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After exploring the collectivism in Korea, it triggers me to explore more about the difference between individualism and collectivism. They are just two different ways of organizing society. Individualism holds that individual people are the most important thing. Collectivism holds that group is more important. Each organizing type has its own advantage:

Individualism:

• Respecting individuals right and allow people to truly be themselves.
• People are free to do what they want to do and who they are. Change can happen and society can improve.
• Producing more diverse and interesting society.

Collectivism:

• Less likely to leave people behind.
• Reduce selfishness.
• Connected each individual with society.

111 Can-do statements

My Can-Do Statement:

I can ask direction, understand how to say left, right and go straight. List at least 10 country names, several city names.

I can talk about weather.

I can list at least ten job names.

I can speak at least ten colors and different clothing. I can ask how much a cloth costs.

I can read simple Hangul

I can write simple Korean characters

I have come to learn a lot about Korean Culture from the cultural presentations. It was really interesting to gain different insights into how South Korean culture has developed. What most shocked me was the degree to which the cultures of South Asia differ from that of South Korea. Yes, we do share similarities especially when it comes to family structures and social hierarchies. However, other than that, the two cultures are worlds apart. The kind of TV shows Koreans watch are different from those watched in Pakistan. In Pakistan, there are 2 major categories within which al TV shows fall: Drama and News. To see that there was so much variety in South Korean broadcasting was really intriguing. Another thing that I found interesting was the development of the Korean script. While Urdu and Siraiki languages borrowed scripts from Persian, the Koreans developed a script that is relatively easy to understand, all on their own.

Cultural Project Slides

My cultural project discussed how the script of the subcontinent ripped it apart. The events that unfolded after the partition of India were a tragic hour in the history of humanity. 1.6 million people lost their lives and more than 12 million people were displaced. My presentation talked about how the initial policies of the East India Company, or the EIC, that won control of the subcontinent contributed towards the flare-up. The polices the EIC enacted set in motion a series of events that caused the Hindus and Muslims to loose the peace they had maintained for hundreds of years. It also talked about the role of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his Two Nation Theory. The theory set the foundation for the creation of Pakistan. It is important to know what the politicians of the time thought about the matter. The most important of these politicians was Gandhi. He, being a non-radical reformist, wanted the subcontinent to return to relatively peaceful state it was before the arrival of the EIC. However, ethnic and religious tensions on the ground could not have possibly allowed for that. Therefore, on the night of the 14th of August, Pakistan was ripped out of India’s bleeding womb and gave rise to the state of war that exist to this very day.

General Time Line:
711:
Arrival of Arabs
Introduction of Arabic to the Subcontinent
1206:
Establishment of Delhi Sultanate
Persian official language
Hindustani semiofficial language
1526:
Arrival of Mughals
Persian reintroduced as official language
Development of Urdu gains momentum
1606:
Arrival of British
1757:
British rule of India begins
Persian replaced with local languages
1857:
Great Indian Revolt
1872:
Two Nation Theory Introduced
1945:
Partition of India
Pakistani languages take-up Persian script
Indian languages take-up Devanagari

Siraiki Words:

1. خوراک

2.جنگل 

3.دوست 

4.زمِین

5.دریا 

6.مطلق

7.کھیݙَݨ 

8.رستہ 

9.پَر 

10.سِر 

In South Korea, people stress on member of group concept. Loyalty supreme and over-rides most other social rules and regulations. People there consider group success is more important and priority then individual success. The whole contry is a big group and even big families. Through communication with Korean students on campus, younger students call elder students as elder sister누나 or elder brother오빠, even they do not have blood relationship. This phenomenon is more common in South Korea, the young will call man uncle삼촌 who is like their father’s age. In western hemisphere, people will just call Mr. XX or Mrs. XX instead of uncle and aunt. When a foreigner visit in Korea, it is common that a big family with a focus on the extended family or extended relationships. Because they consider them as a big family, so the society fosters strong relationships where everyone takes responsibility for fellow members of their group. Communication is indirect, because they want to leave the idea to the listener to fill in the blanks and make out the meaning by correctly reading the contextual clues. 

During this semester, exploring Korean culture from academic journal, news and talking with students coming from Korea is a really interesting culture aspect. The Korean culture places a lot of value on interdependence. In contrast to individualistic cultures of the Western hemisphere, Koreans develop a sense of identity through relationships and tend to identify strongly with their in-group. They prefer to immerse themselves in the in-group’s activities; however, it seems that these collectivistic tendencies shift towards individualism when Koreans receive more education that is beyond high school.

Talking about collectivism, firstly people refer to people or things as ‘our’. Usually Korean will say our house, our friend, our food, etc. As we known, we get used to refer to my house, my friend in us. A major community item is food. When you went into a restaurant in Korea or ordered a Korean meal, a lot of times you will not able to order a meal for one person, but for four or five people minimum. Because of collectivism in Korea, it is not usual for Koreans to eat, drink, or live alone, they all eat collectively and together. Each person does not have their own dish and plates; all dishes are put in the middle of the table and shared together. Korean culture is about sharing and give and take.

Secondly, I realized that Koreans have little or no personal space. When I watched Korean drama or Korean movies, people in public spaces have bumped into them or cut in front of them in line without saying sorry. In American or western cultures when we bump into someone or need to closely pass the crowded, we may say ‘excuse me’ or ‘I am sorry’ to the passerby. 

The process of learning to read and write a new language is an incredibly difficult journey. Over the course of the semester, I have tried my best to teach myself Italian greetings and various vocabulary words. While I struggled to retain some of the Italian I learned, I found that my background in Spanish helped tremendously. Being a romantic language, like Italian, many of the roots of words are similar across both languages. 

I am very happy with my decision to take this course because it expanded my cultural knowledge of not only Italy, but many other societies across the world!

My first time writing Korean was drawing family tree. When I was drawing my family tree, I tried to write Korean characters based on pronunciation and Korean alphabet (Interestingly, it took me half an hour to draw my family tree while my Korean friend only used few minutes to finish it). The experience was like drawing, using lines and circles.  Then the combinations of circles and lines become phrases and words with some meanings.  Even though I can only read a little Korean right now as I mostly focus on oral Korean this semester, I will actually take actions to systematically learn written Korean and understand Korean next semester.

No doubt that the amount of people who speak some major languages such as English, French and Chinese increasingly surge. At the same time, some creole languages are on the verge of oblivion.

A language always associates with its own culture. When a language dies, not only the the language goes extinct but also the relevant history and culture fades. Language is a key to a new culture. To unlock a new culture and understand it deeper, learning and mastering a language is rather an efficient way to dig into cultures that a skill.

 However, I am so glad to see that the danger of extinction encourages language experts and researchers to maintain the existences of languages by developing dictionaries, and documenting related cultures.

FinalReflectionPaper.docx

Shuyi Chen

Dr. Scinicariello

SDLC 105

12/02/2015

SDLC 105 Final Reflection&SDLC110 Final assessment

I have been interested in Korean Culture for a year since I started to watch Korean dramas and make Korean friends. I am so glad that University of Richmond offers SDLC courses for Korean Learners and with the help of this, I intuitively position myself as a Korean language and culture learner instead of a Korean culture fan.

So far learning Korean has been a great experience. In SDLC 105 class, we meet once a week throughout this semester. Since all of us are learning different languages as self-directed learners, we have the opportunity to learn from peers to enhance the efficiency regarding various language learning experiences such as efficient language learning methods and interesting language learning activities. To be honest, I did not expect to learn from so many perspectives as I did in SDLC 105 class. I thought the class would only provide some resources and orient us to utilize resources in global studios or online. However, upon reflection, I did touch upon diverse and broad cultural topics from others’ cultural projects. I did gain knowledge on, for example, brain structures on language learning , interesting facts about Korean drinking culture,  the history of American sign language and Arabic. Besides, the assigned readings provided us with general knowledge of linguistic principles such as language families, language history, which are helpful for language learners.For example, Korean language originally evolves from Chinese. I find similarities on pronunciation ,basic language structures and grammars between Chinese and Korean. So I am able to memorize sentence structures in Korean based on the specifics. Throughout this semester, the course has provided me with comprehensive, diverse, and cultural experience outside pure language learning.

In my SDLC 110 class, I meet with my language partner, who is a bilingual native speaker. In the beginning of this semester, I did not have my language partner. It was not until near mid term when we met for the first time. So I did not make big improvement on my Korean language skills due to shortage of practices and corrections. Later, we resumed regular meetings with flexible hours , which help me overcome the barrier of lacking motivations to learn Korean independently. In the meetings, sometimes we did roleplay 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 also gives me weekly quizzes on new vocabularies to challenge me, which is an effective way to check the amount of Korean I learned.

This semester, I focus more on speaking and listening as I would like to speak Korean with my Korean friends and understand Korean dramas a little.  Until now, I learned about greetings, number, names of Korean food , family, jobs, school life. I took notes when I had lessons with my language partner and practice them with my language partner, Jihae. One of the most interesting part in learning Korean is to speak Korean with native speakers. Jihae also introduced several Korean friends to me and let me practice to them about what I learned. At first, I got nervous because I got intimidated. Later, I made friends with them and began to improve my Korean language skills.The least interesting experience is to clearly pronounce Korean words with slightly different pronunciations. This will cause misunderstanding when you speak with others in Korean.

I am satisfied with my current progress in Korean as my 110 class started relatively late. Besides these, I have a deeper understanding on Korean culture in some aspects.  From readings, it is impossible for someone to learn a language without learning the culture in the same time. I know about family viewpoints and punctuality on Korea,etc( see cultural posts on discussions).

Although it is almost the end of my first semester to learn Korean, my language learning journey will still continue. Next semester, I will continue to meet with my language partners regularly. And I plan to start to learn Korean alphabet and writing systematically mainly through tutorials and references books.  During winter break, I will use quizlet, an application, in a daily base to refresh my Korean vocabularies and sentences. As compliments of my Korean language learning, I will keep watching Korean dramas and listening to Kpop (I wish to be able to understand at least a few conversations hopefully.)

Overall, I enjoyed my experience on learning Korean this semester and I am thankful for the development of  my self-learning skills.

Knowing a language’s history revealed the evolvement of a language. In the process of researching and knowing the history of Korean, I gained a sense of the structure of Korean alphabet and efficiency of Korean language.

Korean people used to use Chinese in ancient time. Hangul was later invented by Kingsezong as an isolated language. Hangul is considered as one of the most efficient and learnable language. People are able to read the language by combining the every single Korean alphabet in a word.

Understanding the roots of Korean language not only enriches my knowledge in my target language but also facilitates me to develop a more efficient way to read Korean characters.

It is interesting that the two articles give different perspectives on bilingualism. In the first reading, it emphasises on the way how bilingual people process things faster because of their bilingual system in their special environment as they grow up. I do agree with that. The second article argues about the vague correlation between bilingualism and intelligence. More importantly, I appreciate the point that the second article addresses at the end: “ It allows a person to understand a different way of thinking, with unique philosophies and assumptions built into how others see the world”(Ossola). Bilinguals have broader horizons and the habits to preserve the world in two ways. The increasing knowledge on different cultures cultivates their critical thinking skills and builds up brain’s new configurations.

In essence,  learning korean has been a great experience so far even though it is not necessary to make me smarter.  It would be even more wonderful for me if  learning a new language will be a way to enhance my intelligence potentially.

Currently, I have learned around 200 words in Korean. I learned it by watching Korean dramas and talking to language partners. Essentially, one important and efficient way for me to learn Korean vocabularies is to divide the sentences word by word and then translate them into English respectively. For example: “Jae eelum ee Shuyi ep mi da ”( My name is Shuyi.) In this sentence, “Jae” means “my”. “eelum” means “name” and “ep nida” means “formality”. Then I would try to compose a new sentence with the vocabularies I just learned. Besides, my language partner gives me weekly quizzes on Korean vocabularies, which is a positive motivation to memorize Korean vocabularies. My realistic goal is to learn and master 15 word each week.

• In your learning journal, reflect upon your progress to date, consider the effectiveness of your learning plan and activities, and discuss what changes--if any--you will make to finish the semester.

So this morning, was the last tutoring session Suyeon and I had for this semester.  And I am so happy to say that we finished all my learning goals!!! HOW EXCITING!!! I'm so proud that we kept on track with everything and was able to execute my whole learning plan.  The progress has been tremendous!!! From knowing nothing of speaking, reading, and writing to being able to do the basics in one semester is awesome!!! 

The learning plan was really effective, it kept us in place week to week.  I would say that the activities were less effective because Suyeon and I found a way of learning (handouts, practice, videos) that really was able to capture the way I learned.  So that's how each tutoring session ended up being and it was super helpful and easy to learn Korean.  

We did review today and I am so surprised and happy with how much I am able to communicate! 

Fourth Artifact:  Document a learning task that you have completed that meets a personal goal.

Food

• Third Artifact:  Introduce yourself and your family

Family

• Second Artifact:  Show that you can ask and answer questions about identity

Formal

Informal

Fourth Artifact: Ordering Food at Restaurant

Third Artifact: Introduce yourself and your family

• Reflect on your experiences of (trying to) read and write in your target language.   

My experience of (trying to) read and write in Korean has been a struggle.  It was easy to learn the alphabet but I just forgot how hard it was to learn from the beginning again, sounding out words and being totally frustrated in the whole process.  It's kind of amazing though, that when I am able to read out sentences, I just said something in Korean.  There's no case ending or anything so it makes my life easier as well when I am writing and reading Korean.  

I'm still a low-level learner, but I would say that speaking Korean comes more comfortably for me.  Which is odd cause usually it's the other way around.  But I think since I've been exposed to Korean since middle school, I've accumulated a lot of conversational phrases that I'm able to put into sentences or know how to build upon the vocabulary I've got.  So that part is really exciting because I know that I won't be too bad off when I go study in Korea!!! Yay!!!