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When I had to learn English when I was young, I remember I was frustrated when I couldn’t express my ideas or articulate myself correctly when I knew in my head what to say. Another struggle was when I was able to read and understand written information in English but couldn’t understand if someone verbally said it to me. To fix that problem, I watched various American TV shows in English with English subtitles at first and gradually took out the subtitles as my listening skills got better. I enjoyed doing this since I could pick up on conversational language or culture as well. I still remember that excitement when I was finally able to watch something without the subtitles and understood most of the content.

When I was learning Spanish, I enjoyed practicing by talking to friends about my day or my interests in Spanish but I disliked taking quizzes on vocabulary because I just memorized a bunch of words in short term and easily forgot most of them in the long run.

Through the assessments I took, I had already known that I’m a visual learner, but I was surprised to see that I learn best from interacting with people. Being more introverted than extroverted, I would have thought that I would learn best by myself but the results showed me that social interactions enhance my learning skills. It was also interesting though to see how FIRE model revealed that I’m factual when it comes to integrative thinking which means I like learning step by step in a thoroughly thought-out plan.

Based on the assessments and past experiences of language learning, I think I would learn advanced Korean best by watching shows or reading books and articles that use such level of vocabulary and language. I also think it would be very helpful for me to talk to someone using the advanced vocabulary or phrases that I plan on learning. One area that is out of my comfort zone and something I didn’t do much especially in learning Korean is practicing writing in Korean more often. This could be something that I can expand on in my learning experience of Korean.

Reflect on your experiences as a language learner.  What did you enjoy?  What did you dislike?  Think about the FIRE model and the surveys you have just completed.  What kind of learner are you?  What kinds of language learning activities suit your learning style?  How do you think you should expand your learning activities?

Growing up I learned English and Vietnamese concurrently. During school I learned and spoke mainly in English; however, whenever I was at home, I spoke Vietnamese and took classes on the weekends. I started taking French in middle school, but it was also during this time that I was very interested in learning Korean. My middle school did not offer a Korean language course, so that was when I started my self-directed study in Korean.

One thing I enjoy as a language learner was not only learning the language, but also the country's culture. It was also nice to learn at my own pace. There weren't mandatory assignments or tests, it was a pleasurable hobby.

One thing that I dislike as a language learner is that I often use words or phrases from one language that makes no sense in another language. For example, if I were to say an English-translated Vietnamese proverb, it would make little to no sense to someone who doesn't know Vietnamese. There are also times when I am speaking in English, but suddenly I would switch to another language mid-sentence.

I am a tactile learner. This means that experiencing or doing hands-on activities are most effective for me to learn. Obviously, this means that the best way for me to learn Korean is to go to South Korea. I do plan on study abroad next year in South Korea, but for the time being, there are other local activities for me to do to learn the language.

For now, I think some activities that will suit me best is speaking in Korean to native speakers on campus, getting involved with the Korean-community in the Richmond area, playing Korean games/activities, and connecting with the other students also learning Korean. 

I was exposed to a second language, English, at a very early age. Despite the fact that I grew up in Korea, I started to learn English when I was 5, starting with alphabets and simple words. As English is the most spoken language in the world, many people in my nation start English education very early. Some children even start to learn Korean and English at the same time in extreme cases, and it is starting to become a trend. Even though I begin to learn English relatively early, I do not consider myself as a fluent English speaker. I still stutter when I speak, have accents, and can't find an appropriate words at a right timing. Mastering and developing language skills in second language has been very tough for me.

Before I moved to the states, English education has been always focused on the grammar structure of the language. However, as soon as I moved to the states, I realized that the grammar rules and sentence structures would not get me out of the situation where I was trapped in the airport for several hours. This made me realize that I did not learn how to speak in English for past ten years, but only focused on perfunctory facts. I struggled with understanding the lectures in classes, keeping track of important announcements and socializing with friends outside of classes. However, I was able to adjust to a new environment quite quickly and change the whole paradigm of my thoughts. Still, I get self conscious about speaking English in front of many native speakers, but I'm trying to overcome this aspect through being more confident and participating more actively.

In Sophomore year of high school, I challenged myself by learning a third language, Spanish. I thought it would be easy to begin a new language, but it wasn't. Learning conjugation rules and new sentence structure seemed like a whole new world. I tried to connect this situation to a point when I started to learn English, but it was harder than I expected. There were more rules, more vocabularies, more structures to learn as I got more deeply into it, and I stopped acquiring it as soon as I got to a college. If I ever get to travel or live in Spanish speaking countries, acquisition of language would come more naturally; however, I noticed taking Spanish classes would not get me out of the airport if I ever get trapped in a Spanish speaking country unless I make more effort in order to achieve a professional level.

Through these experiences, I learned that achieving a certain level at a language is a difficult and time consuming task. Moreover, it made me realize that taking a class and getting fluent in a certain language is a totally different experience. From the surveys, I learned that I am an auditory and kinesthetic learner. I hope to engage these skills with my further interactions with languages, and to make my learning experience more effective and interesting. 

As a Spanish learner during my high school years, I really enjoyed being able to communicate with native Spanish speakers who were not able to speak English. During college, I was able to visit my sister, who was studying abroad in the Dominican Republic, and have basic conversations with the residents. Of course I was not able to speak fluently and understand the speakers completely, but I was able to go by without an issue. 

What I disliked about learning another language was having to make sense of the sentence structures and learning to conjugate verbs. To this day, it still confuses me and I feel like I know many words, but do not know how to piece them together. 

Overall, I am a tactile learner who wants to obtain information with facts. I have known this by what I disliked and liked about my past classes and what I did to study for the classes. I disliked all of my classes that had to do with applying different theories instead of working with straight up facts. The best way for me to study for my classes was by making index cards, repeating things over and over out loud, and writing on whiteboards. I was able to memorize information a lot better when I was physically doing something.

To expand my learning activities, I feel like I have to work with people and go over information to see whether what I thought is wrong or right. I also think that watching videos of people speaking in different languages would really help me understand how to speak the language.   

Hi All, 

This is an interactive site for you to preview the various sounds in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Understanding these principles will be helpful when you encounter phonetic transcription in your studies. The speaker adds an unfortunate suprasegmentals in between his renderings of each sound, but the initial recordings in each clip still provide solid approximations of each sound.

http://www.ipachart.com/

Michael

Reflect on your experiences as a language learner.  What did you enjoy?  What did you dislike?  Think about the FIRE model and the surveys you have just completed.  What kind of learner are you?  What kinds of language learning activities suit your learning style?  How do you think you should expand your learning activities?

I learned Spanish for four years in high school, and my favorite part of using the language was being able to piece together sentences from words that I had learned in class. Though I often cannot say a whole sentence that is grammatically correct, being able to use words together in Spanish and have others understand what I was trying to say was very satisfying for me, and a motivator for me to try harder to become more fluent. I am a visual learner, and I often rely on using flashcards and pictures to memorize words and objects. I find that rereading the same word or seeing the same picture 20 times in a row almost burns a permanently memory of that word/object into my brain. I have tried other methods in my four years of Spanish, but it is this particular type of visual aid that works best for me. I want to start working on my auditory skills, I am pretty bad on picking up what others say to me in foreign languages, especially if they are fluent. I heard that watching Netflix in a different language really helps, and I think watching fun Korean dramas would be both interesting and a fun activity for me to do this semester, something that I am really looking forward to!

Interestingly, my learning style is auditory by 40% while my visual and tactile is each at 30%. I think I can relate that I am a auditory learner. Sometimes, I would record my lectures notes then review them by listening to them again and writing notes down. However, I also think that I would do well if I physically do problems and keep practicing through drilling will help me learn. This relates to my other survey that I am a body movement type of intelligence. When I physically write things down then I find it easier to recall the information. My second intelligence is nature. I can relate new words and phrases I learn to nature and the environment. Reading about nature and animals would aid in my learning experience. 

Reflect on your experiences as a language learner.  What did you enjoy?  What did you dislike?  Think about the FIRE model and the surveys you have just completed.  What kind of learner are you?  What kinds of language learning activities suit your learning style?  How do you think you should expand your learning activities?

Much of my experience with studying language, namely foreign language, has been done through school. I’ve studied a fairly wide array of languages, each to varying degrees of success. It is when I began to study Asian languages that I really began to enjoy the study of language. Through languages such as Japanese, the world of non-western culture was opened up to me, and I felt as though I could create a genuine connection to the other side of the world. I enjoy learning and becoming better, but I have never liked memorizing obscure words just for the sake of a quiz. I want to focus on common, frequently used vocabulary that I can use to describe more complex concepts or words I don’t know.

As for the surveys, I learned that I am predominantly a visual and auditory learner. This means that it would be helpful for me to focus on visualization and connect language to sound when possible. I’ll mostly likely use a lot of visual aids such as flash cards, and I’ll speak aloud or listen to things in Korean. When it comes to expanding my learning activities, I know I need to practice with native speakers whenever possible. This will be a challenge because I know I won’t feel very confident or comfortable speaking a new language, but speaking as much as possible will definitely help with grammar, vocabulary, and fluency. 

Attached is a PDF of my Cultural Project, which contains the slides, and the sources that I used. 

Attached is an oral summary of my Cultural Project.

Bradley%20Fischer%20--%20Cultural%20Project%2011.pdf

Cultural%20Project%20Oral%20Summary.m4a

https://drive.google.com/a/richmond.edu/file/d/0B3n1Y5ZSOg6IcklEQ01Mc0ZGUTg/view?usp=sharing

How well did you achieve your goals? What were the stumbling blocks you encountered? How were you able to overcome them? What was most/least interesting to you? What would you like to do next?

Overall, this semester I had a difficult semester after coming back from abroad, but I am proud of the accomplishments I have achieved this semester. I reached most of my goals regarding vocabulary and being comfortable using the language and tried my best to reach more wishful feats such as memorising music in Czech or reading an entire book. Some of the stumbling blocks I encountered was motivation and self-discipline as I had to crave out certain hours designed for the independent study which I have never done before. It was also difficult not having someone to bounce ideas off with and practice on. I was able to overcome them by keeping touch with friends abroad and using it in my daily life. I think music and art has helped me integrate my love for the language and culture. The most interesting thing this semester has been listening to the other cultural presentations because they have taught me so much about Korean and Turkish culture as well as the passions of my fellow peers. The least interesting to me was some of the psychology behind languages. Although I enjoy learning about the origins of languages and how they contribute to our lives, I wasn't too interested in learning how our brain responds to certain things. Next, I would like to continue learning Czech and practicing Korean and hopefully, I will be able to pursue Polish or Russian next because those languages are the closest to Czech in the sense that they are all from central Europe. 

SDLAP_learningplan213.docx

Final%20Reflection%20Paper.docx

Here is my final reflection paper.

IMG_0451.JPG

This artifact was a great listening exercise where we had to listen to a popular pop artist in Turkey and fill in words, related to our parts of the face vocabulary. 

IMG_0450.JPG

This worksheet taught me how to discuss family in Turkish. 

Post (a) an evaluation of your First Artifact conversation, and (b) an assessment of how well you met your learning goals for weeks 4 and 5.

My first artifact was when I introduced myself with greetings and farewells. I thought I did ok, but I could definitely sense an American accent because I have not introduced myself in Czech for a long time. There are certain things that feel better when other people are speaking the same language and I think when I was introducing myself, I found myself speaking as though I was an American instead of a Czech person. I think this could hinder my growth because as I mentioned previously, I want to be able to shift my mindset when speaking a new language because it can help me be more authentic when spekaing the language. My learning goals for weeks 4 and 5 have been going well, I managed to converse with my friends from abroad and during my presentation for the CCE, I was able to present in Czech for a few sentences although it was sometimes hard to pronounce a couple of words. Overall, I think I am doing a good job with keeping up my learning journal.  

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?

To learn Czech, I need to know more about how the language can be used in daily conversation. I think one of the problems with learning a language is that they are too structured and sometimes too formal. Some of the situations that we learn are not applicable in real life, which is why people struggle to listen and speak the language. They are looking for words and phrases they learned in the textbook. While I do think it is very important, children do not learn the complete structure of their language, they learn what they need to thrive in society. To acquire the knowledge I need, I need to integrate myself with more Czech media such as newspapers, articles, tv shows, movies, and music. I think a reference grammar can be useful, but I think becoming dependent on a reference is bad because in their mind, the person speaking the language might take too long to conjugate the verb. 

Reflect on the readings.  How does this knowledge help you shape your language learning process?

The readings this week revolved around one central theme: how does the brain take in information and how are languages analyzed through the brain. I think this subject is very interested because even in a class of twenty students, they will all be a different places in the language. Some may have previous experience with the language or some may know a language that is similar to the language they are studying, while some may have only known one language their entire life. I think the people that succeed with progress the fastest are not those with the biggest brain or the highest GPA, but those that have the ability to see the connection between their native language and the language that they are learning. While many people think language and culture divides us, it actually brings us together and the articles emphasize the fact that all of us start out with the same brain. 

I mentioned in my 105 reflection how I felt like I learned a lot of vocabulary this semester, however, I wish I able to learn more grammar to be able to structure more complex sentences. My biggest challenge this semester was finding adequate time in my day to sit down and practice Korean. Overall, I feel as if my Korean has definitely improved but not to the extent I had planned at the beginning of the semester. I had high expectations for myself, but if anything I was able to learn how difficult it is to learn a language.

This week my goal was to expand my vocabulary on certain everyday activities and being able to describe what I usually do throughout the day. This task was pretty straight forward and I just followed up my task with my language partner afterwards as usual.