Although I have not experienced culture shock to this point in my life, I have had multiple friends who have. For example, one of my eventual good friends during high school moved to Pennsylvania from Mexico with just a basic knowledge of English, so I was able to see and hear about some of the struggles involved in assimilating into a different culture. Obviously having a different accent makes foreigners stand out a bit, but this difference was never something that affected my friend much. For him, other than actually learning English, the subtle social nuances were most difficult to pick up. However, everyone handles culture shock differently, so it is important not to generalize one person's feelings. I will find out what culture shock feels like when I go to Europe for the first time this summer, but hopefully I will be able to adapt quickly.
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- Reflect on the Culture Shock video and your own experiences and expectations of culture shock
I easily found some common experiences that I also had on the video. The professor in the video defined cultural shock as something you feel you are not belong there and want to go back to your home country. I think it is little extreme but I did feel I do not belong to some communities in America when I first saw different attitude towards people and different life styles. I thought I was open minded person, but still I was not free from cultural shock. I think because I feel I am not a majority in this society, it become careful on my behavior or words. I totally understood the international student who said he did not talk for a long time because he felt like he was wasting other people's time because he spoke English slowly. I felt less confident in the class in my freshman year, too so I had hard time getting used to ask questions and discuss in the class.
One time, I typed "Let's do BS" on group chat and I meant BS, bible study. I got embarrassed when my friends told me it stands for a curse word. There were several times that I was shocked because I did not know some abbreviations and numbers that represent something else. I also did not understand why people judge me using utensils when I eat pizzas, and some finger food. I was eating french fries with a fork in Minnesota and my friends from there were staring at me in weird faces and said we do not use forks for french fries. In addition, transportation system in America was surprisingly inconvenient that I felt less independent in America because I had to ask for a ride to go somewhere.
Actually, the most shocking thing for me was that people do not use an umbrella when it snows!! I always bring my umbrella in the snow in Korea but my American friends said they never use umbrella for snow. I think Korean people care about getting their face and clothes wet more than Americans do. And the clothes they were during the winter are different from Americans, and they don't usually have jackets that have little caps on the top, they might prefer to use umbrellas under the snow. From those shocking experiences, I learned these little daily lives can be really differ from country to country.
It was interesting to watch all the presentations on different cultures of targeted countries. Since cultures are critically tied to languages, it was good to know what kinds of background cultures are there in those countries. I was impressed by the hidden meanings of the black beanie in Czechoslovakia that people do not show off their wealth in public and the beanie represents the characteristics of people there. In addition, it was interesting to watch presentations on Korean culture that I got to know how other students from different backgrounds perceive Korean culture. They interpreted the bowing culture, using a formal language, and the use of “We” in Korean in their own way. I enjoyed watching the explanation of Korean traditional clothes and the global aspects of them.
My progress so far has been on pace with my learning plan so I have finished all the lessons I listed. However, I feel that I may have made my pace too quick. I feel that I spend all of my time learning the lesson that I don't have a chance to practice and memorize it before moving on to the next one. So now, I have decided to slow down a bit and go back and review and truly practice around the sessions. I feel that I'm currently walking on a road and paving it as I walk over it. I'm not giving myself enough time to truly build the foundation before I move to next lesson.
This could also be because the time I have blocked off for learning and review is much less than it should be. For example, I try to spend 30 minutes to 1 hour on Korean daily. However, when I was in Korea, I had a 2 hour daily Korean class and roughly 30 minutes to 1 hour's worth of homework every day. So I would end up studying 2.5-3 hours a day along with the luxury of being immersed in Korean. My other classes were not very demanding so I was easily able to meet the demands of my korean class but it's much harder to do that at Richmond where almost all of my classes require daily homework. On top of that I have my part-time job.
I plan to slow down a bit on the learning I do and focus on reviewing instead. I will also try to find ways to make my daily Korean practice more of a priority and more of a fun, relaxing time for myself. Lately, it's been hard to find the motivation to get through the lessons and exercises but I hope to turn that around.
For my second artifact I will be submitting my Korean resume and Korean inquiry email. This email roughly explains my credentials as a candidate along with my questions for the responder: what requirements do you have for foreigner applicants? do you accept foreigner applications? do you have any openings I qualify for?
As I learned my first target language in an immersion setting, the structure of the language was basically taught to me through showing us how the language worked. In this case my approach has been very different, and also being older and more able to understand the complex aspects of language structure, language structure is something I found to be the most interesting and also the most important. Luckily, the structure of Turkish is actually quite simple from what I can tell. They don't use gendered words and make use of suffixes to indicate person and tense. In this way, it makes learning the language much easier and faster because the word "love", for example, can so easily be translated into "I love" or "You love" just by changing the ending. I do think that a reference grammar would be helpful actually even more so because the structure is relatively simple. Because of the way that Turkish is set up, it would be easy to see patterns in a reference grammar.
- First Cultural Post: What is your interest in 'your' language and what do you hope to accomplish this semester?
Last semester I learned Korean and I wanted to continue to enhance my knowledge of Korean. I have been been exposed a lot to Korean culture through my friends in Richmond. I am also currently in the Korean American Student Association on campus. We try to market to anyone interested in Korean culture through both food, Korean games, and movies. I think that Korean culture is also very interesting in terms of their hierarchy and honorifics.
I hope to better learn my basics and be able to hold a conversation. I am also planning on earning how to change from formal to informal Korean. Also, I plan to learn some sort of reading and writing, so if I were to go to Korea I would be able to read some of the signs.
My first artifact is a recording of myself using greeting, farewells, and introductions with a professor on campus that speaks Czech. I greeted her formally and asked basic questions such as "how are you?" and "Have you been to Czech Republic?" I also greeted her with a formal farewell and discusses a little bit about the class in Czech. I am hoping to build on this artifact by going to her office hours and talking to her for at least a couple sentences.
My goals for week 4 and 5 was to give a presentation in Czech and continue learning basic vocabulary such as colors, animals, and clothes. I have completed the presentation by asking a friend how my presentations skills were such as eye contact, tonality, projection, diction, but I was unable to record it. I thought I did well, I might have took more time to think about my sentences to form. However, I was unable to work on my vocabulary. I have a list from my resources using memrise and czech learning books, but I need to test myself and apply them in sentences. I am hoping to gain more exposure when I visit a European supermarket later in the week.
This week I want to improve on my soccer vocabulary. I will do this by learning more about soccer in Portuguese, and watching more interviews. I also will watch some more basic new commentaries just to learn more about the Portuguese language as a whole. I also intend to find some books to hopefully practice my learning.
My First Artifact is to about greeting, introducing my name and where I am from, and thank you.
It goes like this:
Hello
Nice to meet you
My name is Ziwei Liao
I am 22 years old
I am from China
Thank you very much
I found the culture shock video quite interesting. Being from California I did have some culture shock, but I definitely did no have culture shock to the extend of those featured in the video. Coming into college I did expect my life to be different, than my life at home, but I did not expect the environment around me to affect how my life would be lived. For example. coming into college I already knew that Richmond was not as dense as California, but I did not expect this to cause me to feel as though there is a lack of action or things to do in Richmond. On the other hand, unlike those featured in the video, I did not experience any language barriers, or any trouble trying to accomplish daily tasks, as in no way did I feel out of place when I first came to college.
Over the last two weeks, my language partner and I have watched and discussed several Ukrainian cartoons. This strategy of watching cartoons is meant to increase my listening comprehension abilities. At first, I had some difficulty understanding the dialogues in the cartoons, but then we found some with Ukrainian subtitles as well, so it became much easier. I think of these subtitles as training wheels, because of course in real life there will not be any subtitles to rely on. One of my goals that stemmed from using subtitles is to be able to understand cartoons without using subtitles by the end of the semester. I think that it can be possible, especially because of the supplementary visuals that exist while watching a cartoon.
I have been able to introduce myself and add my nationality by saying, "My name is Emily. I am from Virginia." I think that my pronunciation of the alphabet has definitely improved. It is a bit difficult with some of the letters that are the same as English but have different sounds. I think I am catching on pretty quickly to being able to communicate without too much thought going into what I am saying. But at the same time, I know that I have an accent that I'm not sure I will be able to get rid of in this one semester.
I learned more vocabulary via my apps and I am progressing pretty quickly in my opinion, although still maybe not keeping up with my original learning plan.
We have not yet gone over family.
The Culture Shock video was not at all surprising, possibly because I have experienced culture shock firsthand and therefore I have a sense of empathy for those experiencing it. Perhaps, if you asked me when I was a freshman at UR about my conceptions about culture shock, I may have had a more surprised reaction. You see it on TV shows and you see it in ethnic enclaves in communities of immigrants where they never fully adapted to the new society in which they live, so they do not learn the new language and they do not make friends out side of their comfortable social circles.
Today, after studying abroad in China and interning abroad in Latin America, I think I recognize that I am in an unfamiliar place and use that as motivation to discover where I belong, if I do, in the new society. When I first arrived in China, I stuck with people who were also international, which was not hard as I was in an exchange program in an international university. But as I stepped out of my comfort zone, and put my language skills to use, I found that there were aspects of the society that I never would have discovered had I remained in my privileged bubble. Because the ability to remain a participating member of society while still feeling secure in a new place is privilege. There are people who are totally thrust into a new place where they do not speak the language, nor do they know anyone. That is culture shock in its purest form.
Well Known Korean Idioms and Proverbs
1) 쏜살같이
Literal: Like a shooting arrow
Meaning: Very fast
2) 바람 맞았다
Literal: Hit by the wind
Meaning: Got stood up by someone
3) 고슴도치도자기새끼는예쁘다
Literal: Even porcupines think their children are pretty
Meaning: All parents think their child/baby is pretty
4) 그림의 떡
Literal: Picture of a rice cake
Meaning: Used to describe something that you want, but can't have or afford
5) 시작이 반이다
Literal: Starting something is already half the work
Meaning: Taking the initative is already a big step
6) 눈코 뜰새 없다
Literal: Don't have time to open eyes and nose
Meaning: Extremely busy
7) 귀 빠진날
Literal: Day my ear was pulled out
Meaning: Birthday
8) 개천에서용났다
Literal: A dragon was born in a stream
Meaning: Someone who became successful from a poor background
9) 혼자서북치고장구친다
Literal: Playing a drum by oneself
Meaning: Someone who does everything alone and doesn't care about other people's opinions
10) 고양이에게 생선을 맡기다
Literal: Entrusting a fish to a cat
Meaning: Expressing doubt to trust someone who you shouldn't trust
On the first week, I asked Joora if we could go over homonyms and/or commonly misused and misspelled words. We went through 12 commonly misused/misspelled words, which happened to be all homonyms. This lesson was really useful and I learned a lot. I always wanted to go over homonyms, because I often type or text in Korean by sounding out the words and characters. Although auto-correct fixes some mistakes, there are many times when auto-correct does not catch the mistake when the word is just used in the wrong context. At first, i was really hard for me to differentiate the homonyms, because the characters looked so similar. Joora also told me many native Koreans get some of the homonyms mixed up as well. To practice and further my understanding on Korean homonyms, I came up with sentences using the two homonyms and asked Joora to check it over for me.
On the second week, Joora and I read a Korean short story together out loud and went over some of the vocabularies, phrases, and grammatical principles. (https://www.howtostudykorean.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/HowtoStudyKorean-Stories-Set-1-1-First-Date.pdf). The short story was about dating and relationships. I wasn't used to reading Korean out loud, so it was a bit awkward and hard for me. While reading I had to stop a couple of times or slow down because there were so many tongue-twisters and I couldn't sound out the vowels correctly. I really enjoyed this exercise with Joora not only because we both laughed over some of the cheesy lines in the short story, but because it really helped me with the fluency and flow. I definitely became more comfortable reading in Korean towards the middle and end.
Here, I will take a detour from my first culture post in which I advertised key areas within Bali's culture that I wished to investigate. This culture post concerns a phenomenon called pasung. This topic hits closer to home because it is a phenomenon with which my language partner and I would like to study this summer.
Pasung may be defined as the shackling of people with mental disorders. Fifty-seven thousand people with mental illness have experienced pasung at least once in their lives, and 18,800 people are believed to be shackled in Indonesia today. Approximately 300 people in Bali, Indonesia, are currently suffering from this practice.ii Because of the scarcity of resources that provide mental health treatment — there are 48 mental health institutions for the country’s 250 million people and only one in Bali, for instance — families with loved ones who have psychological disabilities resort to either social care institutions or their homes. Social care institutions are known for their practices of “arbitrary detention, physical and sexual violence, and involuntary treatment” while administering medication. Furthermore, the conditions in social care institutions are woeful: they are overcrowded, unsanitary, and lack basic amenities, such as bathrooms. People are chained to the floor lying in their excrement and urine with only a bucket of water to bathe themselves.
Despite the government’s long-standing positions and recent initiatives to put an end to pasung, hurdles such as 1) a lack of access to medication, 2) education, and 3) traditional belief systems about mental illness make it difficult to eradicate pasung entirely. Indeed, the government formally banned pasung in 1977 and set into motion a program called “Indonesia Free from Pasung” in 2014. Nevertheless, access to medication remains a large headwind in decreasing pasung. According to the Indonesian Ministry of Health, 90% of individuals are unable to enjoy mental health services. As it stands, Bali only has 25 psychiatrists for the island’s 4.2 million inhabitants.vi In addition, the lack of education is a roadblock: Fewer than 10% of Indonesia’s population have a university-level education, while only 43% have graduated primary school.vii In this light, a common belief that mental health disabilities are the result of supernatural phenomena such as a curse persists. Consequently, many Indonesians conclude that mental health conditions cannot be treated and stigmatization abounds.
It is a devastating topic, indeed. But one that reveals a great deal about the Balinese people's understanding of mental illness.
My goals for these past two weeks were to:
- A) Finish unit 7 Directions/Instructions, sourced from the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture
- B) Begin reading Indonesian comic books (I decided that I will utilize free versions of comic books rather than purchase a (short) Indonesian children's book).
- C) Meet with my partner for four hours
Strategies to accomplish these goals:
- A) Over these past two weeks, I have made a lot of progress with unit 7. Nevertheless, I have not completed the unit as it is dense and lengthy. This will constitute a minor hurdle as I planned to finish one unit every two weeks. 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 unit's activities. Now, I can describe a building's location vis-a-vis its surroundings. In addition to describing the location of people, things, and animals, I have amassed a large vocabulary pertaining to the topic that will prove useful in daily conversations. For example, I can ask where objects are in a given room and describe its location. Moreover, I practiced equative, comparative, and superlative comparisons.
- B) I began reading 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.
SDLC 110 Learning Journal 3
This week, I first started to review all the Hangul I learned so far. I met with my language partner Minkyung and we will have meetings with her twice a week. She went through the alphabets with us. I tried to combine the alphabets together to pronounce the words but it was very hard to imagine the sound. Three of us had a competition of pronouncing words. In addition, we learned greeting phrases and practiced conversations with each other. Also, this week I watched the music video that repetitively spoke the phrases we just learned. I found the music video to be quite good and really helped me to remember the sentences.
