Blogs

• Post (a) an evaluation of your First Artifact conversation, and (b) an assessment of how well you met your learning goals for weeks 4 and 5.
  • Artifacts are evaluated for accent, cultural appropriateness, and linguistic accuracy.

(A) I thought my First Artifact conversation went well. Omer was nice enough to help me out, and in all it went smooth. I incorporated information that I have learned from my time spent on Goal 1, Task 1: directions / street awareness. 

• My accent was good. If one were to listen to Omer's accent vis-a-vis my accent, there would only be a slight difference. My cultural appropriateness was also fine. I used many of my sentences on the streets of Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and Jerusalem. And my linguistic accuracy was appropriate as I used these lines with my learning language partner.

(B) I thought I met my learning goals for weeks 4 and 5.

Goal: I will continue to work on subset 1 of my Task / Goal 1:T o understand how Israelis communicate on the street in everyday life. Task 1: I want to be able to ask for directions and give directions. Subset: I want to be able to use the transportation. Cultural context — How to pay for, and procure, transportation fare

Task 1: I continued with Mango, Chapter 1:

I learned:

• Tomorrow
• famine word for close
• soon
• Are you well (Many different forms for this sentiment)

Chapter 4:

• Hotel
• Service
• Museum/s
• restaurants/s
• city

Sentences

• Do you prefer to walk on foot or to take the bus?
• What bus number do I need to take?
• Bus line
• Keep going
• Keep going straight until that...
• How often does the bus come?
• How far?
• Car (Many words too)
• Streets
• Turn
• Intersection
• Roundabout
• At the end of the street
• Can you repeat that once more please but more slowly?

Lesson 2, Chapter 4:

• Called
• Formal for what is your name
• sir
• Madam
• man

Chapter 2, Lesson 6:

• Spoke
• There is only one way of discussing an action in the present
• soon
• understood

Chapter 2, lesson 8

• Little
• When your answer is a negative, you need to add an extra "no" before the verb.

Since I have been in Israel, I know how to pay for and use the transportation.

This week I will continue to work on adjectives and describing things and the grammar related exercises according to Chapter 6 and 7 in Korean from zero. I'm then going to start on Chapter 8 and work on locations, which will help me transition into my learning goal of asking for directions and questions related to taking public transportation. 

The topic I would teach is descriptive verbs. I think these are very important because it is how you describe things, which makes up a lot of conversation, and when I learned it, most things in Korean dramas I had heard before started to make sense in terms of how they constructed the sentence and the meanings. There is the verb stem, which is the unconjugated version and then the basic form, which is the form used to express the meanings. There are general rules but there are also a lot of exceptions. I learned it through the Korean from Zero book and it had a chart of the rules and exceptions, but it was pretty boring to just memorize the chart and it didn't really stick. The workbook exercises helped a bit though. But my activity would stimulate activities I did in class learning grammar and words for other languages. It would involve a small group of people and turning it into a game. First, I would give the people the chart of the rules I learned so they have a general idea. The game is where they will solidify the rules in their minds. The game would entail moving around such as the around the world game where whoever answers the question first gets to progress. Whoever can get around the room first wins. The questions asked would concern how a verb would be conjugated in basic form or how to say a certain sentence in Korean with the basic form verbs. I think this would be a more effective and fun way to learn because I learn better when I'm having fun and I'm completely engaged and there's no room for my mind to wander. The basic verb forms are meant to be memorized and I think an interactive game with lots of repetition is helpful as it was helpful for me to remember my multiplication tables as well as vocabulary words in Spanish class. 

• Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language

I think the history of a language allows you to look into the past and see how the language developed and evolved over time. It can also help you see how it connects to other languages. For example, I know early in Korean history Chinese characters were used, meaning there was probably Chinese influence in the culture and society. It still relates to the present because some words may be similar to Chinese words such as the Chinese numbering system, numbers 3, 8, and 10 are very similar in sounds. Because I knew the Chinese numbering system before learning Korean so it was very easy for me to learn the Chinese version numbering in Korean and numbers 3, 8, and 10 were particularly easy for me to learn. Thus, being able to establish links to other languages helps make it easier to remember certain words and maybe even grammar patterns. I definitely understood the French grammar system easily because I had 6 years of Spanish before. Otherwise I would have been forever trying to understand the subjunctive and be able to use it. Being a native English speaker also made it easier to guess certain words when I tried to speak Spanish or French. For example if I wanted to say person, I could guess according to the style of the language, just adding an a making it persona or saying person with a french accent. I think learning about recent history of the language can also help with learning idioms and slang phrases. For example, the past Japanese invasion in Korea could have lead to cultural and language influences. But looking more recently Japan may continue to have connections to Korean culture and language particularly with Japanese kawaii culture and Korean aegyo and the way they change word endings to make it sound more cute. 

Bradley%20Fischer%20--%20Artifact%201.m4a

Knowing the origin of the Korean language is crucial to not only understand how the Korean language was born, but how it is uniquely different to other languages. Furthermore, this knowledge allows me to see what other languages may have influenced its creation and also reveals a part of my own ethnic identity as a Korean-American. Through my research of Korean, I was surprised to discover that Korean has obscure origins that are still debated to this day. Apparently, Koreans do not even come from a single homogeneous race but actually come from a variety of groups of people who merged together in the Korean peninsula during ancient times. Korean itself did not appear until around the 15th century and prior to the modern Korean writing system (hangul), Korean scripts often used Chinese characters to make the appropriate Korean sounds in speech. Still to this day, around half of Korean vocabulary is based on Chinese words, primarily through the influence of Confucianism. Though Chinese heavily influenced Korean language, the Korean writing system hangul distinctly separates Korean from Chinese. Invented by King Sejong in 1443, hangul consists of 24 letters: 14 consonants and 10 vowels. Known for being one of the most scientific alphabets invented, hangul is known for being a landmark achievement in Korean history since it is believed to be the main reason why Korea has one of the highest literacy rates among all other countries. 

My progress has been slow but consistent. The reason it has been slow is mainly because I based my learning plan on continuous interaction with my language partner but since I still do not have one I have not been able to do much in terms of improving my speaking skills, which was my main goal for improvement. I have been improving however, in writing and reading because I have been constantly messaging with native Korean speakers through an app called Hello Talk. I also practiced a little bit of speaking with them through phone call, but not as much as I would have liked at this point in the semester. I plan to perhaps focus more on improving my reading and writing since I do not have much opportunity to improve my speaking. I will do so by continuing to talk and message with native Koreans on Hello Talk while also writing a few sentences in Korean each day in a journal. Furthermore, I will improve my writing by continuing to self-study grammar and vocabulary through online resources such as YouTube videos. As for cultural learning, I will continue to watch Korean dramas with and without subtitles to improve my comprehension skills as well as search the history of Korea and the Korean language. 

• Reflect on how knowing a language's history can help you learn the language.

Leanring a language's history is important because it gives us an insight on the culture's history as well as what it values which one can discern by a norm's attachment to a word. For example, Hebrew is deluged with such occurrences as its history is reflected biblically in the Torah, and thus Hebrew as a language. One example is the word Ivrit (Hebrew). Ivrit is derived from the stem "eber," which, in Hebrew, means 'the region beyond." Historically, as well as biblically, when the Jews were marching up from Sinai desert and into Israel, they had to cross the Jordan River. So, "ivrit" designates a people that are across from the Jordan River. Moreover, the father of Eber, Shem, and thus the father of all of Eber's, descendants, becomes institutionalized through attaching his descendants to the name "semite." Classical Hebrew script -- Ketav Ashurit -- was first in use after the Israelites' captivity by the Babylonians. It is said this was done in order to create a distance from the Samaritanism. This new language was called Leshon Hakodesh, or the holy language. Therefore, one can see how intertwined Hebrew is with its history and religion of Judaism. Moreover, there are different forms, or generational Hebrews if you will: Biblical Hebrew -- or Classical Hebrew -- which was spoken in the Temples during Jesus' time; Mishnaic Hebrew -- or Rabbinic Hebrew -- was first spoken in the second century AD and was used in the Talmud and Madrash; Medieval Hebrew, mostly used to translate Arabic works into Hebrew; and Modern Hebrew, 19th century to modern day. Hebrew was revived in order to effectively create a zionist vision in the Israelite lands, spearheaded by figures such as Ben Gurion, and Eliezar Ben Yehuda amongst others. 

http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_One/History/history.html

So far I have learned greetings, farewells, introductions, some basic survival words and identity words and phrases in Korean. I think my learning plan has been effective because it keeps me in track of what i should learn next, and the resources I can use to learn them. So far I have not had to make much changes to the learning plan, but maybe later I would have to make some changes depending on how well I can grasp the previous activities and how long they take me because my tasks later on will be more difficult than the tasks I am learning now. Other than that, my learning has been going well. 

So far I think that my language learning has been very challenging. The Korean culture is fascinating because it is very different from my culture, but the language is not easy to learn. I started off thinking that I could just memorize and repeat over and over again random words and phrases and that I would easily be able to speak Korean in a matter of weeks or months. Then, as the semester went by, I realized that you cannot just learn a language my memorizing words and phrases. Instead, my language partner made me realize that the best way to learn a language is by breaking down what each word means and learn its literal meaning in order to learn how to speak the language. For example, the phrase, “I’m American” in Korean is said “cho-nun-(mi-gu-gin)-i-e-yo”. “Cho-nun” means “I’m,” “(mi-gu-gin)” means “American” and “i-e-yo” does not mean anything, it is just an ending for verbs that can implicate tenses. My Korean friends have told me that even though “i-e-yo” does not mean anything, it must still be used at the end of that phrase because it gives the sentence completion. Especially in a conversation, the ‘i-e-yo’ should be used because if not then you would just be stating a fact, and talking like a child that doesn’t know how to speak well. In the Korean culture, they tend to use words with no actual meaning at the end of a sentence because it makes the sentence sound better, thus, for them it completes the sentence. This is why I find it useful to know what each of the words mean because then I am able to use them with other words to make other sentences. This is a better way of learning a language rather than memorizing the whole phrase, and my learning partner has been extremely helpful in helping me understand and learn the language using this method.

As far improving in my communicative competence, I can continue to talk to my Korean friends in Korean and meet with my language partner every week. I can also improve by looking for more resources and apps that give me the opportunity to expand my Korean knowledge or even give me new fun and easier ways of learning the language. I think hearing myself say the words and sentences helps a lot because it allows me to really take into account my pronunciation of these words. I think having good pronunciation is important because if I speak to a Korean I would like for them to understand what I am trying to say, so I can have a decent conversation with them, and hopefully when I visit Korea, I can speak to people without having language difficulties. 

I am thinking about choosing Korean Dramas as the topic of my culture project. Korean drama is not only something about handsome/pretty idols, it also reflects the belief and values of the current Korean generation as well as the targeted audience. For example, we can see that he topics of Korean dramas have changed a lot in the past 20 years, In the 1990s, most of the dramas were about cancer, car accidents, and sad stories. However nowadays Korean dramas become more positive and have more funny plots. Also more and more dramas focus on the areas of high technology, aliens, doctors and wars. Korean drama develops as the generation changes and it also shows the current trend of the country. Thus I think it would be cool to find the cultural and historical currency behind Korean dramas. 

My learning goal for this week is to figure out how to introduce myself in details. For example, how to say "I am from Shanghai,China. I am studying Business in University of Richmond. I like dancing and traveling." I am going to first search basic self-introduction information online to learn the basic structure of the sentence and then ask my Korean friends for more personalized details. I am going to record this on my phone so that I could show my friends and listen to it again to improve. I will also keep watching the YouTube program and Korean drama to gain more cultural knowledge as well as to get familiar with the language environment.

The video "Culture Shock" reminded me of many things that happened at the beginning of my college life. It is common that international students who study aboard will encounter “cultural shock” and have to step out of their comfort zone. For me, there are no exceptions. I am an international student from China, hanging out with my Chinese friends for eighteen years before I decide to start my undergraduate study in the U.S. When I was in orientation, I found that all other freshman were talking, laughing, icebreaking, only I was left and had no clue what they were talking about. The language barrier was certainly an issue to me, and I was afraid to speak in front of the class. However, all the professors and students were friendly to me, they encouraged me to express myself and gave me confidence. Then I realized that I came to the U.S wanting to embrace, not escape from the cultural difference.  As it is mentioned by the students in the video, I also participated in a lot of clubs on campus such as Peer Advisor and Mentor, Eight Left Feet Dancing Club and Sophomore Scholars in Residence. By participating in these activities, I gained life-long friends from Vietnam, France, England, Venezuela, and Bolivia. Those are the people who have the same interests as me, and they helped me went through the cultural shock.

Language serves as the means of communication across the world. However, language in each country is very different This can be attributed to the historical derivation of each country's language. Each country experiences a different process to develop the current language that they utilize. The final language developed in a country is a product of various historical occurrences. Several of the major factors I have seen in the development of language are the influence of other developed countries on less developed countries, the regional area and environment, and the overall culture of the country. Languages are also heavily influenced by the different customs and traditions in the country. For example, in South Korea, there is a high level of respect towards elders in the culture. When you address someone who is older than you in Korea, you must address them in a way that illustrates respect for your elders. Each country possesses distinguishing characteristics that are not only portrayed in the way they live, but also in the way they speak. 

Understanding a language's history helps you understand the culture of a country. Language serves as the most essential part of any community because it serves as the way people express themselves and communicate. By understanding the language of a country, you inherently learn more about the way you should communicate. 

Communicative competence combines the structural and cognitive characteristics of communication with social, cultural, and practical implications of a foreign language. It is essential therefore to master not only grammatical competence but also social competence in order to convey and interpret messages and to function in daily interpersonal exchanges. One should adopt communication and the context in which the language is used. Thus, one needs to understand the culture and the way the language is embedded in the culture. For me, it has been particularly important to focus on the socio-cultural competence while improving my German skills, because I have already mastered the grammatical competence. As Larsen-Freeman (2004) would say, we can focus on evolving a bond between the individual and others, namely to become a member of a community. The best way to develop this bond is through conversation. Besides taking a German class and engaging in discussion during the class meeting I am watching German shows (political, historical, but also entertainment). Additionally, I tried to find people I can talk to in German. Fortunately, there are a few German speakers on campus. Furthermore, I tried to keep constant contact with friends I met in Germany, either by text messages, emails or phone calls. All forms of conversation are essential. Text messages and emails enable communication in an even higher dimension because one needs to express himself/herself and respond without seeing the reaction of the contact person. Thus, one needs to understand the meaning of the words used, how they behave in the sentence, whether they are part of some idiom, phrase or expression, but also to distinguish feelings that are behind the words in order to understand the illocutionary force within the context. In the process of learning I also had to understand when my contact person is apologizing, complimenting, thanking, disapproving, or saying yes or no. Hence, to learn the pragmatic conventions it is essential to learn cultural aspects of the target language. It is critical to recognize how body language, gestures and eye contact work. In one of my journals I mentioned that keeping eye contact while talking to someone is important in Germany. It shows not only respect, but also attention from the other participant in the conversation. Learning how the culture uses body language to convey messages is crucial. Luckily, Germans use almost the same body language as other Europeans, and coming from this continent, it was easy for me to adopt the kinesics of the German culture. Still when it comes to kinesthetics I had to learn that Germans, similar to Americans, maintain personal space and do not like to be touched that often when having a conversation. Although I come from the same continent, I come from the southern part, where kinesics involves kinesthetics. Hence, to cope in German, I had to learn and I am still learning how to integrate cultural standards into the grammar and structure of the language. Thus, I believe that the best way to acquire the necessary competence in the language is done by naturally encountering with other Germans speakers.

I have wanted to take the Self-Directed Language course since my first semester. I finally have the space to do so.  I began learning Turkish simply to learn another language. Turkish was intriguing to me because it is unrelated to any language I’ve ever studied. Linguistic textbooks talk about the uniqueness of Turkish extensively. As a linguistic minor, I believe it is useful to know a language like Turkish.

Most of what I know about Turkey is from 7th grade world history. I have enjoyed learning more about Turkey’s rich history and culture throughout this course. This semester I am also taking a history course about WWI in the Middle East. I registered for the class thinking it would be about Arab countries, but it is primarily about the former Ottoman Empire and present day Turkey. It is neat that this course is overlapping into my other classes.

I am able to pick up languages fairly quickly. I can easily imitate the accent and memorize the phonology. In the early stages of language learning I have a lot of enthusiasm. However, if I don’t have enough motivation, I plateau. This is something I will try to work on throughout the semester and into next year. Meeting with my tutor has been so beneficial. I have tried teaching myself languages in the past and have failed, simply because I had no one to practice with.

The Self-Directed Language course actually does provide me with direction. If I were to try and learn Turkish completely on my own, I would not learn about the culture. I am more interested in the language rather than the culture in which it is spoken. This course pushes me to research Turkey’s history and culture just as a formal language course would.

So far, I have had a positive and productive experience learning Turkish through this course. I am really enjoying the language as well as learning more about the culture. Hopefully I will travel to Turkey one day and practice all that I have learned..

As the first time I have ever undertaken independent study that is not research or MCAT related, it has been difficult to really learn Korean effectively and efficiently. I think it is mostly because learning I am trying too hard to learn the language the same way I learned Spanish in school, which was by doing class worksheets and homework, learning the grammar and memorizing vocabulary. That seemed to work for getting me to read, but I could not really have conversations when I tried with native speakers. While my learning goal pretty much includes the same topics as what I learned in my first class in Spanish, I keep forgetting that my objective is to be able to speak Korean and not figure out just the grammar. I was frustrated for a couple weeks because I was learning different phrases but I felt I could not structure sentences because I was missing much of the grammar. I have to keep reminding myself not to get too stuck in the grammar and details and over all try to talk to myself using what I have learned to practice speaking. Sticking to conversation as the main goal has made me progress a bit faster. I think by the end of the semester I will be able to converse enough on a basic survival level at least. I think focusing on learning how to say certain things first also gives me more insight into the way language is structured and I will figure out the grammar eventually. But I also gain insight into the culture.

I have been able to make connections to the culture when I learn different phrases. For example, the Korean language really emphasizes the informal and formal distinctions when talking and using the wrong way can bring a bad impression. I see it even in dramas, sometimes the characters when they first meet they will start speaking formally even if they are near the same age and then they switch. They really notice when they switch from speaking formally to informally. Thus, I think this says that there is hierarchy in Korean society. Respecting elders is a must. Though, there are a bit formal ways to say things in the U.S. and we think that we should be respectful to elders, but even when I am speaking to my parent’s friends, I do not find that I speak so differently than I would to my friend. One thing I need to keep in mind is not to directly translate right away phrases or words that I learn to English because they might literally mean different things or there might not be an accurate translation of the meaning in English. For example when you want to express that you do not like something you can say “shiro”. It literally means I hate it, which is a bit extreme even if you do not really hate something. I do find it interesting that they use this phrase often for expressing when a person does not want to do something as well. 

As far as improving my communicative competence, I think watching more TV shows is a good start as I am really starting to recognize a lot of key phrases and words that I have learned in different contexts. That will help me learn to know when to use certain words. I think starting to practice with my other peers who are at a beginner level or even better would help as well to reinforce the lessons that I have learned.

I think the hardest thing for me is sticking to a consistent schedule. I'd usually fit in time in the weekends as well as before and after class to try to work on things. I think what worked for me is just having a to do list of chapters and lessons either in Mango or Korean from Zero that I want to work on and try to complete them by the end of the week. Originally when I started doing that, I think I was a bit too ambitious and I only ended up getting through about half the things. So I think going by the learning tasks outlined in the class calendar helps give me a focus as most of those learning tasks are in my learning goals anyways. What I'm really having trouble with is just actually retaining everything. I can start to pick up different grammar points in Korean shows that I watch and that's when I feel like I've actually learned something. But I think in addition to just using the end of chapter review questions in Korean from Zero and Mango, I think I have to come back to each lesson and review what I've learned weekly because I've been moving on from lessons and then realize that I forgot some of how to introduce myself again. So I plan on going over the chapter reviews at least 2 more times after I finish a lesson. As of right now I think I'm not going to change anything in my learning plan topic-wise as I think they are all basic topics that will be covered in the Korean from Zero book since I plan on finishing the book by the end of the semester. I've looked into apps that I could use to practice chatting like Eggbun, but since it's not available on iPhone, I've been searching for others such as Wespeke.

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

For my cultural project I'm really interested in looking into the plastic surgery culture in Korea. It is apparently the plastic surgery capital of the world. I've heard and read that most celebrities have had some plastic surgery and then even non-celebrities also are a part of the plastic surgery culture. I really noticed as I watched more and more dramas that Korean celebrities always look so perfect and I think even more perfect than American celebrities do in movies. Now I can pretty much guess which celebrity has had plastic surgery. I once asked my Korean friends what they think gives someone a beautiful appearance. They all seemed to want to be really thin, really pale, have big eyes, double eyelids. I think what I want to learn about this topic is really the psychology behind putting so much emphasis on certain appearances and having the pressure on people who feel like they have to put so much effort into it. I read that a high school student wanted double eyelid surgery as a reward for getting top marks on her exams. So I think there might be effects on self-esteem and confidence particularly for girls. Another thing I want to know is how the trend started and more on how people feel about the trend and how it is presented to people through media, kpop, etc. 

I find the Korean writing system to be interesting, particularly the way it's structured. I read that Koreans originally used the Chinese writing system, which consists of symbols that represent a word. The current Korean writing system, Hangul consists of an alphabet, but to make one sound of a word, the consonants and vowels are combined to make a block, which I think resembles the Chinese characters. One thing that confuses me about the way sentences are written is the use of spaces. So far I have seen instances where a whole sentence lacks any spaces in between words and than certain sentences where there are spaces between words. I haven't seen much explanation in any of my sources as to when to use spaces and when not to or if there even is a rule. After googling around I saw that general rules are that the noun and verb are separated by a space and same goes with noun, adverb and verb. There are no spaces with particles and verb endings however. 

My learning goals for this week are to work on being able to talk about family, particularly introducing where they are from, what they do, who I live with, my aunts and cousins. So specific vocabulary I will learn are family members first, and then occupations. I think learning how to say different homes like apartment or house would be helpful as well. I think I will continue to use Korean from Zero as they have vocabulary lists for people. I will also continue using Mango. There isn't really a chapter on how to introduce family, so I will integrating vocabulary and phrases I used for introducing myself to introduce my family. I will also search for different vocabulary lists online in case I miss something from just using Mango and Korean from Zero.