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During these two week, I have learned a few vocabulary words about traveling and talking about the weather. One week, we spent the time learning about the traveling. The words we learned were things like tourist attractions, tourist information center, entrance fee, greet, collecting information, and so on. These words will come useful when I visit South Korea and need some information. Joora gave us a background for each word and gave us the English translations after it. This was an effective way to learn, because it helped to keep me engaged with the content and stay entertained. In order to ensure that we retain this information, Joora gave us a mini quiz for the next class. This forced me to study for the quiz and review the new vocabulary words. 

The next topic we learned was about the weather. We learned words such as urban hot island effect, precipitation, dry and cold, humid and hot, and so on. These words described Korea's climate and gave me an insight to how the weather is like in South Korea. This was also taught to us in a similar manner to when I was taught about travelling. There was also a quiz on these vocabulary words, which helped us to receive incentive for our studying.

Before taking this course, I thought that learning Turkish was going to be a daunting challenge but to my surprise I have enjoyed learning the language as well as its rich culture. The more I learn the language the more I am interested in learning anything and everything about Turkey. Over these past few months, I have learned a wide array of vocabulary from how to tell time, how to count, how to refer to family members, tell the weather, and even how to say different countries in Turkish. I have surely come along way from just learning about how to say simple greetings like hello and goodbye. I have also developed an understanding of grammar and the vowel harmony rules. Above all, I do believe that I have reached my goals and even gone beyond. In the beginning of this course my main goal was to gain a basic foundation where I will know the alphabet, simple greetings, and how to ask for things like food, transportation, and goods. Also how to ask for directions, understand directions and be able to find my way around Turkey. I have learned about how to say those things and much more like Turkey’s rich culture. From belly dancing, to women’s rights and the history of Turkey’s secular government it has been fascinating to learn about the many unique and cherished aspects of Turkey’s culture.

The most challenging aspect of this course was just being open minded and allowing myself to be vulnerable to learning something foreign and very different from English and spanish. It was difficult to grasp how to say things properly, also just memorizing vocabulary and other terms like numbers were challenging especially since it was a lot of material being covered in such a short period of time. Above all, I believe that learning the grammar was the most challenging aspect of learning the language and I think that I am just now finally understanding the vowel harmony concepts.

Looking into the future, I hope to continue to build on my knowledge of the Turkish language. I hope to learn how to say terms in economics and government in Turkey. I also have small goals like  learning how to count up to 1,000 in Turkish. I also hope to improve my communicative competence by developing my ability to listen to and interpret spoken Turkish, as well as working on improving my pronunciation and the fluency of my spoken Turkish. In order to achieve these goals I will continue to practice having conversations in Turkish, expanding my vocabulary, understanding grammatical rules, listening to Turkish dialogues, and even watching the popular soap opera my professor introduced me to.

Overall this course was incredibly enlightening, helpful and enjoyable and it showed me that learning new languages can be fun and exciting!

This week we had our cultural project presentations which I found to be incredibly enlightening and thought-provoking. I learned a lot about women's rights in Turkey but also in South Korea. I also learned important vocabulary terms like how to say women in Turkey "Kadınlar", equality "Eşitlik", gender "Cinsiyet", and power "Güç". I was very impressed with how both cultures are very progressive in women's rights and there are opportunities for women to become highly educated and serve as leaders in the workforce. But also, I was very surprised to learn statistics about domestic violence in Turkey, the gender wage gap in South Korea, and educational disparities among men and women as the result of economic status. These presentations opened my eyes to the current gender debate going on outside of America and motivated me to learn more vocabulary related to this topic so that I could have conversations in Turkish about this important issue. 

Last week we learned about how to talk about the family in Turkish. I found two things interesting about this lesson. For one, how you say grandparents in Turkish differs based on whether they are you maternal grandparents or your paternal grandparents. Maternal grandmothers are called "anneanne" and granddad's are called "dede" while paternal grandmothers are called "babaanne". Another interesting part of the family vocabulary is that there is only one word for half sibling and step sibling. Additionally, there are different ways to refer to younger and older family members. For instance, for younger brothers you say "erkek kardes" and you call your older brother "ag-abey abi". Above all, I found it very surprising that the way you refer to a wife is a major sign of respect in Turkey. It is respectful for a man to call his wife, "karim" which is my wife, but it is incredibly rude to refer to a wife as "Kari". 

Overall, the nuances in the family vocabulary directly reflect how Turkish culture, respect for women, paternal and maternal relatives, and siblings impact the way you refer to family members in this language. 

My final cultural presentation focused on the education system in South Korea. I decided to do this topic because my main learning goal for this semester was to learn about the different types of majors and careers in Korea, so that I can have more sophisticated conversations with my family and friends. As a result, I broadened this idea to talk about education as a whole and how it has been shaped over time. Education is important because it help can help us understand the customs and traditions of a certain culture. For example, learning about education in Korea provides us insight about how important education is to Korean culture because there is a large emphasis placed on education by not only parents but also the government system. After briefly learning about the history of education in Korea, I showed my classmates what I learned this semester by showing what different majors were in Korean and how I used what I learned to develop sentences that I can use in conversations with others. 

SDLC%20110---Final%20Cultural%20Presentation.pptx

My last learning goal for week 13 is to develop my writing skills by learning how to write a personal letter to my aunt. I want to accomplish this goal because I am always thankful for my aunt, but I have a difficult time showing my appreciation. As a result, I can accomplish this goal by first thinking about what I want to say to her by writing a letter in English. Then, I can look at sample letters in Korean to help translate what I wrote in English to Korean. I can also work with my learning partner to help fix the tiny details so that I can write a coherent letter to my aunt.

My learning goal for week 12 is to further develop my learning and understanding of Korean news by being able to read and comprehend a Korean news article. I can accomplish this goal by looking up news articles on Naver, which is like a Korean google. There are a variety of available topics to read from, so I can start off with easier to understand topics, then progress into more difficult topics.

My learning goal for week 11 is to develop my listening and understanding skills. I can accomplish this goal by continuing to use SCOLA and GLOSS to become familiar with Korean news through audio methods. I can listen to the news in Korean and try to translate what it says to a fellow friend. At first, I can maybe use the subtitles, but I will try to challenge myself by not using the subtitles and only focusing on using my knowledge of the material. I know this will be quite difficult but I think I can do it!

My learning goal is to know how to invite someone to do something with me because it is a very common sentence structure to use in daily life.

For my fourth artifact, I watched a YouTube video to use a k-pop song to teach my grammar. It taught me how to ask for someone's intention, such as "do you want to ... with me?".  It appeared couple times in the song.  

To ask for someone's intention, "rae yo" (want to) is added to the end of the sentence.  She also talked about how "rae you" is applied in the song. She explained the usage of "rae yo" very clear. She explained that when the verb in front of "rae yo" has no ending sound, it has to change form.  

For example, to ask someone if he/she wants to have coffee with you is “coffee ma sil rae yo?” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE9yVyw0VU0&t=118s

My Learning goals for this week are a continuation of last weeks, which is to continue reviewing the material I've learned and work on mastering these topics in preparation for the review. Recently I have been going over the Korean number system again as I'm still a little confused about when you should use the Traditional number system and when you should use the Chinese based number system. This also includes reviewing topics like talking about the time and introductions. Throughout the week I hope to do some review of the grammatical structures I have learned and also continue learning how to talk about my day. Last week I reviewed topics like introductions and food related vocabulary.

In Matter’s article “Why bilinguals Are Smarter”, he talks about there are fundamental benefits for bilingualism – being smart. Being bilingual has positive effect on the brain, and can improve cognitive skills even not related to speak language.  The reason is that bilingual’s brain has both languages active. When two languages are working at the same time in the brain, it helped the brain to resolve internal conflict, just like a workout for the brain.  The experiment of asking bilingual and monolingual children to sort blue circles and red squares showed that bilingual children are faster and more accurate in performing the task. I agree all the benefits for being a bilingual.  However, there were also concerns over training kids to be bilingual at very young age.  Because they are receiving double the information, they might be slower than monolingual in learning the one particular language because other kids put all attention into learning one language and can practice more. 

SDLC 105 Reflection Paper #3:

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?

This has been an enlightening semester in terms of learning Korean. I learned that I need to improve my habits as a language learner. I thought that because I already knew some Korean, I would become advanced by the time the semester ended. I believed that I would just have to practice a few phrases here and there, but I would be good enough to be considered fluent. However, after practicing for a semester, I realized that it takes a lot more practice than I thought: something that shocked me. In terms of being a cultural explorer, I found myself more interested in Korean culture than I thought I would be. As I am from Los Angeles, a city with a large Korean population, I thought I knew everything there was about Korean culture. However, I realized that there were so many aspects of Korean culture that I did not know. I found myself researching about the culture on Google and talking about the news in great depth with my language class. Once someone who shunned Korean culture, I now find myself being more open to it, and I am even considering studying abroad in South Korea to immerse myself into the culture even more. My most favorite thing about learning Korean this semester was being exposed to a new side of Korea that I never saw before. I learned about cool places to visit in Korea, new dishes to try, new vocabulary words that do not exist in English, and more. However, this learning was also accompanied with many difficulties. The most challenging thing about learning Korean was conditioning myself to not skip syllables as I normally do when I speak Korean with my parents. As it has been a habit for many years, teaching myself to pronounce the whole word instead of skipping some syllables has been challenging me to rewire the way I knew the Korean language. I plan to continue learning by continuing to speak with my mom in Korean. We often speak in a Korean-English mixture, but I am going to strive to speak in only Korean when I can. I also am going to continue listening to Korean music and read the Korean and English lyrics along with the music. I found that it was beneficial for me, in terms of learning new vocabulary words and pronouncing words correctly.

I found the readings about the dying language of Siletz Dee-Ni interesting. I did not realize how important languages are to the world. Languages are accompanied by perspectives to view the world with, cultural values, and long-standing traditions that are so important to the speakers of the language. Languages are often seen as just a way to communicate with others. However, this article made me realize that so much is tied to the language. It made me more eager to learn languages that are endangered. I liked the learning activity in class where we taught our peers something about our language. It allowed us to get creative with teaching, and it also allowed our peers to be exposed to our language and its cultural aspects. I would like to learn more about how my peers’ languages’ cultures differ from America’s culture. Oftentimes, we believe that everyone else in the world is the same as us. I would like to learn more about which aspects different countries differ from us in and why that is.

• Reflect on your experiences of (trying to) read and write in your target language.

While I initially thought that learning to read and write Korean would be one of the hardest parts of learning the language, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Korean was not the complex character based language that I had originally expected. The Korean alphabet is surprisingly simple and intuitive and I have really enjoyed learning it. The competitions my language partner holds have been really helpful for cementing my understanding of the basics of the alphabet. However, as I learned more Korean I came to realize that there are some strange rules that come into play on rare occasions. I'll see radicals in strange positions in characters or complex arrangements of characters that work together to create new sounds and I won't know how to interpret them. There are also many situations where slang in Korea distorts characters into new words which are hard to decipher. Overall I have found the Korean alphabet to be easy to learn but hard to master.

• Response to the readings on whether or not learning another language makes you smarter

While I thought that both articles on the effects of bilingualism on human intelligence were interesting, I found the second article, "Are Bilinguals really smarter," to have more of a foundation in science. As stated in the second article, when discussing the benefits of bilingualism it is important to define what you mean by intelligence. Personally I think Ossola's definition of intelligence as the ability for a person to absorb and apply information is rather limited. I believe that there are different types of intelligence and that while learning another language may provide an advantage in areas like executive function and decision making, it likely also introduces weaknesses in other areas.

• How many new words have you learned in your target language?  How did you learn them?  Do you have realistic goals for your acquisition of vocabulary?
  

It is hard to gauge how many new words I have learned in Korean because many of the words I have learned are part of phrases like 안녕하세요, where I know that 안녕 means hello and that the phrase overall means hello more formally, but I don't exactly know what 하세요 means. In general I have learned vocabulary relating to the following subjects: food, family, directions, introductions, greetings, farewells, professions, school, time, numbers, relationships, and basic conversational vocabulary, in addition to a foundation of Korean grammar and some random phrases. As far as learning new vocabulary I found meeting with my language partner to be the most helpful and effective. I also studied the character sheets  we were given and used websites like quizlet to practice. One surprisingly effective tool for acquiring new vocabulary was watching Korean Dramas, as you pick up a lot of commonly used phrases and words. My goals are still to be able to watch part of a Korean drama and be able to understand what the people are saying, as well as to be able to hold a basic conversation with a native speaker. While I may have to re-watch the scene a couple times I think it is still a reasonable goal to have.

After researching on different aspects of the Korean culture, I found that the main factors that affect Korean culture is respect and nationalism. First, in regards to respect, researching on their clothing I found that they have these specific traditional clothing for respect for celebrations and events. This formal wear guarantees that people are dressed appropriately. For nationalism, it is also true even in clothing because even in the modern age people are wearing the hanbok. For instance, there is a designer that revolutionized the hanbok for more everyday look. 

My goal was to have a fifteen minute conversation without resorting to English. Though it was difficult and I did experience moments where I resorted to English, I tried my best to use Korean whenever possible.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0hAeQoTMsoH

My goal was to have a fifteen minute conversation without resorting to English. Though it was difficult and I did experience moments where I resorted to English, I tried my best to use Korean whenever possible.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s0hAeQoTMsoH

Introduce yourself and your family

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1R2U5AR8Nts

For this cultural presentation, Joora and I worked together to present on the topic of the transition between Ottoman Turkish and Modern Turkish. I learned that Ottoman Turkish was a language of the elite that used the Arabic alphabet and borrowed most of its words from Persian and Arabic. I was also interested in learning the history of the transition between the two languages which we talked about in our presentation. Basically, the first president of Turkey declared that he wanted to secularized the country and one of the biggest reforms was that he was going to make a new Modern Turkish that used a western, Latin alphabet and more exclusively Turkish words rather than Persian and Arabic words. They started by outlawing the use of Arabic number and then later the whole alphabet. They had scholars go around the country to teach the people of Turkey this essentially new language since now they had an entire country that was illiterate.