. It was fascinating to see how different cultures are from one another yet how well they all coexist.
For week 12, I've decided to present on Korean robots and the impact they have on the Korean education system (or English learning process more specifically). I chose this topic out of pure curiousness on Korean robots but later found a relationship between the robots and education. Since me and my language partner discussed cultural differences between Korea and the US, we also touched on the subject of education. There are slight differences between the two education systems, so I figured I would talk about the involvement of robots in the Korean system. I already knew Korea was very technologically advanced, but had no idea about their impressive robotics. They used robots called Engkeys to teach good quality English to children outside of the capital city of Seoul. The entire project was to address the shortage of English teachers outside of Seoul and engage children more while they get a better quality education.
The general idea of family in Korea is much more based on close ties and dependencies. An article I found states the following: "Koreans incorporate the fact of biological continuity into their family life according to ancient ideas of birth and conception. Mothers traditionally were thought to produce the flesh of their children, and fathers to provide the bones. As bone endures longer than flesh, kinship through males was thought more binding than through females.Even today men pass on membership in their clan to their children, while women do not" (Asia Society). Although this is just a personal and broad opinion, I've always noticed that Korean relatives seemed much more close and comfortable with each other than the western families. The article also states that American families do not like to depend one each other or cling on to each other, while in Korea, family members are encouraged to depend on one another and help each other out in any way. The tendency and attitude towards dependency might be a factor in why I notice the differences between the two.
Week 11, me and my language partners discussed environmental disasters. Apart from the cultural differences between Korea and the US, I was curious to see the different geographical and natural aspects of the two nations as well. During that week, there was a 5.4 earthquake in the city of Pohang, South Korea. My language partner explained that since environmental disasters were so rare in Korea, the people were pretty shaken up about it. We also compared the frequency of natural disasters in Korea to the United States. We talked about the recent hurricanes (Harvey, Irma) in the US, as well as the common mini earthquakes in California (since all three of us were familiar with California).
For week 10, me and my language partner discussed Korean slangs and identified slangs in a movie we watched, called "The Thieves." Initially, it was difficult to understand since they used a lot of slangs that I wasn't familiar with, and that made us study slangs more. My language partner shared some common slangs that students around my age uses, and I continued to jot them down on my phone. It was a goal of mine to get familiar with slangs and the kind of language students my age in Korea use.
I strongly believe that learning a history of a nation can help one to learn the language. In example, the history of Korean language, Hangul, starts from the Chosun dynasty. King Sejong created a language as many people had hard time learning Chinese characters and he thought that increasing the literacy rate could make the nation more powerful. Hangul is scientific and logical that many linguists say it is well organized and therefore easy to learn. By learning the history how the language was created, it will be easier for learners to recognize the structure. Every syllable has a origin and meanings to it and by learning those, novice learners would be more engaged to start their journey to a new language.
Since I am a native speaker and wanting to learn deeper into my first language, I don't recall learning a sentence structure or grammar structure of a language. However, I definitely think that learning a structure of language would improve my comprehension skill when I read and to think in more logical ways. Encountering dense articles or news, I always use to break up one sentence into multiple parts and read them again. Learning sentence structure would benefit this kind of aspect. In order to acquire the knowledge I need, I would have to dedicate more time when I read. I would break up the sentence into parts and try to understand separately at first. Then, I would put the sentence together to make sense as a whole. Furthermore, I think reference grammar would also help tremendously, as I still have to look up for different combination of sentences for clear understanding when I read.
As a person who moved to the states with a Korean nationality, there was a cultural barrier that I had to went through. As I look back, cultural barrier was higher and tougher to overcome than the language barrier. For the first month, everything was new and I was excited to be in a new environment with new people. However as the time goes, I realized that I started to miss home, family, friends, and food. As I get homesick, I started to only hangout with Korean friends and wanted to stay in my comfort zone. More time went by and now I feel like I belong to both nations, but there still is an uneasiness in accepting american culture.
The culture shock that hit me the hardest was people wearing shoes in their house in the states. I saw my friend sitting on her bed with shoes on and I was very surprised. Now I understand the American lifestyle, but I still prefer to not wear my shoes in my room.
Since I’ve been attempting to read and write in my target language most of my life, I will focus on my experiences that occurred this semester. I can undoubtedly say that this semester my reading and writing skills have improved tenfold. Although the spelling for my writing is still a bit iffy, I can definitively say that my increased vocabulary has expanded my ability to express myself in Korean. Whenever I talk to my parents or relatives, I can express certain things through written form. In addition to that, my typing in Korean is a lot faster, as I memorized where some of the keys are to be able to write. My reading has also gotten quicker. Instead of struggling slowly over words, I can now read a lot more fluidly without having awkward pauses in between. I can also understand what most of these words are, as I don’t have to devote as much brainpower as I once did in order to understand the meaning of the context of what I read.
Growing up as a bilingual, I was very interested in reading on whether or not bilinguals were actually smarter than those who grew up learning only one language. The reading discussed how bilinguals, while not necessarily more intelligence than their counterparts, had a stronger portion of the brain that dealt more with decision-making and control. This occurs because as children growing with two languages, they have to constantly switch over to the other language and decide which word, grammatical structure, or phrase they must use that is appropriate for the context of the situation. I know this occurred to me multiple times growing up, and sometimes I would accidentally use a word in other language than I intended. For example, when frustrated, sometimes instead of expressing my thoughts in English, it came out in Korean.
It is difficult to measure how many words I have learned in my target language, but I have constantly been attempting to learn more words whenever possible. During our SDLC sessions, our teacher occasionally offers us vocabulary guides with a fill-in the blank portion, as he teaches us the meanings of certain words. In addition, I try to write down words I don’t know in the Korean music that I listen to, and I look up the meaning of the word later on. Lastly, by changing the settings on my phone to all Korean, I was able to pick up some technical terms. Although I do have realistic goals for the acquisition of my vocabulary, I think it would be handier if I was in an actual class setting able to learn these vocabulary words. It would be helpful if I had someone quiz me every time and continued to quiz me so that I would be able to learn more words.
When languages die, a significant portion of the culture dies along with it. Many languages have expressions or words that are only available to be characterized by that certain language, and the death of a language results in the death of that expression or word. In addition, languages are often rooted to the identity of certain ethnic groups. To be considered part of a certain ethnicity, for example, one must be able to speak that language in the eyes of some ethnic groups. The death of a language seems to be inevitable for certain languages. Globalization has increased homogenization, allowing for a few languages to dominate most of the world. Although individual languages, especially those from native tribes, still maintain some relevance and attempt to save their language through the creation of dictionaries and online resources, these might remain to be the last of the languages. Actual verbal communication would be difficult to recreate, and would only be applied for scholarly text.
My presentation was on the influences of the Hallyu Wave. I spoke about how the Hallyu Wave was changing cultures around the world with South Korean culture, especially about the impacts of the Hallyu wave in America.
Third Cultural Post
Teach someone using the activity you created in Week 9; reflect upon the effectiveness of the activity.
I taught my friend the colors in Korean by playing Bingo. I made the Bingo boards by writing words in Korean. I made a 3x3 chart, where I wrote the following colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, black, and white. I also tore up pieces of paper and wrote the English word on them. I said the word in English out loud and we would both try to identify the Korean counterpart to it. It was difficult for her because she had never encountered Korean words before, so she did not know what to do at first. However, she later seemed to use a creative strategy where she chose the word based on the shapes the Korean characters. For example, she recognized the color red because of the interesting shape of the first character (빨간). It was overall an activity that, in retrospect, was a bit difficult for non-Korean speakers. However, she cooperated very well and it seemed to be an enjoyable experience for her. Though I am not quite sure she will remember the characters again if we play again, I hope that somewhere in her brain, the connections are there.
In your learning journal, 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
I think my progress in learning Korean has been going overall well. When I first started learning Korean in SDLC 110, I was placed in Novice High. This semester, I placed myself in Intermediate Low. However, I think after a lot of thought, I am still in Novice High. Therefore, one change I made to my learning plan and activities is that I stopped watching Korean TV shows. I found that, more often than not, it was very difficult for me to listen and recognize the words the characters said, resulting in a frustrating experience.
I think that the type of show I watch definitely matters. I think that I am better at understanding shows that use daily conversation language, such as comedy shows. However, regardless of this change, I think I am getting better at understanding the overall themes in the shows I have watched in class.
However, despite this change, I have been working on my other goals. I have been reading short stories, having my writing graded, learning new vocabulary words, and practicing having conversations with fellow Korean learners.
Post your fourth bi-weekly report on your language-learning activities.
Create a learning activity to teach someone else something you have learned in your language; outline this activity in your learning journal.
This week, I learned several new vocabulary words. It sounds a bit silly, but I have always wanted to know the colors of the rainbow in Korean. I knew the basic ones, such as red, yellow, and blue. However, I wanted to be able to point at any object and be able to describe what color it was. Therefore, this week my language partner taught me how to pronounce various colors. After we practiced them, she gave me a spelling test. I also learned the vocabulary words for fruits and vegetables. I learned the vocab words for various Korean fruits as well as American fruits.
Lastly, I learned vocabulary words to describe my actions throughout the day. I learned how to describe how to say “in the day” and “in the afternoon” and “in the evening.” Furthermore, I also learned how to say various words to describe my daily routines, such as making my bed, brushing my teeth, and napping. I learned the correct formats of how to use these vocabulary words.
I decided to make a learning activity of teaching my friend various colors in Korean. As I love the game Bingo, I decided to make a bingo chart of various colors in Korean, and I would say the colors in English. It was fun because it was a two-part process. The first part was recognizing what the color was, and the second part was to match the Korean word to the English word. Though we only played a few rounds, I felt like she seemed to be making connections between the colors in English and Korean.
Post your third bi-weekly report on your language-learning activities
This week, my language partner and I watched an episode of 비정상회담 (bee jung sang hweh dahm). It is a show where TV personalities and guest stars debate about topics about Korean culture from the perspectives of non-Koreans. The episode I watched was about how the Korean language was perceived by people from other countries. The episode had many people of different nationalities, who spoke Korean all share about their experiences with learning Korean versus their own language. To be honest, it was a bit difficult to understand due to the high vocabulary of the complex topic. However, I challenged myself to at least understand the main idea of what was going on. I found that after a while, I began to get better at understanding what was going on.
I also have begun to learn about object particles in Korean. The object particles are 을 [eul] & 를 [reul]. How I have come to understand it is that it comes after the noun, connecting to the verb. An English example of this would be something like “the dog gave the toy to me.” In Korean, the object particle would be placed between the dog and gave, connecting the noun and verb. There are two object particles, one for if the word before has a vowel or a consonant. If it is a vowel, we use 를. If it is a consonant, we use 을.
- Recording
- Translation:
- Hello! This week, I learned about the money system in South Korea. In the United States, we use dollars as the currency, but in South Korea, they use “won.” In South Korea, they have $1, $5, $10, and $50, while we have up to $100 in the United States. $1.20 in the U.S. is 1,200 won in South Korea. Thank you.
I took a Korean accounting class at the University of Richmond a few years ago, and I remember how difficult it was for me to understand Korean business articles which were written using advanced words that I was not familiar with. Even though I was able to "read" the article, I either had to read it multiple times to get a general idea of the article or ended up not being able to "understand" the content. And this past summer, I interned at an ad agency and when I tried to write a social media post all in Korean, it took me hours to articulate certain thoughts because I could only think of them in English and couldn't find an accurate way to translate that idea in Korean because my limited knowledge of Korean. Also, certain phrases that I thought was a right translation actually sounded a bit off or awkward to Koreans. So I had to edit a few times and be extra cautious in double checking if I'm using the appropriate words and phrases at the right place.
