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We learnt the 10 basic consonants in Korean Hangul system this week. Each hangul is made of initial (consonants), vowels and sometimes finals (also consonants). Due to the shape of certain vowels, they are placed either to the right, or below the initial consonant. The way that I learned was that there are "bright" and "dark" vowel sounds in Korean. 오 & 아 are "bright " and 어 & 우 are "dark".  The "bright" sounds are similar to when the sun is the brightest 오 (sunrise) and it then travels from the east 아. Then the "dark" sounds come in, 어 (going west) and 우 (sunset). When I imagine that with the BRIGHT sounds, my mouth is more open and wide, and with the "dark" sounds, my mouth is narrower and tighter. For example, 아 vs 어, your mouth will be wider for the "bright" sounds and narrower for the "dark" sounds and the same for 오 vs 우. 

SDLC%20111%20Presentation%20%28han%29.pptx

My cultural presentation is on the subject of Han and its association with Korean culture and identity. Han is a difficult concept to describe because there is no English equivalent. It is considered part of the Korean experience. It basically means sorrow, resentment, and regret. It is theorized to have become a concept in Korean culture and identity because of the long depressing history of Korea. Due to being so prevalent in the Korean identity, the culture is heavily influenced explicitly and implicitly by the expression of Han. 

This week I also practiced the topics provided by Minkyung for my final evaluation. I talked about my semester, my day to day activities, and also about seasons. We had a group session this week with 2 of the advanced Korean students. I was able to practice with my language partner and also with the other 2 advanced Korean students. I plan to read over the dialogue that my language partner has made for me and practice it for my final evaluation. Also I will go over my notes and artifacts to prepare for my final evaluation since the topics are similar.

This is a sample text that I had with my suite mate. He asked what I have been doing and I said that I have been studying. And he asked if he wanted to eat together for late dinner, and he suggested 10pm. 

This artifact shows that I can briefly talk about my day and time, and also my ability to read and write Korean.

Learning Journal 11: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

For task 10, I was required to read a Czech children’s book. I read a folktale called Longshanks, Girth, and Keen, the story of three serving men. Basically, an old king wants his son to marry and he decides to choose the most beautiful woman in the entire land, but she is heavily guarded under a magician’s spell. He recruits three men with special abilities to help him with his tasks. At the end of the story, he marries the princess and asks the men to stay with him, but they tell him that they are wanderers and decide to leave. I first read the Czech version, and use the English version as reference. Some of the translations were difficult because they were not in American vernacular. However

Learning Journal 10: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals

This week I was supposed to listen to Czech songs by Czech artists. I found a great playlist called Nejlepsi ceske pisnicky, which means best Czech music. Two of my favorite artists are Tereza Kerndlova and SEBASTIAN. They both sing love songs, but it was very difficult to understand the lyrics because in music, they tend to break up the diction to fit rhyming pairs. This is similar to Korean music; sometimes it is difficult to understand a sentence because the song breaks up the sentence or word structure. However, I found it very valuable and it gave me a better appreciate for music in different languages and cultural influences. One thing that made me sad was that in the past two years, American music has been at the top of Czech charts, which means Czech music has not been rising in their own countries. 

Learning Journal 9: State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

My learning goals for week 8 was to practice more vocab and learn miscellaneous things. I used Utalk and memrise to practice old vocabulary as well as learn new ones. One of my favorite words I learned this week was “kytara” or guitar, and I also learned zpivat which means to sing. Those two words go hand in hand because I love singing and I recently acquired a guitar and signed up for class guitar next semester. I really enjoyed saying that I liked to sing and that I have a guitar now 

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

My learning goals for this week was to write a reflection paper on my time so far being back in Richmond and things I miss about Prague. Unfortunately, I was only able to write a couple of sentences that completely expressed my thoughts. I found myself using a hybrid mix of English and Czech for the most of it. I realized that even though I learned a lot of speaking and listening this semester, writing has been very difficult for me to learn. I think especially because in Korean, writing is basically non-existent for me, I have not made it a priority to focus on it. However, I was able to convey my main thoughts: I really miss Prague and being back in Richmond has been hard, but I will go back one day. 

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.

My progress at this point, in consideration of my learning plan and activities, has fluctuating. One day, I will be having a great conversation in Czech with my friend from abroad, but another day, I will be hard-pressed to find a situation where I can use my Czech. I think one of the biggest struggles of learning a new language is having no environment to practice. I tried my best to try and find people to speak with, but it has been difficult to try and find an appropriate time to focus simply on the language. I think one of the things that I would have changed would have been having a language partner, or being more active about reserving a time to speak with another person. I have skyped and face timed with my abroad friends, but during that time we barely used any Czech because they wanted to practice their English. Overall, I think the fluctuation could have been minimized. 

I think I accomplished a good amount of my goals that I set out for this semester. I reached many of my goals in the learning plan. One of the stumbling blocks that I encountered was figuring out where to start for one of my main goals, which was to learn more vocabulary. The Korean language is massive and I wanted to learn practical phrases and words that would be used in day to day interactions. Thankfully, Joora, my learning partner, helped guide me on where to begin and what kind of topics would be the most practical to learn. The most interesting thing that I learned for 111 was the history of Korea during Japan's invasion. It happened so recently, but I knew nothing about it and it was such an impact in the country's history and culture. For 112, I hope to put an emphasis on learning more things about the culture of Korea and its history. 

This week, my goal was to start a new section in uTalk. I started learning directions and travel. Starting a new section has made me realize that I want to learn a variety of subjects like food and restaurant words which are equally as important and if not even more practical when traveling. Overall, I find that I get excited but also overwhelmed when I start learning a new topic because I want to use it but I also want to learn more. The more I learn, the harder it is for me to recall as quickly or sometimes I'll recall the wrong word. This is going to take more repetition practice. 

안녕하새요!!! 

Here it is!!! 

It's my final cultural presentation!!! 

For it, I'll be talking about Christianity in South Korea! 

The main focus of my time this semester with learning Korean was learning about the culture of the Korean Church so I'm very happy and excited to share with you information about it! 

I'll also be sharing my own personal experience of Christianity in South Korea too!  I hope y'all are as blessed as I was when I was studying abroad in South Korea, experiencing my faith! 

Korean 111_Cultural Project

This week, I worked on rewriting the words and phrases we have learned so far. The hard part is not being sure of which vowels are supposed to be making the sound I think I am hearing. Again this has to do with listening and being able to recognize and distinguish sounds which is still hard for me. I think that by writing out the words, hopefully I can better understand the distinction between the sounds and the vowels that are making them. 

My goal for this week was to start listening to more Turkish. The way I practiced this was by looking up Turkish songs and their lyrics online. Then I would listen to the same song a few times to see if I could recognize any of the words. If I thought I heard one I recognized, I would find it in the lyrics and then try to look it up to remind myself what that word meant. I obviously don't have enough vocabulary to be able to figure out what the song means but I think this exercise also helps me with my pronunciation.  

This week, my goals are to be more confident in using the limited Turkish that I do know. I Skyped with a friend this week and he was at a Turkish restaurant and I was like "oh! I know a little Turkish!". I think that the hardest part of actually using the Turkish I know is being able to recall words and construct phrases on the spot. For this I realize that my practice should be a lot of repetition so that I don't have to think about it so much when I want to recall something to be able to use it. Flash cards are a good way to practice words and repetition, but in terms of constructing phrases I haven't found a particularly efficient way to practice this. 

For this semester, I planned to learn Korean Alphabets (Hangul), to ask simple questions, and to introduce my family and myself. In general, I am pleased with my learning result, as I met most of my learning goals and the learning sessions with language partner were very effective and fun. I also found useful resources for me to continue my self-learning of Korean. Through the meetings with Minkyung, I was practicing my spoken Korean in a real room setting, which helped with my listening and pronunciation. I also learned many useful sets of words including vegetables, directions, number, family members, and animals. Because of my interest in Korean culture, I can also learn from listening to k-pop and watch k-drama once I have laid a foundation this semester. I wrote a more detailed reflection in my reflection paper if you are interested in knowing more about my learning experience.

One of my main goals was to learn Hangul, which is the alphabet system in Korean. After this semester I would say that I succeeded. I can read and write many words in Korean. However, my vocabulary is still very limited. I can introduce myself and my family in Korean, which is a significant progress for me. On top of that, I can now make basic conversation with my Korean friends. I can ask simple questions like “Do you want to eat?”, “Where are you from?”, “Is it delicious?”, etc.

Some of the biggest challenges for me were learning the different forms of the vowels in the alphabet system (when 2 vowels are combined to make another sound), sentence structure, and grammar. When the vowels are combined into one, some of them sound exactly the same but different length in the sound. It was really confusing for me because it really depends on the word. The Korean sentence structure is also really tough because the structure is completely different than English and Indonesian (my native language). Lastly, grammar is also another area I have been struggling in, such as adding suffix in the end of a word to make it grammatically correct. However, as a beginner, this shouldn’t really be my focus because I can still say a sentence (constructed from words without being grammatically correct) and Korean people can still make sense of it.

Learning Korean has been a great experience so far. It has been a very long time since I learned a new language. Last time I attempted to learn a new language was probably 10 years ago when I tried to learn Mandarin. However, I decided to give up after 2 years because I didn’t feel the need to learn Mandarin. On the other side, learning Korean this semester was definitely a different experience and it was a positive one. One of my main goals was to learn Hangul, which is the alphabet system in Korean. After this semester I would say that I succeeded. I can read and write many words in Korean. However, my vocabulary is still very limited. Thus, I may be able to read or write words, but do not know the meaning of them.

The main goal for me to learn Korean was to make basic conversations with my Korean friends and also Korean elders. As mentioned many times, honorifics are greatly emphasized in the Korean language system. I would say that I have not been too successful in learning the formality in the Korean language. First of all, it would be too much for me to learn both formal and informal ways of saying things. Second of all, it wasn’t really the main focus in my learning progress because I was trying to understand the meaning of the words and constructing sentences. Therefore, if I were to continue my learning, I will put more focus into learning the honorifics.

Some of the biggest challenges for me were learning the different forms of the vowels in the alphabet system (when 2 vowels are combined to make another sound), sentence structure, and grammar. When the vowels are combined into one, some of them sound exactly the same but different length in the sound. It was really confusing for me because it really depends on the word. The Korean sentence structure is also really tough because the structure is completely different than English and Indonesian (my native language). Lastly, grammar is also another area I have been struggling in, such as adding suffix in the end of a word to make it grammatically correct. However, as a beginner, this shouldn’t really be my focus because I can still say a sentence (constructed from words without being grammatically correct) and Korean people can still make sense of it.

Having to do the artifacts definitely helped a lot in constructing sentences because you have to be able to put together the words that you have learned. Also, the 2 articles about bilinguals are very interesting. As a bilingual myself, I would want to agree with the New York Times article that argues that bilinguals are smarter. However, there is some sort of bias in their argument of being smart. What does it mean to be smart? And there are other variables outside of the argument that can affect kids’ intelligence besides having the ability to know one more language. So I definitely want to learn more about the effect of being a bilingual on intelligence. 

*I also attached my final learning plan that shows self-assessment

Angella%20Lee%27s%20Final%20Learning%20Plan.pdf. 

    I had a really fun time taking SDLC 105 and 110 for the first time this semester by learning the language of Korean. Since my parents and family members are Korean, I did have some previous experience of learning this language. However, I was born in the United States, so my first language was not Korean. As a result, having a self-directed class was helpful because I was able to plan out my own goals of what I wanted to learn and achieve. As an autonomous learner, I was able to structure my learning to target the topics that I still do not know. For example, one of my main goals this semester was to learn about the different types of majors and careers in Korean. I wanted to learn this because I wanted to overcome my struggles of talking about my college life with other family members and friends. I am happy that I was able to achieve this goal first because now I can have better conversations with others about not only my major but also those of others.

     As I am stronger in speaking Korean than reading or writing, I have definitely struggled with trying to fully comprehend news articles in Korean. However, I continued to work on this goal by developing  a gradual way to achieve it. I tried to first familiarize myself with the vocabulary used in news broadcasts by looking at helpful links. Then, I used SCOLA to look up news videos, which is easier to understand because it is auditory. Afterwards, my learning partner and I worked on reading a news article and translating it from English to Korean! It was nice to see how far I developed with comprehension, which I can always expand upon by listening to more videos and reading more articles.

     For SDLC 105, I really appreciated the readings that dealt with bilingualism because I am a bilingual speaker with English and Korean. I have definitely heard arguments about whether bilingual speakers are smarter or not, which is why it was interesting to read about two different articles that talked about the pros and cons of the same topic. I think it would be nice to expand upon this topic in the future because it opens up a question that is always debated, so it can lead to thoughtful discussions.

     For SDLC 110, I am really glad that I could plan out and implement my own goals for learning Korean. Since I have previous experience, I will not be actively learning in a lecture-structured classroom setting because I would already know the material. As a result, as an autonomous learner, I was in control of what I wanted to learn, which actually helped me a lot to focus on the specific things that I struggle with. For instance, along with majors and careers, I also struggled with learning about family relationships because there are very complicated ways to address relatives from your mother’s side vrsus those from your father’s side. My other goals were also very specific to what I wanted to learn, so it was a great experience to work with a learning partner to target the specific topics that I wanted to focus on.   

So far, I think that my techniques have been pretty effective to help me learn Turkish. I would like to be able to dedicate more focused time to reviewing what we learn in our lessons and maybe rewriting them would help to cement them. In addition, I would like to be able to spend some time on my own in a quite place practicing listening and pronouncing out loud the new words I've been learning. The applications and programs are good but it is hard to find a quiet spot to practice out loud. I'll have to work on that. Overall, I think that my learning plan has been effective. In addition, Sezgi has been teaching us other basic topics that are not part of my learning plan but will probably be useful. Things like the weather that I never really considered learning as part of a basic practice. I enjoy learning these things with her since I wouldn't have thought to learn them first even though it might help to just generally strengthen my vocabulary and comprehension skills.