Blogs

The culture, the local knowledge, traditions, the religious of the people might go away with the language. The uniqueness of the culture will no longer be passed, learned, understood or comprehended by people if the language is gone. In the reading, language experts try to save the Siletz Dee-ni by creating online dictionary for people to learn. But the problems is, there is not enough people who speak the language on a daily basis. People who are not born with this language, can never comprehend the culture behind it or merge into the language and its culture because they don’t live with it. Language learners can only know how to pronounce the words and directly translate the words. But the meaning of those words in the real life is hard to apply. Thus, the culture, knowledge, local people’s traditions and religious, cannot be preserved by dictionaries. When the language is gone, all of the things will go away with it.

In the context of globalization, a single language being lost seems not a big deal, after all there’s very few people speak it. And small group of people has to keep up with the globalization by speaking the more common languages, English, Spanish, Chinese, etc. People seems to lose the language inevitably. However, globalization is damaging the cultural diversity by forcing people to communicate in common language. Some might lose the native language by practicing too much of the adopted language and not passing the native one to the next generation. Thus, even the descendants of the language still exist, the culture might disappear as well. 

The history of a language influence the grammar, the logic, the structure and the culture of the language in a lot of ways. For example, the French colonization of places in African has left a lot of people in African speaking French. But local Africans speaking different French than people in France because they incorporate local knowledge, social, geographical aspect into the language. When learning a language, it’s important to pay attention to variations within a language because of the colonial history. I once had a Spanish professor from Spain, but then when I had another Spanish professor from Argentina, I could not understand the Argentinian professor at all because of the different way of pronunciations. Argentinian style of Spanish is different from Spanish-Spanish possibly because of the colonial history. The logic and the structure of language can be different because of the history as well. The logic, structure and culture can be affected by the history of the language as well. Some words and use of words are unique in certain languages, but don’t exist in others, because of the different history of living in different places, interact with different things. Some language as a lot to do with the ocean, some are more familiar with the mountain, some has to do with tropical forest, etc. Language reflects on the life of the people, in another word, the history of the traditions and culture. 

I can resonate with a lot of things that have been mentioned in the video. For example, the newness that came at the beginning when I first came to the U.S and the school. I felt excited about almost everything. But then as the newness went away, I started to feel difficult about dealing with academic and social life. I felt alien from this very different world than my home. As a lot of people said in the video, the first few weeks were very tough and were packed. I had to get used to everything within a short amount of time. I had to spend two or three times more effort on the work that U.S students, etc. I was stressed out. But then, as I interacted with professors more, tried to take the initiative to reach out to other people, and got more involved in class, things started getting better. In small schools like U of Richmond, I think it’s really an advantage to have a small community where I can always find help from my professors and faculties. There people who are less interested in me and my culture, but there still are a lot of people who cares about me and my culture, who want to talk to me and get to know me, which has been a great encouragement in my life here at Richmond. One thing that I think would be great is the host family program. It could be a great support to international student as one of the girl talked in the video. We don’t have host family program that has student actually live in the host family now, instead, we have host family that could take student to dinner, local places, holidays, etc. It has less interaction with the host family, but still a good way to get familiar with Richmond and in some way, the American culture. 

For this week, I plan to work on expanding my last week's task of being able to read Korean by reading news articles. I read several business news articles but found out that it was too dense and specialized for my level, so I tried to look for new, easier articles to work on. I found some articles that were around my level of comprehension. I understood about 70% of the article and attempted to Google translate the rest. This was only somewhat successful because of the poor accuracy of Google translate. However, it allowed me to use context clues to help me engage in learning new vocabulary along with learning how professionals use the Korean language. Business articles might not have been a good place to start because of its specialized language that I do not even know in English, but it is a field of interest for me and I believe it will be easier to understand something that I am actually interested in. Because of this, I will continue on trying to read more news articles and try to understand it with more ease. I believe that the more I read them, the more my vocabulary will increase, making the readings go easier each time.

My learning goal for this week is to practice ordering food at a Korean restaurant. My attempt at this goal could help me develop my interpersonal communication skills. I plan on accomplishing this goal by going to a Korean restaurant at Grand Mart, an international market, which is located near our campus. I hope that this kind of practice would prepare me for my interactions in a restaurant in Korea, since I plan on studying abroad my junior year of Spring semester. At the restaurant I could accomplish my goal by reading the menu and deciphering what the food is. I would also be practicing phrases and words I learned that relate to interactions that would happen when ordering at a restaurant. I would know I have accomplished my goals when I feel confident with ordering and requesting services. 

Reading and writing Korean is surprisingly easier than many other languages. Since there is a limited number of characters you need to know, reading Korean is simple. However, understanding it is completely different. Since I grew up in Korea, I can read Korean at moderate speeds, but I will rarely understand what I am reading. This is because of my low vocabulary level in Korean and the lack of practice reading professional, presentational writing. After reading some business articles, I realized how complex Korean is and how hard it is to understand some of the structure and syntax of Korean. Especially with the highly specialized vocabulary that is used to describe certain things in the business world, I had a hard time understanding. 

However, writing is much simpler than reading and understanding Korean. Similar to many other languages with alphabets, it is not difficult to write in Korean. There are certain times when I do get confused about which vowel to use, but even with the wrong vowel, most Korean speakers can understand what I was trying to say. There are different vowels that sound the same but have different meanings. These vowels can make it difficult for new or novice Korean speakers to write, but it can be acceptable for people who are just trying to get by. Overall, reading in Korean is easy but difficult to understand, and writing in Korean is easier to understand.

Reading the articles, I was pleasantly surprised. As a bilingual myself, I was surprised to find that they generally perform better in certain tasks. However, through personal experience, I have not experienced this. Growing up with friends that are also bilinguals, it never occurred to me that they were smarter than the rest. I do believe that bilinguals should be respected because of their ability to speak two different languages. I did notice that the bilinguals did perform slightly better in classes such as math or science. Since these classes require more logic and require the use of the more technical side of your brain, I can see what the article was trying to say. However, just growing up with my bilingual friends did not make me think that they were more superior than those who can only speak one language. I believe that it is a good skill to have to be able to speak two languages, but I do not believe that it makes us smarter people. The article also mentioned that this can be seen with the older generation and that it can prevent dementia, but I personally do not know any bilinguals that are in the older ages. I did read somewhere that the more puzzles and the more involved your brain is, the more prevention it can do for dementia. Speaking two different languages will definitely exercise your brain, so I do believe that there is possibility of prevention for dementia.

For this week, I will dive deeper into Korean current events by reading and analyzing the Korean newspaper. After reading a newspaper article, I will give a presentation in front of my language partner and my fellow peers in Korean to explain the article. This will allow me work on more professional and presentational speech and reading. Since news articles have to be professionally written, it will not contain any colloquialism. This will help me to understand how formal Korean is written and how to write with no bias in Korean. With all the controversies that are going on in Korea, I believe that I am obligated to keep up with the news and what is currently going on. This can show a glimpse of the Korean history along with the culture of Korea. Through this, not only will I learn how to read and understand Korean, but I will also learn how Korean is used in the professional field.

I have been constantly learning new vocabulary words so it is difficult to actually come up with a number of how many new words I have learned. I usually have been learning these words when working with my language partners or through my online sources that I have been using to learn about my target language. One of my sources is a a series of videos that teaches me a variety of lessons on specific topics of Korean that I could use practically. At the end of each video the teacher provides a list of vocabulary words that relate to the topic of what they taught in the lesson. I do not really have a realistic goal for acquiring the vocabulary of Korean. I just wanted to naturally learn by coming across words that I encounter through the video lessons or from my language partners. I assumed that these words would be the ones that I need to know to participate in a typical conversation in Korean.

Family.m4a

Identity.m4a

Recording

Introduction%201.m4

aIntroduction%202.m4a

The goal of this week is, first, not to forget some expressions I learned until now, second learn some colors in Turkish. I already learned how to ask some questions in Turkish, so after I knew some colors, I can also ask the color of some things near around me. I learned about 10 different colors which is quite confusing and difficult. Therefore, with my language partner I had practice about one hour memorizing them. Now I could tell 10 different colors in Turkish and ask some questions about colors and answer it. Also there are some youtube clips that explains for this colors in Turkish although those are for little Turkish children. It is still helpful though with some music and imaging effects. 

I dealt with greetings, farewell, introduction, and asking about identity. Memorizing some basic words, and number in Turkish. These are what I learned until now. Of course I forgot some expressions, and start to learn again. To avoid forgetting somethings before my regular class with my language partner, I prepared for the time for reviewing and practicing what we've done before. I like and satisfy the way we learned and practiced. Chat with each other, and using some SNS, recording and listening, and using Youtube is also fun way to learn some languages. Now I think I almost done with my basic stuffs so I am going to move on to my travel subjects in Turkish. I am going to imagine my own situation in Turkey in the future, and ask my language partner for translate it into Turkish and memorize and practice. 

This week, I learned some basic words in Turkish. It is kind of starting point of my Turkish. As a novice language learner, my language partner gave me some words like pen, desk, teacher, students, school, etc. I kept memorizing those words for some times. It is totally different words that I felt little hard to memorize and keep forgetting about it. However, some words had some common parts which make my memorizing easier. Now I also try to keep memorizing it. 

My first artifacts are recordings of my saying greetings, farewells, and introductions in Turkish. My language partner helped me evaluated my accent, cultural appropriateness, and linguistic accuracy. She said my pronunciation was good, and quite accuracy. Therefore, I think I did well on my first artifacts. 

I learned week4, and 5 basic speaking skills in Tukish. I also did in my first artifacts about greetings and farewell things, and now I can speak that kind of conversation so I made it my goals for week 4. Also I knew how to ask questions like "What is this?" of "Is this a table?" and answer the questions. I also review the number in Turkish. Until now, I did well on my Turkish learning. 

I did study in this week about basic stuffs in Turkish. I finished read alphabet, and start to learn about greetings, farewell, and introduction. Those are what I started last week so just review the expression and speak with my language partner. Because Turkish is difficult for me, I tried not to do too much things in short period. My goal is not that big, so I think I am doing well. For this week, my learning goal is get used to the Turkish number. Numbering is so important in any kind of language. My language partner let me know about 1~10, 20~90. Now I can say from 1 to 100 in Turkish. After I knowing about the number, I just try not to forget and keep remember what I learned. I keep writing, and speaking Turkish number. 

I already finished those kind of stuffs such as life survival languages and greetings, farewell, and introduction. I and my language partner practiced how to speaking Turkish from the basic. Firstly, I learned Turkish alphabet and how it sounds like. Next, I started to learn greeting, farewell, and introduction my self, asking questions, answering. Because I did not know anything about Turkish, so my language partner just gave me some papers which has some expressions and conversation on it, and teach me how those expressions sounds like, and what those expressions mean. After getting some meaning and pronunciation, I keep repeating until I felt comfortable for the expression. Although it is quite different with English, of course Korean, I still try not to forget about it. 

I mention several times already my goal of learning Turkish. It is because I want to go Turkey in the future, and I just want to use some Turkish language with native Turkish people. Although I do not have any experiences with Turkey or even Turkic area or Arabic culture. I heard Turkey is one of the really beautiful country and the people living there are really kind. Now I am quite close to my Turkish instructor Sezgi, we promised to meet in Turkey someday and speak with a little basic Turkish. Therefore, my goal is to learn some Turkish related about traveling conversation. I am meeting with my language partner twice a week, and now start my learning about traveling issue. Everytime, I made a situation and my language partner helped me translate it into Turkish. I hope, in the end, I knew several good Turkish expression for traveling. 

• Learning Journal 11:  State your learning goals for this week and how you went about accomplishing these goals.

Goals:

• To finish Unit 5 "Touring" -- Ministry of Education and Culture
• Grammar: Prepositions --  Chapter 3 from Let's Speak Indonesian: Grammar and Context
• Meanings of prefixes such as "Ber" -- attach when denoting to possess, to own to have, to wear, to use, to ride, or to do an activity
• Culture

-----------------------------

I just have one more subset left with regard to my language learning plan.

-----------------------------

To Accomplish:

I completed Unity 5 "Touring," from the Indonesian Ministry of education and culture. In it, I worked on my reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills by completing different activities that cover these domains. I accomplished the speaking and listening tasks with the help of my language partner. There was a section that covered basic prefixes, such as "ber," in this chapter as well. I learned the correct use of prepositions and their correct contexts. Here, I used Let's Speak Indonesian: Grammar and Context. Lastly, I learned about Indonesian culture. I read about etiquette such as when to take off your shoes upon entering a house; basic meal structure (including the primacy of rice); customary naps in the afternoon called tidur siang; and shower customs. I practiced for two hours with my language partner.