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

My learning goals this week are to:

1. Watch a Korean video on SCOLA and write about it in my journal

2. Listen to a Korean song and write about it in my journal

3. Read my Korean book (I chose the Giving Tree) and attempt to respond to it in my journal

4. Call my mom and have a conversation with her without using any English twice a week

I accomplished these goals by going onto SCOLA and picking a video that seemed interesting to me. I chose a song that I felt was slow enough that I could hear all of the syllables, and I listened to it over and over again. I received my Korean edition of the Giving Tree in the mail today, so I plan to read the book and write about it in my journal. Lastly, I am in contact with my mom through phone and Skype calls to enhance my conversational Korean.

Post Learning Journal #5 on Your Blog in the Ning

• Reflect on the Culture Shock video and your own experiences and expectations of culture shock

I have not studied abroad yet, but I had a small case of culture shock when I travelled from the West to the East coast for college. Like the individuals in the Culture Shock video, I found that discussing the differences between the two coasts with fellow West Coast students made me feel more comfortable. I wasn’t used to the fashion, behavior, and food. Coming to Virginia introduced me to new fashion trends such as Vineyard Vines, LL Bean boots, and generally more “preppy” outfits. I had never seen someone wear clothing like that on the West Coast. Furthermore, the behavior was different because people were generally more well-mannered and hospitable. I was not used to saying thank you when someone held the door for me because it generally did not happen very often. I was shocked by how many people said “you’re good” and I didn’t know what it meant at first. Lastly, I was not used to the food at first. I had never eaten a “hush puppy.” It is called Carl’s Jr on the West Coast, but on the East Coast the restaurant with the smiling star is called “Hardee’s.” To be honest, my initial response to these differences was to believe that  my beliefs are superior. However, I am learning that though we all live in the same country, there are many regional differences that should not dictate how I view an individual.

SDLC 110:

• Fifth Cultural Post:  Identify a topic for your culture project and your learning goals for your topic.

For my culture project, I plan to present on the Korean social hierarchical system. It’s an interesting topic to me because though I am Korean, I was born in and grew up in the United States. I identify more with my American culture than my Korean culture, so it feels strange when I am in social situations where I have to abide to the Korean social hierarchical system. In the United States, respect is earned through one’s character, personality, etc. Therefore, it is very difficult for me to abide to a system where respect is given due to factors such as age. It is a form of social ranking that I do not agree with. Therefore, because I struggle with this concept a lot, I plan to research more about it, with the hopes of coming to understand why it was established/ why it still exists today. My learning goals for my topic are to browse the internet for some potential articles to read about this social hierarchical system.

My goal for this week is learning how to describe things. Before, I had learned simple ways to describe things such as "It is big," "the car is red," and so on. But I wanted to expand that so I could describe memories, daily events, or purchased items vividly. Saying "I bought a brown bag" and saying "I bought a brown bag with studded straps and two large side pockets" is very different. Also, the ability to describe things can be useful when giving directions or discussing likes and interests.

So far, I have been working towards this goal by making lists of adjectives and also making lists of features that go with objects. For example, I know the word for book is 책 but then I search the names of different genres, page numbers, topic matter, etc. So now I can say "I bought a nonfiction book about space" rather than just "I bought a book." Also, if I go to a bookstore now I can navigate around the store better because I know the names of genres. Before, I had to skim the books in an area first before I could determine what they covered. 

My next step is to go through a TTMIK series which has photos and provides sample responses. I will be using that to test my progress and learn about new sentence constructions and vocabulary. 

During these two weeks, I was switched between Minkyung and Joora for my language partners. With Minkyung, we learned about a topic that deals with service and customers. I learned that in Korea, service is taken very seriously and that Korea has one of the best customer service in the world. Because of this, many issues can arise, such as customers taking advantage of the workers. We learned about an incident that happened in an airplane that was headed back to Korea from Vietnam. A man that was intoxicated on an airplane was making a scene and causing chaos in the airplane. We learned various Korean words to describe the situation. We also went over the situation in the form of a news article. In this news article, we identified words that we were not familiar with and Minkyung went over it with us.

For the second week, my language partner was switched to Joora. We learned about trendy vocabulary that is used often in Korea, such as "numsabyeok" which means someone who is too perfect at something. We learned various texting lingo and other commonly used phrases that are trending in Korea. The next meeting, we learned about the Korean alphabet along with the consonants and vowels of the language. Although this was review, it was good to start off with the basics again. 

These were very effective for me to start the semester off. I will continue to expand on these topics by learning more about not only the trendy vocabulary, but also other specialized vocabulary that was taught to me by Minkyung and Joora. These class sessions were helpful in getting my mind back in Korean and to get me started efficiently.

State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

My learning goal for the second week is to understand weather reports. However, I found it is a really hard task for me. At first, I went to KBS website( which is a Korean News broadcast) to find some clips about it. But, the reporters spoke too fast that I couldn't understand most of the monologues. Thus, I went to search some resources online, and found out some very useful dialogues and learned a lot professional words for broadcasting a weather report. And then, I went back to find the original clips I found on the KBS. This time, I found it became more simple for me to understand. So, I write down one of the dialogues in Korean and translated it by myself or by using a dictionary for the words I didn't understand.

I definitley experienced culture shock while I was abroad. Similar to the people in the video, it was a draining experience and led to a feeling of discomfort and unease. The biggest issue was that it lowered my self-confidence and made it difficult to do simple tasks because I was so worried about making a mistake rather than the completion of the task. Being unable to do simple tasks, such as use the washing machine, can make you feel dumb and out of place. 

Prior to going to Korea, I prepared a lot by studying Korean and memorizing key travel phrases and vocabulary. Doing tasks like asking for directions or shopping in a store, were easy for me but there was still a lot of local knowledge I lacked. No one tells you to prepare for those sorts of things. Things like finding where to buy bagels because you're craving them or where to buy a pillow because you need a new one are unexpected obstacles.

I was lucky enough to have a close group of Korean friends who made me feel accepted and were always there to answer my questions. Also, I found a "happy place" for myself where I could go and recharge after having a tiring day. It served as a refuge for me when I felt the most homesick. My advice to others is to find local friends and to find either a place or an activity (such as taking a morning walk) that gives them some sense of normalcy or comfort. 

It was very interesting to hear about the different cultural aspects of Korea, Turkey, Czech, and Portuguese during the presentations. Different countries have many unique aspects of culture that is not always apparent, such as food, clothing, dance, clothing, etc. I didn't quite understand how meaningful a drink or an item of clothing could be to a group of people, but these presentations made it clear that many people value things unique to their country. It made me think about certain aspects of American culture that I hold dear, and it's weird to think that some of our behavior would be just as strange to someone not from here as vice versa.

I know a decent amount about the structure of Spanish, such as adjectives come after nouns, verb endings change depending on the subject, pronouns can be attached to verbs, etc. There are also plenty of online resources to learn more about the language structure, so I have numerous ways to learn more. I think a reference grammar is useful in learning a language faster, and English is a suitable reference language for Spanish. There are many cognates between these two languages, so vocabulary is a little easier to learn. 

This week we met with our language partner and quickly discussed what we would be learning about for this semester. Minkyung gave Jacob and me a packet that had problems related to listening and speaking. We watched a brief Korean news video and tried to answer who, what, when, where, and why questions. It was a little difficult to understand everything so we watched multiple times and analyzed what words we had trouble understanding. She asked us questions about the video and we had to answer in all Korean. This exercise helped me review all my learning from last semester and made me remember how bad I was at speaking fluently in Korean. Afterwards, we read an article related to the news video. Our language partner helped us define difficult sentences or words that we didn't know.

Spanish is one of the romance languages, so it has many aspects in common with languages such as French and Italian. Additionally, Spanish stems from Latin, so it shares similarities with many other languages too. Verb endings change depending on the subject, adjectives follow nouns, etc. Many words are cognitives to those in English, so it is easier to learn than other languages that don't. 

Due to SDLC 110, I believe that my listening and interpersonal communication skills have improved. However, I came to the conclusion that I need to focus on my reading and writing. My vocabulary is very limited, which hinders me from becoming a better reader. I cannot understand many words, so I lose the meaning of what is being conveyed in written work that is all Korean. I hope to tackle this problem this semester by learning more vocabulary that is related to common topics of conversation as well as in writing. I also find some Korean words difficult to spell because it contains vowels or consonants that sound the same, but have a totally different meaning. I plan on working with my learning partner on this problem.   

My cultural learning goal for this semester is to learn more about the history of Korea. It is where my roots come from and I know nothing about it except for the few things that I learned from last semester while doing the cultural projects for SDLC 110. The few things I learned through those projects were fascinating because I was learning about the history of my nationality. The only time I came across Korean history in my life in the American education system was in my history class in high school and it was on the Korean war. However, the information was very brief and it was contained in a small paragraph that was about a few sentences.  I hope to explore these topics with the help of my learning partner. I plan on finding online articles as well some educational videos on YouTube that teach historical topics about Korea. Through the exploration of Korea's long history, I hope to gain some insight on the Korean people and why things are the way they are. 

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My goal for week 4 is to learn about the different types of majors and minors, such as Mathematics, History, and Geography. I can achieve this goal by doing prior research before my tutoring session with my language partner. I want to learn about majors because I always struggled with finding the right words, whenever I tried to talk to others about my major, Chemistry. In order to carry on this conversation, my learning goal for week 5 is to apply my learning of majors by expanding my knowledge about different career paths, such as pharmacist, accountant, and lawyer. I can accomplish this task also with prior research on how these types of careers are used and with which types of majors they are typically associated with. After learning these two tasks, I can evaluate my success by having fluid conversations with my family and friends about fields of study courses and careers.

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In order to learn Turkish I need to know about the grammatical rules, vowel harmony, the Turkish alphabet, and key vocabulary. I hope to acquire this knowledge by completing in class exercises, watching videos in the language, and also having conversational exchanges in Turkish. I also believe that I can work on learning these structural components of Turkish by completing writing and listening exercises. I do believe a reference grammar can be useful because it will help me to memorize and grasp the different rules that go into speaking the language properly and it will serve as a great resource if I happen to have any trouble or questions.

It was very exciting to hear my classmates present on a variety of cultural topics in different countries! Since I am learning Korean, it was very interesting to hear about the different aspects of Korean culture, such as the use of “us” and formality/informality. However, I was also very interested in learning about other cultures too! For example, it was fun to learn about how differently coffee is viewed in Turkey, when compared to the United States. People living in Turkey seemed to see coffee as a delicacy by serving it in smaller portions and by using the leftover coffee as a way of telling your fortune! It was also nice to learn about how time in Spain is multi-active, which is why it can be appropriate to have 2 hour lunch breaks and the ability to push back time, if necessary. This can be compared to how time is portrayed in Korean culture, which is monochronic. This provides an opposing view because Koreans tend to follow their set schedules and not appreciate interruptions that mess up their schedule.

The structure of Korean starts with the basic technique of putting vowels and consonants together to form individual words. Although this sounds very simple, the struggle comes when deciding which type of character goes under the consonant + vowel word. I can acquire the knowledge needed to learn this by focusing on improving my writing through one of my learning tasks. I know that I can write simple combination of words, but I would like to challenge myself by further exploring how I can become a better Korean writer. A reference grammar book may be useful to answer any questions I have. A better way to learn may be to actually practice this task by developing my writing skills with my language partner.

One prominent theme in Korean culture is the use of indirect language. It may be difficult to completely understand Korean communication because they are not very direct in what they want to get across. This means that yes may not always mean yes. As a result, this leaves us to decipher the meaning of the words and even provide our own interpretation. This theme is used because Korean culture does not want to upset the harmony, so they can tend to be passive aggressive and avoid conflict.

Another part of Korean culture deals with collectivism, which can result in indirect communication because many ideas are assumed as a part of the common language. Collectivism also deals with teamwork, which is present in Korean culture because Koreans like to do activities together, which explains their low individualism.

Koreans may view time as monochronic because following a set schedule is a part of their culture. For example, Koreans may keep and follow their tight schedule of academics and social activities, without missing classes.

The last factor shows how Koreans are external, which relates to the first two themes of collectivism and indirect, because Koreans tend to be low risk takers. This results from their high ranking of avoiding uncertainty.