My learning goal for this week was to practice on requesting and responding to favors. I learned the grammatical structure on how to ask for something through an educational website called Quick Korean. They have an online video section that provides lessons on specific topics that might occur in a conversation. I watched the 30 minute video that provided an example of how a typical conversation surrounding the goal of requesting for favors would be like. It provided questions that allowed me to apply what they taught so that I can confidently make sure I understood it properly. My language partner and I applied what we learned by practicing a conversation involving requests and responses. We asked each other for a specific request using the grammatical form that we learned in the lesson. We responded with rejection because it allowed a challenge. It required us to create a specific reason along with the proper form of responding. Just agreeing would have been too simple.
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I think Diigo is an excellent website and I love that it provides easily accessible sources discovered by my classmates. So far, I only bookmarked a youtube channel titles "Learn Korean with KoreanClass101.com."I intend on supplementing more sources using the Diigo bookmark whenever I come across a helpful link that can hopefully benefit my classmates. I have started to work with my language partner on practical phrases that might be used in a informal conversation. The first phrases we are working on are on comparing things to prove a point. For example, we learned phrases like "her face is red like an apple." We found some practice questions online and have been working on them together. So far the progress has been good. It is a slow, but fulfilling process and I think it is a great start.
In the Korean culture, there is an important difference between being formal and informal. As I have presented, respect plays a big role in the culture. Through the importance of respect, formality and informality play a big part of the culture. The respect required of the younger people of Korea towards the elders is a crucial aspect. Showing any form of informality towards an elder person or anyone who holds a great amount of respect in the country would be extremely rude, and would account for unpleasant consequences. With formality comes a certain type of speaking and behaving. Informality is usually only allowed among friends or with those younger than yourself, but when interacting with anyone older or anyone who holds a place of power in the country, it is imperative that one uses formal language and behavior. Especially because Korea is a culture where it is not individualistic but rather group focused, each individual represents their family. And if one acts wrongly, the whole family will be judged so Korea takes it very seriously when differentiating between the use of formality and informality. Because one represents the whole, each individual holds a great burden in reflecting the nature of their family line and therefore being able to identify when to be formal and informal is very important. One mistake in one's behavior may bring shame and disrespect for the family.
The presentations given my classmates provided an interesting insight into the cultures that we are studying. It was new information to me when I found out that asking about one's blood types was a common conversation topic in Korean culture. I found it odd, but when Tia compared this question to asking someone what their zodiac sign is, it made sense. Koreans might find this strange too. It was also interesting to see how big the drinking culture was in Korea. I did not know that so much formality existed when pouring drinks to elders. It really revealed how different American culture was in terms of formality and the treatment of older people. I also found it fascinating how Basque culture can vary depending on what area of the country one were to examine. In America, for example, language is homogeneous wherever one were to go. Overall, the presentations were an interesting look into the cultures of these individual countries.
Food in Korea is very different from the food from other countries, including other Asian nations. One thing that Korean food is known for is it excessive amount of side dishes for every meal. Koreans usually have side dishes that range in quantity from two to over twenty. Many foreigners mistake side dishes as appetizers. However, Koreans eat the side dishes along with their entrée.
Also, a lot of non-Koreans think Korean food smells bad. This is due to the country’s use of garlic in a lot of dishes. It goes in everything from Kimchi, Korea’s most famous dish, to various soups and noodles. Similar to a lot of Asian countries, Koreans eat a lot of rice. People eat rice with almost every meal of the day.
Formality and informality in Korea is extremely important. There is a significant level of respect when it comes to speaking, greeting, addressing, etc. If you are younger than someone else, you have to bow to them, hand things to them with two hands, and not make too much eye contact with him/her. The way of talking informally or formally in Korean is very interesting.
Formal Korean usually ends with a word that is used when you are talking to someone politely or to someone that should be respected. The way of saying “hello”, “goodbye”, “thank you”, and so many other phrases is different for informal Korean and formal Korean. It is very important to keep these rules of formality because one can come off as rude or disrespectful if you speak informally to someone even if you are a foreigner.
Korean was the first language I ever knew but English became my main language after living in America for over 10 years. However, I do not want to lose the skills I had in the Korean language because I want to be able to maintain my Korean heritage as I grow older. Being bilingual is extremely advantageous especially in today’s society.
Additionally, I have a genuine interest in the Korean culture and language. I believe it is one of the easiest languages to learn and it is a language that has a very rich culture. I want to be able to speak in the level that Koreans my age speak in Korea. Also, I want to be able to understand any business articles in Korean. Lastly, I want to learn as much vocabulary words in Korean as I can.
During these next two weeks, I am going to do something different to improve my Korean. I am going to watch a feature-length film in Korean every weekend. I will make sure that I watch them without subtitles to help me understand and open my ears to new words that I do not understand. I have decided to watch New World, a recent gangster movie that has a lot of dialogue, and Ode to My Father, a classic movie about the struggle that men in the early 90’s went through in South Korea.
I will watch these movies, write down words I didn’t understand, and figure out the meaning to subjects that I am not familiar with. I will use the internet to research and define these terms, subjects, and topics. Most importantly, I will try to utilize these things I learn in a casual conversation with my language partner or even other Korean students/professors.
My target language's writing system is the same as most of the Western World, using the roman alphabet, so it is very easy to learn to write. Not only that, but because it was not a language that was written until the year 950, it is completely phonetic. Because of this, even a person who is unable to speak Basque, such as myself, is able to write a word by hearing it. Unlike the many European languages though, certain letter combinations have different sounds than they would to other language speakers. For example, 'tx' makes the 'ch' sound, while 's' and 'x' make the 'sh' sound, and 'z' makes the 's' sound. Once these sounds are remembered, it is fairly easy to learn how to properly write down words and sentences in Basque.
I think that my first artifact conversation went really well. It was created after Amaia and I had been working on creating and answering basic questions about ourselves, and I also found it extremely useful to have Amaia's help with my accent as well. By creating a conversation between the two of us, we were able to teach me the proper cadence of a conversation in Basque, as well as understand the types of questions that a person may ask in real life, and how I can answer them. The one drawback was that it was scripted, so next time my goal is to have an organic conversation between the two of us. As far as how well I met my learning goals for weeks four and five, I think that I did a fairly good job. When Amaia quizzed me on my knowledge at our next meeting, I was able to remember the responses to each question she asked, as well as learn how to generate new questions according to the meanings of certain words, like "non" leading to a question asking about location, or "zenbat" meaning "how many." As for learning the verb "egon," I still have some things to learn, but for the most part I can use it in the correct context, which is also important.
Basque Learning Plan Fall 2016
Week 3: Goal – Be able to say “I am,” “you are not,” etc. as well as greetings and farewells
Tasks – Survival Language, Greetings, Farewells, Introductions…. Be able to greet, exchange names with a person, be able to describe a person (including myself) saying 4 things that they are (height, ethnicity, size, intelligence), and 4 things that they are not, and be able to say goodbye
Methods – Aurrera 1 – 1.3, flashcards, memrise, learning partner?
Week 4: Goal – Be able to answer very basic questions like “are you a woman?” or “is your friend tall or short?”
Tasks – Be able to ask a person if they are a student and be able to answer if I am one in return. Be able to ask what 5 things are and answer. Be able to ask about people, like “who is Dr. Scinicariello?” and answer, “Dr. Scinicariello is a teacher” or say, “who am I?” and answer “I am Maddie and I am a student,” etc.
Methods – Aurrera 1.4 – 1.9, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 5: Goal – Learn the verb “egon” to be able to say verbs like “I am sleeping,” etc.
Tasks – Be able to begin a conversation, ask how a person is, say how I am, ask about another person, and then say how other (plural) people are. Also be able to say what I am currently doing like, “I am not at home,” or “I am sitting”
Methods – Aurrera 2.0 – 2.4, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 6: Goal – Be able to describe what I do, and what I’m studying, as well as say where things are and what they are doing
Tasks – Be able to say where I am, what I do, what I’m studying, and then describe what my learning partner is doing and where they are, like, “Dr. Scinicariello is tired, she is seated in the office,” etc.
Methods – Aurrera 2.5 – 2.10, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 7: Goal – Be able to ask about time and tell it, be able to say where my partner is from and our nationalities, as well as state someone else’s nationality
Tasks – Be able to ask what time it is in order to catch a train and then tell a person when they don’t know what time their train leaves, ask my partner where they are from, state my nationality and my grandmother’s nationality, and say what time it is in my grandmother’s country, all in one non-stop conversation
Methods – Aurrera 3.0 – 3.11, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 8: Goal – Be able to say where I and other people live, including plural, and ask where and with whom people live and where they do not live
Tasks – Be able to have a conversation for 3 minutes talking about where I live, where my partner lives, and where our friends live through making statements
Methods – Aurerra 4.0 – 4.14, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 9: Goal – Be able to use the words for “this” and “that” and “with” as well as count through higher numbers and therefore be able to label items, like “20 people,” etc.
Tasks – Be able to ask about and describe 12 objects around a room without stopping, and describe them using numbers (ex. “There are 5 pens on the desk”)
Methods – Aurerra 5.0 – 5.11, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 10: Goal – Learn how to describe or ask about where someone or something is going, be able to order food
Tasks – Be able to describe my trip to a restaurant by saying where I am going, and then “ordering” food for my friends who have not arrived yet and my language partner
Methods – Aurerra 6.0 – 6.10, Global Studio Basque Books, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 11: Goal – Be able to describe where things are coming from
Tasks – Be able to describe where I or a friend is coming from, like in the context of a flight or train trip, be able to describe where an item came from, like a type of food
Methods – Aurerra 7.0 – 7.12, Global Studio Basque Books, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 12: Goal – Be able to talk about what I have and ask people what they have, both in physical objects and abstract things, like a cold, etc.
Tasks – Be able to have a conversation talking about things I have, like if I were to go shopping and read off of a list of things I have at home and things I have put in my cart
Methods – Aurerra 8.0 – 8.8, Global Studio Basque Books, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 13: Goal – Be able to talk about the recent past
Tasks – Be able to have a conversation about what I or someone else was recently doing, and what I was recently not doing, like saying, “She got up at six,” or “we did not leave the house (yet)”
Methods – Aurerra 9.0 – 9.11, Global Studio Basque Books, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 14: Goal – Finish up the fist semester by being able to describe things that belong to people
Tasks – Be able to describe a person’s dorm room by saying what belongs to one person and what belongs to another, like “the hairbrush is mine,” or, “the bathroom is ours,” etc. Also be able to describe these things, like “those peoples’ rooms are very dark,” etc.
Methods – Aurerra 10.0 – 10.12, Global Studio Basque Books, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 4: Goal – Be able to answer very basic questions like “are you a woman?” or “is your friend tall or short?”
Tasks – Be able to ask a person if they are a student and be able to answer if I am one in return. Be able to ask what 5 things are and answer. Be able to ask about people, like “who is Dr. Scinicariello?” and answer, “Dr. Scinicariello is a teacher” or say, “who am I?” and answer “I am Maddie and I am a student,” etc.
Methods – Aurrera 1.4 – 1.9, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
Week 5: Goal – Learn the verb “egon” to be able to say verbs like “I am sleeping,” etc.
Tasks – Be able to begin a conversation, ask how a person is, say how I am, ask about another person, and then say how other (plural) people are. Also be able to say what I am currently doing like, “I am not at home,” or “I am sitting”
Methods – Aurrera 2.0 – 2.4, flashcards, memrise, learning partner
I'll be evaluating my results by having Amaia (my learning partner) test me on my knowledge by quizzing me about basic questions and also the verb "egon," which acts similarly to the Spanish verb, "estar."
It was interesting to see the presentations of my classmates and learn about cultural aspects of different countries and cultures that I hadn't before known about. I liked the Korean blood-type presentation, and found it particularly pertinent because of the blood drive that had been visiting the school over the same week. I also really appreciated the presentation on Turkish coffee. I am a huge coffee drinker, coming from Seattle, so learning about how another culture has a completely different way to prepare it was very interesting to me. I also really enjoyed the presentation on how some Koreans broadcast their eating of food. I found the presentation really funny, and also really interesting because it reflects on our own culture of social media, but brings it into a whole new sphere that I hadn't thought about before. I also liked the presentation on Diwali, because it was something that I had already heard of, but didn't understand, so it was nice to get a better understanding of where it came from and how it's celebrated. The presentations on alcohol drinking and the veterans memorial in Korea were also very informative, because I had never really considered the way other cultures treated the same things that American culture does in a different way.
There are many things that I need to learn about the structure of Basque, but because it is such a complicated language, it is difficult to learn most of them. Unlike most languages, Basque switches from using SOV and SVO depending on the context of the sentence, so it is very difficult to make one without knowing first the word order. An example is "ni Maddie naiz," which means, "I am Maddie." While this is in SOV, I could negate the sentence by putting it in SVO and saying, "ni ez naiz Maddie," or "I am not Maddie." Likewise, one could use SOV to say, "ni irakaslea naiz," or "I am a teacher," but subtly change the sentence to SVO, "ni naiz irakaslea," to say, "I am the teacher." Because of the many intricacies of Basque, I can definitely say that I have a lot to learn, but it is difficult to know what exactly, because the rules are seemingly so inconsistent.
Structure of my target language will be key to shaping the manner with which I approach the language. WIth respect to Hindi as it has gender nuances , it will be important to learn the language from an object orientation as well as a cultural viewpoint. Using a reference grammar might be useful, but rather a form of reference to the way in which Hindi formulates around objects would be more useful.
With my language partner, I viewed a lot of videos of segments from the popular Korean show SNL (Korean-ized version of US’s SNL). Although this show has a lot of comedy and parodies, it is instructional in several ways. For instance, I watched an episode of confusing words in Korean that combine two different words. This combination of two or more words results in a new word that does not maintain the same definition as the two separate words.
For example, the Korean word for “heaven” is Chun-Gook. Those two words separately mean something completely different. “Chun” means one-thousand while “Gook” means soup. Together, they form “heaven”. This is a very strange combination but that is why some words in Korean are difficult to interpret just by looking at its individual syllables or words.
Having easy access to articles pertaining to my target language on Diigo will be extremely useful to me. I plan on reading several articles per week on business in Korea and Diigo will help me keep track of the articles I have read or will decide to read. I will research and discover articles on Naver.com or sites like Daum to bookmark. These articles will help me get a better knowledge of Korean business terms and ways of speaking.
I started to read articles in Korean about the economy not just in Korea but also in America and the rest of the world. I also started watching videos on Korean culture and Korean lifestyles especially in the college scene. Having conversations with my language partner and my friends who are also taking Korean has been helping me with grammar as well.
As an intermediate user of the Korean language, I want to become better at it so that I can easily hold a conversation with any Korean at any level. More specifically, I want to expand my vocabulary. There are a lot of words in Korean that use words derived from Chinese characters. These are the words that I have trouble comprehending.
Additionally, I want to learn the way business people talk, write, and speak. I want to be able to understand articles in the business or economic area. As an accounting student, I want to be able to understand business topics in both America, Korea, and other countries as well. Lastly, I want to learn how students my age conversate in Korean. This is so that I can improve my skills in Korean and hopefully be able to develop relationships with solely Korean speaking college students.
Viewing a lot of presentations on the Korean culture and language was very interesting. I learned about Korea’s strange phenomenon of the popularity of eating broadcasts called “Muk Bang.” Koreans tend to have a unique and strange sense of humor but of course, they may view American sense of humor strange as well. I also was reminded of Korea’s obsession with blood types and their belief that blood types correlate to different individuals’ characteristics and personalities.
The presentations on India and Basque were interesting as well. I learned about how different towns in Basque did not associate with each other too much. This is interesting because in small countries like South Korea, the people usually bond together and have common goals or interests.
