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This cultural artifact will talk about the current scandal related to South Korea's current President. Park Geun Hye is the first female president of South Korea and was impeached last week. Park Geun Hye was found to have strong ties with the daughter of a shaman leader, Choi Soon Sil. Park Geun Hye was the daughter of a respected military leader who led a coup and advanced South Korea greatly. However, many believed that Park Geun Hye was unfit to be president. 

The whole scandal started when a tablet with all the information was discovered and released on the news. Choi Soon Sil had severe influence on Park Geun Hye and her presidency. It was speculated that Choi Soon Sil had writted some, if not most, of Park Geun Hye's speeches. Choi was also speculated to have severe influence on the decisions that Park Geun Hye has made. This was a point of concern when Choi's alma mater was hosting a protest about unfair grades for Choi. Choi was suspected of bribing school officials to alter her grades and even increasing her chance of getting accepted into a prestigious university.

During these past two weeks, I learned many things mainly involving the history of South Korea and the vocabulary words that revolve around it. We learned South Korean history between Japan and its overruling of Korea. Joora showed us a video that compared a recent blockbuster film in Korea, Assassination, to actual history. This video featured a very popular lecturer in South Korea and was very informative. Although it was hard to understand everything that was going on, I still understood majority of the video. Through this video, I learned many things like the important figures of Korea and the important dates.

Stemming off of this lesson, we moved onto the important dates and national holidays in South Korea. We learned when Korea gained independence and when the legislation was made. Through this, I learned many specialized vocabulary about the government like "independence" "legislation" and so on. From this lesson, I also learned of a special national holiday that stemmed off of a folklore from South Korean history. The story states that there was a son of a god who looked at the Korean peninsula and created a civilization on the peninsula. The day that this son of a god landed onto Korea and made a country is 10/3 which is another holiday. Through this, I learned when Korea was founded, which is BCE 2333. 

Up until this week, I have been keeping up with my progress very well and was learning quite a lot about Korea. Joora does a good job teaching me the language through culture and other relevant stories and ways. Although it is difficult to memorize every single vocabulary word taught to me, I will at the very least be aware of it.

Learning Journal 6:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

For this week, I practiced dialogue with my classmates regarding family members. We first write the English translation for the conversation so we understand the meaning.  For every learning session, we have handout that we can fill out the sentences and create conversations.  The conversation goes like the following:

How many family members do you have?

Where do your parents live?

Where do your siblings live right now?

and we will answer depending on our own circumstances.  

I found conversation practices to be effective way to learn basic spoken Korean. I also looked at videos that reproduce  scenes and teach conversations but they are not as effective as talking to my peers.  In addition, we learned a set of words on directions, including right/left, south/north/east/west, and other positional words.  

My biggest culture shock, and watching the Culture shock video, was the language and this was partly due to Richmond creating somewhat unrealistic expectations about the language dynamic abroad. They told me it would be equally shared between English and Czech, but this was certainly not the case. It was also a shock of how fast people spoke. Obviously, native language speakers speak at a much fast pace than learners, but the speed of some of the phrases was almost incomprehensible. One phrase is: Hodi se ti to (is that ok?) People say it so fast that it seemed like one word when I first heard it. Other culture shocks were the reserved nature of the people and length of time it got to know each other. I felt like I got close to Czech people after several months unlike America where we make friends very fast.

However, the biggest culture shocks I have had were when I come back from abroad. The people, the social interactions, the lack of excitement all accumulated to me struggling to transition back into American culture. I think I am used it now, but I know that without a solid support system and a new change in attitude, I would not be able to feel as comfortable as I am now. One thing I do miss is being able to talk to people in a different language; I do wish there were more Czech people in Richmond

My second cultural post will be on Korean idioms and proverbs. This will also be my topic for the cultural presentation.

I personally find idioms and expressions very interesting, fun, and profound. When I was learning about Korean idioms and expressions, it was sometimes difficult for me to translate them into English due to cultural and historical differences between Western countries and Asian countries, like Korea. However, to my surprise, there were many Korean idioms and expressions with a Western/English equivalent.

For example, there's a Korean idiom, "제 눈에 안경이다," which literally translates to glasses in the eyes. This idiom is used to suggest that the way people see beauty is different (glasses we see with are all different). This is somewhat equivalent to the English idiom/saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

The Korean idiom of “꿩 먹고 알 먹는다” literally translates to “If you eat a pheasant, you also eat the egg.” This expression is used to describe a situation when you get two benefits at the same time from one action. This is equivalent to the English expression “Kill 2 birds with 1 stone.”

The Korean proverb of “뜻이 있는 곳에 길이 있다” literally translates to “In the place there is a will, there is a way,” which is equivalent to the English expression of “where there’s a will,there’s a way.” Both expressions is used to describe situations where if one is determined, even through hardships and difficulties, they will find a way to achieve their goal.

The Korean proverb of “누워서 떡 먹기” directly translates into “Eating rice cake while laying down.” This expression is extremely similar to the English idiom of “A piece of cake,” which is used to express how easy something is.

Lastly, the Korean proverb,“남의 떡이 커보인다” which directly translates to “another person’s rice cake looks bigger,” is used to describe envy and when people are never satisfied with their own situation and think others have it better. This is very similar to “The grass is always greener on the other side.”

During the first week, we learned about the different holidays in Korea. I learned about Korea's Independence Day (Samiljil), Memorial Day (Hyunchoongil), Constitution day (JaeHunJul), and the day Korea was founded (GaeChunJul), which translates to the day heavens opened. While learning about the different holidays, I learned vocabulary words specific to these holidays and and also learned some basic Korean history as well and we talked about how Koreans celebrate these certain holidays.

I also learned how to say biblical terms in Korean. Joora and I went over the Lord's Prayer in Korean and I learned new vocabulary words. Because I knew the Lord's Prayer in English, it was easier for me to define the words in Korean, but it was interesting because many of the words were specific to the bible. For example, the word forgive in Korean is yong-seo, but in a biblical context, it could also be sa-ha-da. 

My learning goal for week 9 is to work on my listening skills. My overall goal for listening is to listen and understand 2 minutes of Korean news. However, since this is a challenging task to overcome at once, I wanted to use my time over spring break to listen and watch some simpler videos, such as short youtube video clips and/or short snippets of a Korean drama. These types of media is easier to understand because they provide an interesting storyline that is usually easy to follow. I will work on achieving the larger goal by setting these smaller goals to accomplish over spring break. This is will possible because I can learn Korean by watching videos in Korean that I am interested in, which will be both relaxing and fun! I can apply what I learn over spring break to help me listen and comprehend Korean news.

Week 6

This week we reviewed the material that we have learned so far in the semester and expanded by studying the Turkish number system and grammar rules. The number system was difficult to learn at first, but once I memorized the numbers 1-10 the numbers beyond were quite intuitive and I caught on to the pattern. On the other hand, I found that learning the grammar rules to be much more challenging and am still confused about vowel harmony. We also learned how to talk about distance such as near "bu", further "su", and furthest "o". I hope to gain a better foundation in grammar rules and my goal is to feel more comfortable forming sentences when I come back from break. 

Turkish Artifact

As seen in the artifact attached to this post, I had a conversation in Turkish where I introduced myself saying (mehaba) and then I proceeded to ask my partner  her name "adin ne," how she was "nasilsin", where she was from "nerelisin", and good bye "gule gule". Overall, I thought that the dialogue went well considering that we had just learned how to say these introductions and were relying solely on memory. I hope to improve my pronunciations which I believe is possible with further practice. 

I am happy with my progress so far in weeks 4 & 5. I have learned introductions, greetings, nationalities, and the number system. It has been helpful to have these in class dialogues with partners, group exercises, and games to learn this new material and I hope to incorporate more listening exercises as well as learn the grammatical rules. 

First Artifact:  Greetings, farewells, introductions

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This is a short introduction of myself. The content is as below:

HI

This is Yuchi.Wu.

Although I am Taiwanese, I came to America as an exchange student.

I am 23 years old and also a senior now.

This semester is my last semester in the college.

I will graduate in Taiwan this June.

I think I have made a lot of good memories in the U of R.

It will be great if I can come to U.S again next year.

• Post your fifth bi-weekly report on your language-learning activities.

This week we learned how to say different occupations. We learned both how to read and some of these occupations below. 

Nurse (Kan ho sa)

Office worker ( huei sa wan)

Hairdresser (mi yong sa)

Singer (ga su)

Novelist (so sa ka)

Police Officer (geong jal kuan)

fireman (so bang guan)

cook (yo li sa)

street cleaner (huan guang mi hua won)

painter (hua ga)

doctor (eui sa)

housewife (chu bu)

sportsman (eung dong sang chu)

Also, learned the proper way to say different family members in Korean. This was a lot easier because I have already heard a lot of these words from friends talking to their family or upperclassmen. 

The video “Culture Shock” relates to my own experience as an international student at UR.  In terms of greeting, in my culture we ask people if they have eaten yet as a way of greeting, and we do not actually respect a long and real answer to that. It is similar to English greeting of “how are you” and people don’t really mean to ask your feeling.  They are both just ways of say hello.  Also, culture does not only reflect on words but actions and activities.  In US, people like to keep distance in public and feel uncomfortable when others get too close to them.  However, I grew up in a urban city in China where is always crowded and busy.  People are backed in subway going to school/work.  I am used to have no personal space in the public.  I learned to respect others’ private spaces when I came to US.  I can relate lots of things with culture shock because I used to experience it all the time.  Once I got used to the culture, I felt more comfortable and less worry about offending people unintentionally. 

Week 4 & 5

For weeks 4 and 5, my goals are to learn how to count and also continue building on my basic vocabulary. So far, we have learned greetings, farewells, and since I was sick last week it was interesting to learn how to say I am sick "hastayim" and get better "gecmisolsun" in Turkish. We also learned more formality like how to say Ms. and Mr (hanim, bey). In order to fully grasp what I am learning and practice vocabulary I plan to have conversations with friends outside of the classroom and also start watching youtube clips in Turkish with subtitles. I also hope that as the weeks continue I am able to learn more about the culture of Turkey especially since we learned how to say holidays like valentines day "sevgiliter gunu", and happy birthday "dogum gunun". We also learned how to say professor and student and learned about classroom objects like desks, chairs, and the chalkboard. I know that with practice repetition, and continuing to immerse myself in the Turkish language and culture I will be on the way to reaching my goal of having a basic foundation in Turkish. 

Week 3

As we are well into our third week of learning the Turkish language, I am confident of my mastery of the Turkish alphabet. I found the alphabet to be very similar to English with a few exceptions. Also, learning how to pronounce the letters is extremely helpful with properly pronouncing different words. I believe that the most challenging part about learning Turkish at the moment is speaking. The words sound very different from English and Spanish so I find myself always second guessing how to say certain words. We also have expanded our vocabulary for greetings, so instead of just knowing how to say "mehaba" I learned how to say good morning "gunaydin," good evening "iyi aksamlar,"good days "iyi gunler" and good night "iyi geceler". Also simple fun phrases like We are Spiders "We orumcegiz" are interesting to learn and I am able to use it with my friends at school. I am looking forward to expanding my vocabulary but also learning grammatical rules so that I can start form sentences in Turkish. 

Week 2:

My second week of learning Turkish has gone quite well. I luckily have many resources at my fingertips. In class, we were given a helpful worksheet on the Turkish alphabet and we went through each letter and its pronunciation. I was able to take good notes so that I can practice the alphabet on my own time. Unfortunately I was unable to download Byki because I have a mac, but I have found the other resources such as Mango so helpful in learning how to say words like hello (mehaba) and goodbye (gule, gule). I have also bookmarked in Diigo the Turkish alphabet and how it has changed from arabic to latin. I also found an interesting youtube video on when to say formal greetings in Turkish. Apart from the alphabet and simple greetings, I have learned how to say "my name is" (adim Sydney) in the formal and informal, as well as asking "how are you" (nasilsin). We practiced these greetings, farewells and introductions in basic conversations with our classmates and I was impressed that we didn't rely on our notes rather solely on our memory to have these conversations. Overall, I would say that these first two weeks have been filled with learning the fundamental aspects of the language and I am looking forward to building on this foundation. 

      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. So far, I have learned the Turkish alphabet which is very simple and similar to English. I have also learned how to say greetings such as hello (mehaba) and goodbye (gule gule). And I found the Turkish number system to be challenging at first but once I caught on it was quite intuitive. Professor Sezgi has also taught us how to ask and answer questions in Turkish like “what is that/this” and “who is this”. While it has been a breeze learning the vocabulary and basic phrases, it has been more difficult speaking the language. The pronunciations are very different from Spanish and English so when I read words out loud they usually are not the right way to say them in Turkish.

     With any language, you need to have a solid understanding of its culture. For instance, Turkish culture has great respect for the elderly and it is very important to use formal language when speaking with them. This means that you have to learn a variety of ways of just saying simple greetings in the informal and the formal so that you are respectful. Also, I found it refreshing to learn more about what the country is like from someone who is from Turkey. Learning about the religion, secular government, and aspects of the culture like its history and fight for women’s rights motivates me to want to learn the language to the best of my ability so that I one day can visit the country and feel comfortable exploring the beautiful country.

      While I do think that I am on track to reaching my goal of having a solid foundation in Turkish, there is always room for improvement. I plan on learning more vocabulary beyond just greetings and asking questions. I hope to learn how to ask for food in a restaurant or grocery, and also travel directions. I also am interested in learning vocabulary about the government since I hope to possibly one day utilize Turkish in the government sphere. In addition, I have small goals like learning how to count up to 1,000 in Turkish. In terms of improving my communicative competence, my long term goals involve 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, and listening to Turkish dialogues.

       I am a firm believer in the fact that language represents the culture, so that I am confident that if I continue learning the customs of Turkey, it will be easier for me to improve my understanding of the Turkish language.

So far I feel my learning of the Portuguese has progressed in certain areas and has not in others. In terms of learning to speak the language I don’t feel as though I have had much progression. I have had a lot of time learning the vocabulary as duo lingo has helped me quite a bit with that, however, in terms of formulating sentences I feel like I have no progressed at all. I can only create pre-made sentences such as Hello, my name is Oliver. I have no idea as far grammar and the structure of the language. Something that has helped me though is my Capoeira class. Since I am taking my Capoeira class this semester as well, I have found that by singing the songs we learn in class I am learning and improving my Portuguese. On the other hand, once again songs are pre-made sentences, so I still do not have any idea as far as the grammar of the language of sentence formulation. Capoeira has also helped me learn a lot about Portuguese and the roots of the Portuguese language in Brazil. In terms of my learning goal of learning to speak Portuguese and speak about soccer, I have learned a lot of soccer vocabulary. Such as bola, passe, futbol. These words mean ball, pass, and soccer. However, although I know these words I do not feel as though I would be able to hold a conversation about the game as I cannot formulate sentences. I also have no idea how to conjugate verbs. I know infinitive versions of verbs as they are part of the vocabulary such as passer, which means to pass, but I do not know how to say “pass it to me”, or use the verbs I have learned in context. I can however, listen to commentary and conversations about soccer as I can recognize standard vocabulary about soccer. I feel as though this has come about from me watching and listening to soccer commentary in Portuguese. As of right now I feel that videos about soccer in Portuguese has been the most useful tool when learning Portuguese, as by watching the videos, and hearing the commentators repeat similar words repeatedly, has allowed me to decipher which words mean what in terms of soccer. It has also taught me a few slang words that are used in soccer. This is something I feel I would not be able to learn in a class or out of a book. In terms of tools to improve my learning experience I feel as though it would be nice to have a book to explain the standard format of sentence to me. Also, it would be nice if that book could explain how to conjugate verbs in different tenses, and any irregular conjugations.  Another cool learning tool would be to speak or even actually play soccer with someone who spoke Portuguese. 

My second artifact is about asking a person whether he/she has time. I used an formal tone.

The conversation goes like this:

Q:Do you have time today? 

A:I do not have time

Q: Do you have time tomorrow?

A: No. I don't have time tomorrow. 

Q: When do you have time then?

A: Sorry, I'm very busy

Artifact3.m4a

For the past ten years or so I have had the enriching experience of learning the Spanish language. Studying everything from the alphabet to the culture and even learning neat ways to ask for food and casual conversation have been incredibly useful in my social interactions abroad and even home. What I enjoyed the most about learning this new language was how it opened my eyes to new customs and challenged me to study foreign concepts. While learning new languages can be an exciting experience, I did struggle with juggling the different grammatical rules and verbal sayings that are so different from my native language. Thus, I have always struggled with pronunciations, but as the saying goes- practice does make perfect. When it comes to my learning style, I believe I learn best visually. I find that learning new words using pictures or watching films has always helped me fully grasp the concepts. In this course I hope to challenge myself and expand my learning activities relying on memorization and conversational exercises.

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