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In one of the previous tutoring sessions with Suyeon, we read the lyrics of a Korean song, discussed the meanings of new worlds, talked about the sentence structures and different endings used. It helped my vocabulary and showed my how to use different words in context. As a result, we decided to look at the lyrics of another song. This time I chose a song whose lyrics were much simpler and which used words that I was more familiar with. Before meeting Suyeon, I looked at the lyrics and translated it to English by myself. I did not use internet for the words that I did not know but instead I derived the meaning based on the context. It turned out that there were only a few things that I was not able to translate. After I showed my translation to Suyeon she only found one or two mistakes in the translation. Moreover, after she explained the meaning of the parts I could not translate, it turned that I knew them but could not figure it out as I was reading them incorrectly. This really helped boost my confidence in my knowledge of Korean language. Next we decided to watch the music video of the song and describe the actions in the video. This activity helped me identify my weaknesses. As I tried to described actions in complete sentences I discovered that my vocabulary of nouns is very lacking. Since my vocabulary is built based on watching Korean TV shows, dramas and songs, I know a lot of expressions used in daily life. I am also good at having conversations and understanding what others are saying. However, I still lack the skills to describe things, talk about cause and consequences, explaining something and expanding on my opinions. These are the things I would like to focus on when I take SDLC 113.
A learning activity I would create for someone learning Korean involves both listening and reading. This would require knowledge of an adequate repertoire of Korean words and knowing how to read. I would record someone reading a text or record a conversation about a topic. I would insert blank spaces for missing words in the text or transcript of the conversation and give it to the person doing the task and provide choices for each black in the form of multiple choice. The objective of the activity will be to listen to the recording and complete the text or transcript by choosing the correct answer from the options provided. This activity will basically test the listening and reading skills. However, it can be adapted to test grammar, vocabulary, spelling among other things by having verbs, endings of words, adjectives or nouns as missing words.
The tutoring sessions with my language partner helped improve my listening and speaking skills a lot. Therefore, we decided to practice writing in Korean. I wrote a small paragraph about my sister in Korean by myself at first. Writing the paragraph helped me review and apply most of the rules of grammar that I had learnt so far. I had to remember the basic Korean sentence structure which is 'subject + object + verb'. I had to use the proper endings like 'neun', 'eun', 'leul' and 'eul' based on whether the word is the subject or object. I also used past and present tenses, and the vocabulary I have learnt so far. There were also some words which I only knew how to say but did not know the spelling. However, I still wrote the text without any help. After Suyeon read it, she said that I had spelled the words phonetically. I had group the syllables to form words the way I pronounce them. She did not simply tell me the correct spellings but she pronounced the words in a way that helped me deduce the spellings. Also, as she was saying the words I realized that I had been pronouncing the words slightly differently which led me to use the wrong consonants and vowels in some cases. Overall, this task has helped me learn the spelling of some common words that I use frequently, review the grammar and the alphabet. It also made me realize that I should spend more time reading Korean besides listening to it. I realized that it is one way to know the spelling of words besides rote memorization. Moreover, I will also remember them better that way.
We learned how to say “hello”-“안녕하세요 annyeonghaseo” and “good bye annyeong” as the beginning of teaching. I also taught her how to make a brief self-introduction and something about shopping, because she wants to travel in Korea one day. Except language learning, we talked a lot about the cultural aspects, such as individualism and collectivism, Korean movies, Korean hip-pop culture and Korean economy. Teaching language to someone is different experience that I never experienced before. I need to figure out how to make my pronunciation correctly. This teaching activity is really effective, because now I can have a small conversation with my roommates about shopping and greeting.
I recorded myself practicing introduction conversation with myself from reading my notes. I began with a normal conversation- neither formal nor informal. And then I did informal and informal for intimate friends. I think my pronunciation in this is fine, but I should have done an impromptu conversation with Arzu to really force myself to grapple with speaking spontaneously and thinking on the spot.
Since I'm a stickler for pronunciation, my first artifact is reading the Turkish alphabet. Evaluating my pronunciations, I know I got some of the vowels wrong- probably the ö and ü and ı. I need to be practicing with various words to improve making those sounds correctly rather than just repeating the vowel on its own. And obviously reading it with the help of consonants is good practice for where the sound is coming from with the vowel. For example, a 'k' paired with a vowel will have different movements than with a 'p' paired with a vowel.
I can introduce myself (name, age, nationality,grade,major)
I can ask someone’s identity (name,age,grade hometown,major)
I can answer questions about my identity.
I can greet people
I can say farewell
I can count one to ten
I can order foods (at least 10 Korean food vocabularies)
I can talk about my family members.
I can list some school majors and some jobs.
At first, I tried to use as many as resources for Korean language such as Mango, BYKI. With the help of language partner, I picked these two primary resources for learning Korean language.
https://www.zkorean.com/english-korean-dictionary
This is a free online English to Korean and Korean to English dictionary service. It helps me find word definitions and its usage in Korean and English. I can look up Korean words and phrases by simply typing them into the websites. However, this website only offers audio and romanization to premium member exclusively.
http://www.lifeinkorea.com/Language/korean.cfm?Subject=phrases
This website brings useful phrases and vocabulary to help travelers learn to communicate in Korean. It teaches me basic and useful conversations in stores, hotels and airport. It is definitely a good resource for travelers. But for general language learner, it lacks varieties on topics. For example, I want to learn some school related stuffs or cosmetics-related conversations which is not available on this website.
My language partner used to meet up every week. We used to set an agenda before every meeting of ours. This agenda was aimed towards inching me closer towards the goals that I had described in my learning plan. We started off with something very simple which was names of numbers, days and months. We then moved on to advanced concepts such as sentence structure. Sometimes, the weekly agendas were decided by language partner based on how I was performing. We used to cover areas that I found difficult more throughly are more often.
I used in sit in on Skype conversations of my language partner to track how I was doing. At the begging of the semester, I did not understand any of the conversations. However, as I gained more knowledge, the conversations started to become clear. Given that I had made much progress, I also practiced speaking the language but I would put my language partner to tears every single time.
In Crystal’s article “How we mean”, she says “If we restrict our view to just one language-our own-we will never truly understand the distinction between sense and reference, because it is natural to think that ‘our’ way of talking about the world is the only one, or the most natural one. ”, a sentiment I totally agree with.
I am a Chinese native speaker with English as my second language. Now I extend my language learning to Korean, the third language. While I am learning English and study abroad in University of Richmond, I truly feel the differences between native speakers and internationals when we speak English. In learning second language, I have to recognized the clarifications in similar words and try to explain the sense of words under different situations and contexts.The more accurately I express the words, the more I aware of the relationship between words and entities or concepts. Hence, when I learn Korean, I would try to put Korean words in appropriate contexts(check with language partners) to feel the meaning of words.
(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.
I post my first artifact on Ning including pictures of my notes, audio records and texts .The major contents of my first artifact are self-introduction, greetings, and farewells. In my introduction part, I talked about my name, age, nationality, school, current grades.
I finished my learning goals pretty good. I practiced with my language for several time. I can speak sentences accurately and display cultural appropriateness. I checked with my language partner about the formality in Korean when I practiced. So my final artifact conversations reflects appropriate Korean conversation's courtesy. However, I still have strong accents when I speak Korean. To improve it, I will keep repeating sentences from Korean dramas.
Which sources I used
1 Online Dictionary
https://www.zkorean.com/english-korean-dictionary (free online English to Korean and Korean to English dictionary service, helping find word definitions and its usage in Korean and English)
http://www.koreandictionary.net/ (free online English-Korean dictionary service with over 8,000 Korean words, alongside the pronunciations (romanizations) and English translations)
2 Online lessons
https://www.youtube.com/user/koreanclass101/videos (Short and fun tutorials on different topics of Korean)
http://www.lifeinkorea.com/Language/korean.cfm?Subject=phrases (brings useful phrases and vocabulary to help travelers learn to communicate in Korean.)
http://www.eatyourkimchi.com/korean-culture/ (Korean food and cultures)
3 Review and Quizzes
https://quizlet.com/ (Website and Mobile Application on testing vocabularies)
http://www.digitaldialects.com/Korean.htm (Korean language learning games)
How I worked with my language partner
My language partner is Jihae, who is a bilingual native speaker. We have regular meetings with flexible hours weekly, which help me overcome the barrier of lacking motivations to learn Korean independently. In the meetings, sometimes we did role-play on basic conversations and recordings. Roleplaying constructs real scenarios on conversations occurs: not only I learned language, but also I got a sense of Korean cultures. Jihae types notes on what I learn in every meeting. Afterwards, I organize the notes and categorize them by new vocabularies, phrases, sentences structures and conversation scenarios. Jihae also gives me weekly quizzes on new vocabularies to challenge me, which is an effective way to check the amount of Korean I learned.
Activities I found most/least effective
One of the most effective activities is talking to native speakers after I learn something new. Since there are a certain amount of American-Koreans and Koreans native speakers in University of Richmond. Jihae always introduces them to me and lets me speak what I have learned to native speakers. They are always able to point out my mistakes specifically and quickly and give my useful feedbacks from their perspectives. This is a great way to test my pronunciations and estimate my Korean language skills.
For me, the least effective activity is listening to Kpop. Although I am a fan of Kpop bands and singers, I have to agree that listening to Kpop will not help me improve my language skills a lot. I do listen to some kpop again and again and I still cannot understand the meaning of them without Chinese/English subs because of the speedy singing. However, watching Korean dramas is a different story. Actors and Actresses in dramas usually speak in a normal speed and conduce relatively simple conversations. The repeated conversations enhance my memorization of Korean phrases and sentences.
In the class, I taught my classmates something I have learned in my target language for 5 minute. Since it is only a 5-minute lesson. I decide to teach basic greetings in Korean.
Outline of my lesson:
-Use Slides(Uploaded) to present pronunciations and English meanings.
-Display relevant vocabularies
-Connect words into simple sentences
-Let them work on groups of two and greet each other.
It turned out to be effective since I taught from words to sentences, which did not overwhelm them with a long and complete sentence in a foreign language at first.
Korean Food Vocabularies:
muk: eat
ma shi:drinking
water: mool
rice:bap
bibimbap
boo dae jji gae
jap chae
seafood pancake: hae mool pa jun
seafood: hae mool
fried chicken: tong dak
chicken: dak
duck: oh lee
cooked pork eaten with cabbage: bot sam
wings: nal gae
legs: da lee
Noodles dish:
Jiajangmyeon
Ramen
Meat dishes:
bulgogi
meat: go gi
Summary
For my culture project, I would like to explore Korean Fashion. Korean Style has developed its own trending and special fashion style. There are similarities but, obviously, they have significant differences between Korean style and Western Style.
In this project, I explore what Korean Fashion Style is and know about various Korean Style Outfits and some famous Korean fashion Brands including Seoul Fashion week, top 5 popular Korean fashion brands.I also find similarities and differences between Korean Style and American/Western Style. Last but not least, I research the influence of Korean style on China from other perspective.
Slides&Resources
Resources are included in the slides.
