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I feel like I accomplished my goals of being able to improve my listening comprehension skills. By watching children's shows, game shows, movies and the news, I was able to slowly start understanding speech patterns better. I am also a lot better at being able to tell when something is being spoken in Russian, and when it is being spoken in Ukrainian. Through all of the Ukrainian language I have listened to this semester, I started to be able to tell the differences in sounds a lot faster than last semester. 

I still have a little more trouble pronouncing things in Ukrainian than I do in Russian. I'm not sure if Russian just feels more natural to me because I have more experience with it, or if Ukrainian is just harder to pronounce. In any case, I have grown to like the sound of Ukrainian better than Russian, which I think can be attributed to the massive increase in the amount of Ukrainian I have heard this semester. 

Overall, I am excited to increase my grammar knowledge this summer at Ukrainian language school. I think that because I have taken this semester to improve upon my listening comprehension, I will have an easier time absorbing the instruction at the Ukrainian language school. 

Over these last two weeks, my language partner and I watched a Frozen in Ukrainian without English or Ukrainian subtitles. We thought that it would be a good idea to try that because I already know that film pretty well (younger siblings), and I actually was surprised with how much I was able to get out of it. It helped that I pretty much know the dialogue by heart, but seeing it in Ukrainian was interesting because I was able to hear different ways that things would be said in Ukrainian. We also continued to watch/read the news in both English and Ukrainian, and that has been helpful too. As of now, I am feeling more prepared to move to Ukraine in September. 

This week, my goal was to learn the names of different parts of the body.  In class, we learned the different parts of the face and practiced by playing rounds of Simon says with my learning partner and classmates.  Outside of the classroom, I googled other parts of the body such as the arms, legs, feet, hands, and belly.  I recorded this information of my notes and continue to read review them outside of class.

This week, my goal was to learn the days of the week, months, and seasons in Turkish.  Our learning partner provided us with the proper vocabulary and practiced our pronunciation  by having us repeat after her.  In order to try to help us remember the vocabulary, we went through and indicated which months sounded similar to English such as Mart=March and Mayıs=May.  Similarly we went through the days of the week and looked for patterns to help us remember them better.  We saw that Friday=Cuma, Saturday=Cumartesi, Sunday=Pazar, and Monday=Pazartesi.  These endings simply mean the day after so it made it a little simpler trying to memorize those four days of the week.  After class, I continued to study my notes.

This week, I wanted to learn how to describe the weather in Turkish.  In class, our learning partner taught us different ways to describe the weather like sunny, cloudy, rainy, hot, and cold.  From there, we learned to construct sentences like "Today, the weather is cloudy" or "Begün, hava bulutlu."  We practiced by asking each other questions like "Is it cold/rainy today?" and responding with phrases such as "No today it is not cold/rainy."  I then continued to practice by watching Youtube videos of Turkish weather broadcasts and reviewing my class notes.

My goals for these past two weeks were to:

• A) Complete Chapter 9: Characteristics of Humans, Animals, and Objects, sourced from the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture;
• B) Continue reading Indonesian comic books, sourced from the internet; and
• C) Continue reading about Indonesia's political environment -- especially the state of mental health in Indonesia  
• D) Meet with my partner for four hours

Strategies to accomplish these goals:

• A) I completed Chapter 9: Characteristics of Humans, Animals, and Objects. At the end of each session, I collected the new vocabulary that I learned. In addition, I worked on my speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills through the units' activities. I have amassed a large vocabulary pertaining to the topics that will prove useful in daily conversations. The unit's goals are to learn about Human, Animal, and object characteristics; and to give information about colors, shapes, and the location of objects

           -I have completed all of the chapters for this semester.

• B) I continued to read comics whose genres range from comedy to drama to fairytale. Here, this exercise allows me to get a better grasp on the "street" language as these comics use informal speech. It is important for me to not only learn the vocabulary but gain an understanding of the informal sentence structure patterns as well as the culture behind the conversations.
• C) I met with my language learning partner for 4 hours over these past two weeks. During these meetings, we worked on my speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills.

This week my learning goal was to learn the different members of the family and how to pronounce them in Turkish.  In class, our learning partner taught us how to say each relative of the family.  We practiced the pronunciation of each out loud by repeating our learning partner and then we completed worksheets by indicating the names of each relative in the activity.  Additionally, we incorporated our knowledge of numbers by learning how to say things like "I have 2 younger sisters" and "I have 1 aunt."

This week, my goal was to extend my understanding of vowel harmony by learning how to make words plural in Turkish.  Rather than simply adding an -s or -es to a word to indicate that there is more than one, Turkish requires that you add either -lar or -ler to verbs depending on the vowels preceding it.  If the last vowel in the word is a, ı, o, or u, then you add -lar because these are considered the thick vowels.  If the last vowel in the word is e, i, ö, ü then you add -ler because these are considered the thin vowels.  After an in class lesson, I completed a worksheet that required me to make singular plural by adding the appropriate endings.  This lesson has aided me in my understanding of vowel harmony which applies to other circumstances in the Turkish language.

This week, my goal was to learn how to tell time in Turkish.  Since we have just how to count in Turkish, I found that the lesson was not too difficult.  In class, we practiced telling time by first learning the question for what time is it, "saat kaç?" When responding, you simply just say "saat ..." where the dots indicate the time. For example, if it is two, you would say "saat iki."  After learning the basic framework for telling time in Turkish, I practiced with classmates by asking what time it was and allowing them to respond and vice versa.

Up until this point, I would say that I am pretty pleased with the progress that I have made thus far.  I am now able to read/pronounce the letters of the alphabet, say common greetings and farewells, introduce myself, say where I am from, count, ask questions such as "what is this/that?", and add suffixes to the ends of words to indicate pronouns/plurality.  Although I would not say that my knowledge is completely solid on each of these topics, I do think that with more practice and studying I will be able to crystallize my learning.  As the semester continues, I will practice more outside of the classroom by studying my notes, watching more Youtube videos for pronunciation, and continue expanding my vocabulary with apps like Duolingo and Mango on my phone.

This week my goal was to learn Turkish numbers and to be able to count in Turkish.  I accomplished this goal by practicing the numbers with my learning partner and classmates.  I studied a practice worksheet with a number chart that indicated how to count to ten and then gave the names of the different tens places all the way up to 100.  My classmates and I played a game where we went around the room and we all counted together with each person saying one number until someone messed up, then we would start all over.  This game was helpful because not only did it make learning how to count in Turkish fun, but it also required that we actually pay attention to our classmates and memorize the number line.  Currently, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on Turkish numbers.

Over this semester I have learned a lot about myself as a language learner. I originally planned on largely avoiding the Korean writing system in favor of focusing on oral communication, but over the semester these goals have changed a lot. One aspect of learning Korean that I found very difficult is speaking the language, as due to my background in Mandarin I have been told that I often pronounce words in the Chinese style and with an American accent. On the other hand, I have found that I am actually very interested in the Korean alphabet and writing system, perhaps because of how surprisingly intuitive and simple it ended up being. Because of this I ended up shifting my language learning so that I have a stronger foundation of reading and writing Korean. I think this was the right decision overall as it allows me to use tools like language dictionaries to their fullest and really prepares me for a continued independent study of the language. Moving forward after this semester I will be able to look up new words and use websites and other resources that I initially wasn’t able to use as they require an understanding of the Korean writing system. Furthermore, it is also really helpful to be able to sound out words as in many cases the names of modern items in Korean are Koreanized American names.

Throughout the duration of the semester I felt that the resources my language partner provided were very useful and that our meetings were very productive. The competitions she held incentivized mastering the new vocabulary and the different challenges helped develop both my reading and writing skills, as well as my vocabulary.

As far as 105 goes I found many aspects of the class to be really interesting, like the class on the language tree and the history of language, and often enjoyed class activities like culture presentations and activities. The discussions were interesting and I learned a lot about languages in general. I also found the resources the class introduced me to at the beginning of the semester to be very helpful throughout the semester. It was also helpful for me to set language goals for the semester and to plot a course towards achieving those goals, and things like the learning journals did a good job of keeping me on course. I found the activities we did in class to be fun and engaging and would recommend that future classes incorporate more of these activities into the schedule. On the other hand, I occasionally felt like some of the readings were not as related to our studies. It seemed like there were two parts of the class, one where we were given instructions and resources for learning a language, and the other where we discussed languages as a whole, and while both were interesting I feel like it would be more advantageous to devote more time to the former and less to the latter. Overall I would recommend more activities and class time dedicated to learning about different cultures and presenting on our different languages, and less related to linguistics and language theory.

With the experiences of Chinese and English learning, I found it kind of interesting to learn Korean because it feels like the combination of my past experiences. Korean obtains word pronunciations that do not exist in Chinese, so it is fun to learn them. It is similar to an English speaker learning the pronunciation of “rr” in Spanish. Another interesting fact about Korean reading is its similarity with English. Korean words are formed by alphabets, so I am able to read them without knowing their meanings. However, those letters look complicated, and they look like Chinese in a way. Chinese requires a Romanization system to read the characters. Thus, for me, reading Korean feels like reading out Chinese characters directly without a Romanization system. On the other hand, writing might be a bit easier for me than for English-speaking learners. 

For my fourth cultural post, I will be talking about popular career fields and employment opportunities in South Korea. 

I've heard that it's very difficult to secure a job nowadays in South Korea. Therefore, many Koreans are more concerned finding job security with stability over passion. While researching I found out that there has been a high demand of native English speakers in South Korea. Translators for any industry are also sought after, especially in after school academies (hakwons). Also, current employment trends include careers in Finance, IT, International Business, and Marketing. 

Also according to a 2014 survey conducted by a large Korean job search site, the most popular employers among college students were Samsung electronics, Hyundai motor company, Posco (steel making company), Korea Electric Power Corporation, and Kia Motor Company for men, and CJ (food products and pharmaceutical company), Asiana Airlines, Korean Airlines, Samsung electronics, and Posco for women. 

This artifact documents some sentences that I created where I quantify things such as trees, pencils, flowers, books, socks, and chopsticks using the appropriate measurement label.Artifact%20%234.mp3

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For one of our weeks, we learned about more advanced vocabulary words related to the weather. This is our test we took to evaluate how much we retained. I think I did well enough that it documents what I learned. 

This artifact documents an interaction I made using new vocabulary words I learned that relate to tourism. Artifact%20%232%20%28111%29.mp3

I learned how to talk about my future career plans to others. I wrote why I wanted to pursue dentistry in Korean and Joora helped me look over it. 

저의 꿈은 치과의사 입니다. 치과의사는 건강한 치아를 유지하기 위하여 치아를 포함한 구강의 질환을 치료, 교정, 대치하여 예방한다. 저는 사람들과 대화를 나누며 일하고싶습니다. 사람들을 도울수 있고 사람들에게 자신감도 줄수있어서 저는 어릴때부터 장래희망이 치과의사였습니다. 저는 대학후에 치대준비를 할거예요. 

On the second week, Joora, Vana, and I went to Grand Mart and ordered food in Korean. I ordered jjajjangmyun, Korean black bean noodles. During dinner, we also went around and asked each other how our week was in Korean. It was a bit awkward for me first, because I am more comfortable speaking about my personal life in English because I don't know a lot of adjectives in Korean. I said I had a lot of upcoming exams and projects and was very stressed. I also built up courage to ask the Help Desk if they had bibimmyun in stock in Korean. The worker said that they don't have any in stock at the moment. 

This is a brief conversation of what I learned in 110, which is me introducing myself in a formal manner. I added so me vocabulary words that I learned recently that would be used in interactions I would have during an interview. I think I could work on my accent. I sound very "americanized" when speaking Korean. However, I think I was culturally appropriate when using formal language. It also seems linguistically sufficient in terms of my level of Korean. I should work on sounding more fluent and speak more comfortably. I could work on using different types of vocabulary words to convey my thoughts.

Artifact%201.mp3 

Tu%CC%88rk%20Cenaze%20Gelenekleri.pptx