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For this week, I am going to work on my listening skills by watching more Korean news and television shows. By listening to more Korean, I will be exposed to more vocabulary and how they are used in context. Through this, I will learn how to speak more fluently and understand Korean at a faster rate. I will mainly focus on the casual Korean television shows for their basic vocabulary and move onto more sophisticated news shows and other formalized broadcasts. 

I found a website where they have clips of Korean television shows, along with full episodes that have subtitles for most videos uploaded. My plan is to start with using clips with subtitles and leaving them on so I can expand my vocabulary. I will learn vocabulary that I do not know from the subtitles and reinforce the vocabulary I already know through listening to it over and over again.

While Bilinguals may be more able to communicate and deal with issues in a wide variety of ways. I found through the reading that an important aspect of bilingualism refers to the confusion inherent in the language. Bilinguals tend to find it harder to wrestle with issues and so can be affected negatively during their development. I believe that there is a trade off between bilingualism and smooth development, and that the more languages a child is exposed to the harder it will be for him to be decisive.

This week we learned how to say the different months in Urdu from January to December. I also learned more information on the Islamic calendar and how it differs from our calendar. There is a short video on how to say the different months in Urdu. I also learned some background information on the Islamic calendar. We discussed how the role of Islam is so integrated into the life in Pakistan that even the time works based on Islamic History. During Ramadan, people open and break their fast according to the Islamic calendar.

After we discussed how the Islamic calendar works during our first meeting, in our second meeting, we discussed examples of how to tell someone the date of today. We did an exercise where dates were written in English and I verbally translated the dates in Urdu. We also practiced on how I can ask someone their birthday and respond by telling them mine when asked. In addition to this, we briefly discussed how I can also translate years from 1990’s to ask someone their birth year to 2016 so I can discuss important events that have happened between 1990-2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-N5i0QX2c8

http://www.islamweb.net/en/article/200326/significance-of-the-islamic-hijri-calendar

This week we learned how to tell time. We first learned how to count to 1-60 so I was familiar with all the minutes in Urdu.  I practiced saying the time with all twelve hours changing the minute.  We discussed how you can also say it is noon, midnight, dawn, and evening when asked. Zaka also recommended a video that shows how to tell if it is a quarter past a certain hour or half past an hour. We discussed how the system of differentiating the morning and evening in Urdu like we add A.M. and P.M. to time.  We also did an exercise where the time was written down in English and I had to verbally translate it in Urdu.  We discussed how after this week, I should regularly ask for the time and also be prepared to tell the time when asked during our tutoring sessions. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSs-hCckyqE

          As of now, I know the Urdu alphabet fluently. I am able to read short simple riddles for children at a slow pace. I am still learning how to write letters and how they need to be connected in order to form a word. The readings and the articles that we have come up with are educating me on the cultural aspects of the people and geography of Pakistan. I am starting to learn the political tension that is associated with a Pakistani identity. By learning about the history of Pakistan I am able to better understand the division between Hindi and Urdu despite the similarity in how it is verbally spoken.

          The learning plan is giving me a chance to take that first step towards becoming literate in Urdu. The pace that I am going at with my learning is not teaching me reading and writing skills at the pace that I would like to be fluent in. In order to pick up the pace on developing my reading and writing skills I can integrate on immersing myself in the language in my daily routine. I will start to read the headlines that are published in Urdu by family members for example. I will also continue to read short riddles on my own in order to pick up reading pace. There is more information that I would also like to learn about Pakistan’s history with India so I will to find more readings that give various perspectives on how the history impacts people’s identity. 

This week was discussion based and we focused on in a book called Pakistan - Social and Cultural Transformations in a Muslim Nation. I read through chapter nine in this book which was focused on family, kinship, community, and civil society. In this chapter, I read how the historical description of a typical family has been centered on a joint family where unmarried daughters reside with the family and married sons bring their wives into the house. Globalization and westernization has changed this family dynamic. Dependency is being encouraged among children where they are starting to live separately from their families. In the rural parts of Pakistan cousins often married each other.

            As for identity, Zaka and I discussed the concept of what my family’s background as Muhajir. Zaka informed me how Muhajir means Muslim refugees from India. The way that Muhajir even speak Urdu is different from other tribes and sects in Pakistan which is what my parents are.  In the reading, it was mentioned how 97% of the population in Pakistan is Muslim. Islam dominates the social life in Pakistan as well. Men and women keep a physical distance from each other. Drinking and Dancing are not your usual way of spending your weekends nor is it publicly done. 

This week we worked on the alphabet system in Urdu. Zaka explained how the alphabet system starts on the right instead of the left. He read through the alphabet once with me reading it aloud afterward. We worked on my pronunciation with the alphabets and how some letters make a guttural sound unlike the alphabet in English. I also wrote out all the alphabets in Urdu. We went over the letters that were mixed around and we worked on which letters could be written better. The second day in the week I learned more about the history in the alphabet system in Urdu. Zaka discussed how the alphabet system in Urdu was a mix of Arabic and Persian after political tensions in history. Zaka also recommended a youtube video on the alphabet song which gave examples of various foods with all the letters from Urdu which we saved to Diigo. 

We have begun working on our very first task which is to set the structure of the classroom and how to build self-discipline in Urdu. We discussed the schedules that work best for us which is one day out of the week and one day out of the weekend. We discussed the ways I can strengthen my reading and writing skills on my own outside of the class.  We also selected our main reading for the course which is Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatoly Lieven. For each week, we will select different parts of the book to read trying to align to the language tasks set out for each week. Our lessons will integrate short riddles, news channels, discussions, brief TV serials, and articles. For the first week, we had a conversation about how informal and formal greetings are exchanged. We discussed how it is quite normal to stay past the time you have said you would leave before saying your farewells. Similarly, it was also quite normal to arrive past the time set. We worked on the second language task more through discussions by discussing how men and women greet each other differently. Men and women rarely shake hands when greeting each other whereas men will either embrace each other or shake hands with each other in greeting.

            One resource that we have found to be very useful is Diigo to document and record the articles, news channels, and riddles that we will be doing throughout the weeks. This resource will help us go back to our lessons especially when we need to review certain phrases that repeat throughout the news or articles. I can also go back to these resources through Diigo.   

The goals that I have for this semester with Urdu is to learn how to read simple sentences so that I am able to read headlines in the news that come up in my newsfeed on facebook. I also hope to write short simple words in Urdu that will allow me to fill out basic information on applications in the future. For example, my address, my name, and information about my family that can potentially be asked on basic applications. As of now I am advanced in my interpersonal communication and interpretative listening where I can follow extended speech and follow complex lines of argument provided the topic is reasonably familiar. I can understand extended speech and follow a complex argument. It takes me a little longer to comprehend formal Urdu that is spoken in news channels regarding political and current affairs. The skills that I need the most work on are with presentational writing and interpretive reading because I am unable to do both. I am still at the beginning level for that. I hope that I can learn to put simple words together and learn how to read small riddles and poems.

There are many other cultural aspects I hope to learn in the process as I become literate in Urdu. For example, I hope to learn about the geography, political situation, and demographics of Pakistan so that I can be much more familiar with the country where Urdu is dominant. This will help me become familiar with the country and allow me to understand which part of Pakistan is affected when it is brought up in the news. There are more simple things that I am unable to do in Urdu such as telling the date, telling the time, or telling someone how much something is. I hope to master these basic goals that are often used by the end of the semester. In addition to this, I also hope to learn about how Pakistan is a developing country and how globalized it has become. I want to learn about the gap between the poor and rich and how socioeconomic status is determined. I want to understand what westernized ideals may be looked down upon so that I am conscious of it.

I wanted to continue to increase my vocabulary pool, learn how professionals write in Korean and practice speaking in Korean. I continued reading weekly economics article and have conversations with my family members.

Here are the samples of vocab I came across:

손익계산서-  Income statement

매출액- revenue

매출원가 - cost of sales

영업이익- operating income

법인세비용-  income tax expense

회석주당이익- Diluted earnings per share(EPS)

기본주당이익- Basic earnings per share(EPS)

금융수익/비용 - finance income/expenses

Many of these I knew the mathematical concept of but didn't know how it is represented in the Korean language. These are only a few of the words that I came across. I am learning more words, learning to write better and speak better.

I wanted to learn more vocab and familiarize myself with professional Korean writing. In order to achieve this, I read an economics article in Korean. I also wanted to work on speaking so I used this chance to make a phone call out to my brother and my parents. 

Here are samples of the words I came across/ learned this week:

현금 흐름표= cash flows from operating activities

당기순이익 - profit

법인세의 지급- income tax paid

배당급의 지급- dividends paid

자가주식의 취득- purchases of treasury stock

무형자산의 처분/취득 - withdrawal/acquisition of intangible asset

유형자산의 처분/취득-  withdrawal/acquisition of tangible asset

these are some of the vocab that I familiarized myself with in reading this week's weekly economics news article. 

Family is a big part of Korean culture. I could even go as far as saying that filial piety is the single strongest driving factor of Korean culture but there is no factual basis behind that statement.

Everything starts with respect for elders; there is a strong sense of respecting your elders (Especially elderly family members). Younger generations' desire to achieve success usually trace back to their respect for their parents and their desire to make them happy. There is a strong emphasis on how the elders of the family sacrificed their life to pave the way for the younger generation. 

Aside from respecting the elderly family members, Korean families are very tight downwards as well. There are cultural holidays such as chuseok and Korean New years when the entire extended family gather and share a big feast. Especially during the new year, the younger kids bow to the older members of the family and wish them a long and prosperous life. In return, the older members of the family give the younger kids allowance for the year. There are various cultural activities like these that build the bond between family members whether they are part of the immediate family or further away.

In one way or another, family is sacred in korean culture.

I realized that throughout this course there have been many times where spelling was difficult. There are some Korean characters that sound the same, but produce completely different words. This has been problematic to my practice in spelling so I plan on working with my language partner by practicing on some words that use these tricky Korean characters. I also plan on researching on Google if there are any tips and tricks that I can gain to help me with spelling these confusing words. I came to a realization that my knowledge in spelling is a lot more weaker than I expected. 

For this week I plan on learning expressions and words that relate to shopping. I plan on finding YouTube videos that can provide a lessons or any type of information that relate to shopping. If I go to Korea, I want to shop efficiently and make sure I am not going to get ripped off by some sly merchants who know that I don't understand Korean that well. I also do not want to embarrass myself when I can't make a simple purchase because I don't understand common shopping related terms and expressions. I also plan on researching on Google for some documents are articles that teach on this topic of shopping. 

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I want to practice listening in Korean and interpreting what is being said. I think this is something I need to focus on because this is the main reason I am taking this course. I also realized that this is still one of my weakest aspects during this course. As a result, I plan on watching a Korean movie that was recommended to me by my mom called Ode to My Father. She says it is like the Korean version of Forest Gump because the main character accidentally ends up participating in many historic events. I plan on watching it without subtitles and hope to complete the movie with a general sense of what was being depicted. I think it will be not too difficult because of the visual aspect of the movie. I also hope to gain an insight into some Korean historic moments that I am unaware of. 

My learning goal for this week is to become familiar with the interaction of disagreeing and agreeing with someone. I also plan on learning words that relate to this type of interaction. I plan on accomplishing this by watching the lessons plans provided on YouTube by the Korean Culture Series. They provide me with a scenario where two people agree and disagree on a topic. This can help me visualize how to apply what I learn into a real life interaction.  At the end of the video there is usually an introduction to a variety of words that would be used with the expressions of disagreeing and agreeing with someone. I also plan on working with my language partner in class by practicing the words and expressions I learned so that I can become more comfortable with what I learned in the video. I think learning this would be helpful to have some meaningful conversations with other Korean people. 

The problem with reading for me is that in many cases, I can't understand what is written. I can read the language with ease. I just do not know many common vocabulary words that can make it difficult to understand the context of what is being said. This can be discouraging for me. However, I am not that disabled in being to understand what I read. If it isn't too difficult of a reading, I can understand by putting together the words I do know and infer what is being stated. I can do basic writing in Korean, but there are often cases where I get the grammar wrong or the spelling is completely off. There are some specific Korean characters that can be very tricky because they sound exactly the same, but are completely different in what word it produces. Overall, the main problem for me is that I just do not enough Korean words and that can cause a hindrance to reading and writing. 

The readings reveal the advantages that one can have if he or she is bilingual. Before I read the provided articles, I always just assumed that the one advantage of knowing more than one language would be the ability to communicate with others in this increasingly globalized world. Its fascinating how it improves cognitive language and can even provide protection against dementia in old age, which is something I am terrified of. The NY Times article explains that being bilingual allows the individual to be better at tasks that involve switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind. It makes sense because there are many cases where I would be talking in Korean with my family while thinking in English and vice versa. I am constantly having to adapt to the different languages around me. 

My learning goal for this week was to learn more vocabulary and familiarize with professional writings.

Here is a sample list of professional and academic words that I came across from reading the daily economics article in Korean.

회사/기업  Business/Management

경제  economy/ economics

회계 accounting

세금 tax

정치 politics

경영전략 business strategy

There were many more words I came across but they wouldn't all fit in the blog. There weren't that many new words I learned; these words mentioned were all ones I've learned from previous articles. I just wanted to give a sample of the type of words I come by when reading these articles. By reading new articles weekly, I am learning new words and familiarizing myself with academic writing.