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The first task that I undertook was learning how to give and ask for directions along with a list of vocabulary related to directions and places. I hoped to learn how to ask where a certain place is. I will also learn to give directions to taxi-driver or to someone asking for directions. I also hoped to be able to describe the positions of things and places as well learn a list of names of places and modes of transportation.

My language partner made a list of vocabulary and wrote some example questions and sentences that are commonly used. I practiced their pronunciations with my language partner. Sun also explained the grammar behind the questions and sentences. We then held a conversation in Korean using what I had learned. Later, I tried to use some of the words and phrases is normal conversation with my friends in order to retain what I learned. I also taught some of the words to my friends. Moreover, when I watched Korean drama shows I looked for words related to directions and noticed how they were used. I am very excited every time I am able to identify words of directions, that I could not previously understand, in Korean shows.  

I think using Korean words and phrases in daily life conversations really helped me in retain more vocabulary. Also the Korean shows helped me understand the extensive usage of the words. 

Next I would like to learn how to give a series of directions using connecting words. Moreover, I want to learn how to conjugate verbs like go, ride, turn etc in the past, present and future tense, as well as in the formal, semi-formal and informal forms. 

Since using newly learned vocabulary and phrases in daily life conversations helped me remember them well, I am going to continue to do it. In addition, I think it would be a good idea to practice writing down phrases to become more comfortable in writing Korean.

Since I have previously had one semester of Korean, I performed a self-assessment in the beginning of the semester in order to find my level of Korean. I used the Level of Competence chart provided in the SDLAP wiki for the assessment. 

I came to the following conclusion:

1. Interpretive:

    a) Listening: Beginning 2. I can understand phrases and vocabulary related to family, personal information, shopping             and simple conversation, without going into too much details.

    b) Reading: Beginning 1. I can read simple words.

2. Interpersonal:

    a) Speaking: Beginning 2. I can hold simple conversation and exchange information on familiar topics and activities. I             can also ask for necessary information in a restaurant, store and on the streets. 

3. Presentational:

    a) Speaking: Beginning 2. I can describe myself as well as my family using complete sentences.

    b) Writing: Beginning 1. I can write short simple sentences about myself and my family.

My goals for this semester are:

1. Learn how to give directions and ask for directions as well as a list of vocabulary related to directions, places, modes of transportation etc. 

2. Talk about the weather and learn the vocabulary related to the weather. 

3. Learn a list of adjectives and learn how to describe things. 

4. Learn some verbs and how to use them in the present, past and future tense. 

5. Learn some of the most commonly used vocabulary concerning food, clothes and body parts. 

6. Practice more reading that I can read any book or article even if I do not understand it. 

7. Learn to write most of the words that I will learn. 

 Up to now, I have had a fun Korean learning journey. I followed what I wrote in the learning plan that I learn better if I am immersed into Korean-speaking environment. Therefore, I have listened to Korean radio through Tuneln Radio apps on a daily basis. I tried to listen to Korean news, but I found out that instead of listening to monotonous news, listening to talk shows and music programs could make language-learning much more fun. Having listened to Korean on a regular basis, I start to pick some words and phrases up from what I have learned. As time goes along, the more words I could pick up, the more I wanted to learn Korean, and I am curious about how much I could pick up at the end of this semester.

Understanding Korean culture has helped me learn Korean more easily. Knowing that Korean minors need to bow to elders when they greet and leave, I can understand how important it is to remember to add an extra word in the end of each sentence when talking to elders. I have learned that Korean language was invented in a very recent time, late fifteenth century, comparing to other languages. The King Sejong of the Korea wanted to have their own written language and not dependent on Chinese whenever they have to write something. Thus, the King Sejong invented Korean in a consistent and scientific way, structured on the orientation of sun and moon, so that Koreans could learn the written language easily and swiftly. After knowing the origin of the language, it helps me learn the vocabularies easier. In addition, in Korean, the numbers can be pronounced and expressed in two ways, one is Korean own way and another is imported and modified from Chinese way. Koreans tend to mix the two ways when they express numbers. This piece of knowledge also made sense to me that I need to not only learn one or another way of expressing numbers, but both ways, so I would not be confused when I order things.

Communicative competence consists of four aspects: grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence. So far, I am working on the first aspect. Out of Halliday’s seven functions of languages, I have learned how to introduce self and other people and family members, how to greet people, how to order food, how to exchange personal information, and apologize and thank people. I need to learn about how to give commands, identify and describe people. After becoming competent in grammatical level, I will dive into the discourse aspect of communicative competence. Discourse competence involves analyzing the background context on the words or sentences other people said, and being able to come up with a proper response within the context. In order to know how to respond properly, I also need to become more familiar about Korean’s culture.

When I first arrived in the US, I knew and I expected there were a lot of culture differences between China and the U.S. Therefore I remained open-minded to observe what I had to experience. The biggest struggle for me was that I had to contribute my thoughts and opinions from the readings and say something meaningful in class discussion. I wasn’t comfortable firstly to express my thoughts in front of a class, secondly to have to raise hand and come up with some ideas fast enough so that my classmates would not have said the similar thing already. I was grateful to experience culture shock in which it made me become a more open-minded person. Korea, however, is a neighboring country to China, thus there are fewer culture shocks I could imagine to experience comparing to that of America. One thing I do shocked when I first saw a Korean minor did a half-bow to an elder to express an respected good-bye.

I appreciate cultural presentations given by each classmate in whom I learned a lot about what people wear and do differently in different cultures. One of the presentation intrigued me was about the different spending habits between Pakistanis and Americans. Pravass pointed out that most Pakistanis are willing to spend more of their monthly salary on cellphone service, which suggests that Pakistan is a collectivist country where Pakistanis like to be connected with everyone. I think another aspect might also contribute to the differences between a two-year contract cellular plan in the US and a pre-paid based cell phone service in Pakistan is how business environments differ in two countries. The American companies, or companies in the west, tend to think long-term and secure businesses ahead of time for a longer period, whereas the Pakistan companies, or companies in many Asian countries, tend to make short-term business plan and in result business demand could be unstable. 

 After starting learning Korean this semester, I have already known a lot of basic sentences and vocabularies, such as how to greet people, how to introduce myself to others, how to order food in restaurant and the vocabularies of families and basic vegetables, fruit, dishes and Korean food. My process over this half semester is quite amazing and wonderful. My first language is Mandarin, and I started learning English since primary school. With the different extents of learning English and Korean, I found how the brain handles the task of learning languages.

Starting a new language means learning new words, so it is vital to memory these vocabularies that learner partner gave us on class. After class, I also explored more words that I interested daily on Korean learning website, such as Mango Language, and using color-flashcards help me remember these vocabularies. Vocabularies are the raw material for forming the whole sentences, but I need to get involved in the environment of target language. Talking with Korean and knowing about Korean culture gives me motivation to study my target language, because when I talked with them, I will use simple words or sentences that I learned. So far, Sun Yoon and us watched Korean movie together and cooked the traditional Korean food on Friday night. These activities make me feel more interested in learning my target language. The accent is obvious when you start to learn a new language, and through talking with native speaker I can work on sounding more native. In order to pronounce correctly, Sun Yoon recorded the words and sentence that she taught us on class so that we can listen and repeat anytime. Knowing about the correct pronunciations at the beginning of starting a language is really important, which could build the foundation for the future learning. Even though sometimes it is difficult to identify the subtle difference between two similar words, only because I still do not get used to the skills of Korean pronunciation.  

Learning language requires an explicit awareness and understanding, during this process I found some vocabularies I studies sounds like English, such as juice—jusee, waffle---waple, and ice cream---ice klim. Due to the long-term American and Chinese presence in South Korean, many Koreans are used to seeing and hearing English on a daily basis. Korean has also borrowed some words directly from English and Chinese. Generally language and culture are closely related. Language is a mirror of culture, and Korean also reflects many unique aspects of Korean cultures. So far, through watching the drama, I find one of the most noticeable characteristics of Korean is that Koreans use the word “our” a lot more often than “my.” Some English phrase like “my home,” “my school,” and “my country” would be translated into “our home,” “our school,” and “our country” in Korean, even though you are talking about yourself without others. Because Korean culture is more collective than western cultures, Korean’s way of thinking that a group in which an individual is involved is more important than the individual itself. under this kind of culture, the tendency to regard a group’s profit is more valuable than personal’s profit, which help Korean society grow to economically. Another noticeable point of Korean is its polite forms. Different from Japanese and Chinese, Korean possesses several different expressions for the same word. People have to choose different expression whom they are talking with. For example, we could say “Bab(meal)” to our friends, but we have to say “Jin-ji(meal)” to my father or grandfather. The more academic knowledge I learned, the more Korean culture I will understand. 

My language learning experience thus far has been fun yet challenging. I have a basis in Indian languages because of my background in Tamil; however, I am quickly learning that Hindi is much different and requires lots of practice. It takes a lot of time when one’s environment does not immerse them in that language. It has been difficult to learn Hindi mainly because I am not around it all the time but also because to learn basic vocabulary words takes lots of practice and effort and repetition. Because I do not have a basic vocabulary set down, it has been hard to form sentences and go into more complex grammar issues such as different tenses. I have slowly realized the importance of learning vocabulary because learning the basics will eventually lead to you learning the language better. Only then will I be able to put together words together and can start to understand the sentence structure of Hindi, also very different than the sentence structure of English. I am currently learning different tenses of verbs and slowly starting to put together sentences that I would need if I am ever speaking to a Hindi speaker. I realized it is important to get Hindi speaking help from different sources, so one of the main goals for my Spring Break is to buy some Hindi textbooks from Barnes and Noble to keep learning consistently. This will allow me to come back to the University with an understanding of sentence structure and more vocabulary knowledge in Hindi. In the future, I am going to be using these books to fulfill my language goals and use my language partner to clarify the pronunciation of words and to speak with me to get a grasp on speaking more.

I have some HIndi speaking friends at the University of Richmond and back home in Chicago, so speaking to them will help me better understand the language. However, I already have a very good understanding of communicative competence because I am Indian and I have visited India many times. This allows me to understand body language and to show respect through signals and how I act. However, while speaking Hindi, I am interested in understanding how Hindi speakers show respect to each other with words like “aap” instead of “tum”. Seemingly, there is a hierarchy of authority in how Hindi speakers speak amongst themselves.  For example, between two people of similar age and gender who use the lowest form of respect when speaking to each other usually implies the same gender or close familiarity. However, with elders, there seems to be a more sense of authority then is given to elders in English. This relates to Indian culture, where respect is very important because families are really close and its a collectivist culture. I have understood that notion first-hand, as both my parents are from India, and my family seems to be more collectivist than that of my friends. However, proper application of respect and gender is the most important thing while learning communicative competence in Hindi.

                So far my self-directed learning experience has taught me a lot about how to effectively learn a language when one’s environment does not immerse them in the language. I have learned three other languages besides my primary language, but for all three of these I learned at least the introductory level in a classroom with a syllabus set by the professor. Trying to figure out what works best for me has been difficult not just because effective language learning is complicated and in many ways subject to the learner, but also because at times it can be difficult to differentiate between the ways I like learning and the most effective ways for me to learn. I find memorizing vocabulary and sentence structure rules tiring and monotonous, and for two of the three languages I have learned I was able to be immersed in the language as well. This immersion meant I was constantly hearing commonly used words and subconsciously taking in different sentence structures/becoming familiar with how whole sentences should sound – I was able to learn without having to intentionally memorize much besides verb conjugations for different tenses. Learning Urdu has been different because although I have many Urdu speaking friends at the University of Richmond they are not constantly speaking Urdu nor am I constantly around them. As a result I have seen how important it is to intentionally memorize vocabulary/grammar rules when one is not immersed in the language. Though I still believe it is easy to place excessive emphasis on this type of memorization, my approach to learning Urdu so far has not incorporated enough of it (I am most fluent in Spanish besides English and I never did much intentional memorization of vocabulary and sentence structure- but I was in primarily Spanish speaking environments for over a year!) I realized this last week as there were many things I felt I should know how to say when talking with my language partner, but I either messed up the ordering of words or did not know vocabulary that I should have.

                The most important aspect of cultural understanding which has helped my communicative competence is the proper application of respect and gender while speaking. Urdu, like many languages, has a “hierarchy” of respect/authority and gender in the language. In Urdu both verb conjugations and morphology of nouns and adjectives are subject to these factors. The three levels of respect in the second person have allowed me to better understand not only what is being said, but also understand implications to the relationship between the speaker and the person being spoken to. For example, between two people of similar age and gender who use the lowest form of respect when speaking to each other usually implies the same gender and either disrespect (or some sort of antagonism) or very close familiarity/friendship. In a similar situation where the middle level of respect is being used one can infer that the two are not very close/not even friends at all or of a different gender even if they are very close.

It is normal to experience culture shock, which is the personal disorientation a person feel unfamiliar and uncomfortable to get involved the surrounding. For me, living in the different culture is not easy because of many reasons. When I arrived US from China, I found there are a lot of things that I cannot accept or be accepted. For example, first talking and communication with people speaking English is tough and inconvenient. Once I joined a group of people, there were talking about something and laughing. After they stopped laughing, I start laughing. However, I am not supposed to laugh. This made me ashamed. Or when people here were talking about some traditional festival, such as St. Patrick Day, I had no idea why people wear in green because of lacking of investigating and knowing about American history. Even though Korea and China have the similar culture, there are still culture shocks. Taking course 105 is the efficient way to understand different culture from each backgrounds. 

I LOVED watching this video. Many of the things experienced in this video I was able to experience first hand. I had a hard time transitioning when I first came and experienced a lot of culture shock. I was happy to see that many of these experiences were shared with many other students-- especially here at U of R. One of the biggest things I struggled with was the concept of time and the concept of self identity. Never in my life had I been asked "what I am" or have been told that I can only identify with one nationality. I confused many of my American friends because initially they assumed I was just like them-- yet I was completely out of the loop for some concepts. Take for example one of the things that was said by a student in the video. When anyone passed by me and said "sup" I assumed that meant we were having a conversation-- instead they simply walked away. I quickly got used to that, but at first it was a struggle. The same goes with saying "Hi how are you?" I was constantly finding myself stopping and explaining how my day went to a person that had already walked away. Since most people already considered me to be american, during my freshman year they never stopped to explain certain concepts, expressions, or even places! I always had to ask questions and then had to explain that I was an international student.

For example, before I came here I didn't know what a Krispy Kreme was, so when it was brought up in conversation and I asked what it was, people assumed I was being silly and never bothered to explain. I've had countless of these interactions-- solely because I was never thought to be an international student. Where is your accent!? They always asked me. All I can say now is that I'm sorry I don't have one!! They'd ask me "where are you from?" I'd respond "From Costa Rica and The Bahamas." "Oh okay, but WHERE ARE YOU FROM?" I'd be confused, then they'd respond "Like, where do you live in the US now?" That's when I'd realize that people thought I've lived in the US before and I'd have to explain to them for the 17349th time, that I was an international student. I've had some funny experiences. 

The presentations given today were very interesting. One of the coolest ones for me was the Korean bath houses. It is clear to me that in many other cultures that are not a part of the western culture people tend to base many of their activities on group interactions. There are many things associated with being together and spending time and energy in groups. In western culture, since it is mostly individualistic, not that much is focused on group activities. Take for example Spas. Instead of making the core part of the activity inclusive (like a bath house experience does) it is very individualistic. We pamper OURSELVES, it is not about being pampered TOGETHER. I found that aspect to be the most striking. 

Learning about the structure of my target language will be rather difficult, given that my main focus is not to learn the script. This means that I will have to search online and use my online sources as initial structures and then ask my language partner for confirmation. As long as I am checking it by my language partner, I think that reference grammar is a crucial and useful tool to start with. One of the hardest parts is identifying gender in Urdu words. Since I am used to Spanish, French etc. where words have clear patterned endings to identify gender, it is difficult for me to pick up on words and create the appropriate grammar. I will have to work on memorizing and learning these changes in order to properly use grammar. 

I found the Pakistani culture to be interesting because of its many formalities. In general, Pakistanis enjoy close interpersonal relationships. This includes talking about family but it is mostly limited to the male members. Some small details I found to be interesting occur when it comes to interacting with the opposite sex. Pakistanis maintain close body contact but not with the opposite sex. Both men and women generally hug each other when meeting for the first time as long as they are the same sex. Another thing is making eye contact. Maintaining a constant eye contact with a person of the opposite sex is considered rude and unethical. These are things I have not personally encountered while interacting with Pakistanis of the opposite sex-- probably because of western culture. 

The presentations this last week were very interesting. I really liked the presentation on the salwar kameez, because I thought it was well done and it also pertained to my Hindi culture, because Hindi speakers also wear the salwar kameez. I also liked the tagalog presentation. It was interesting to see the Spanish influences of the language and how so many of the words relate to each other. One of the coolest things about languages, in my opinion is understanding the origins of words and where they came from. 

I need to understand the basic structure of Korean sentences in order to be able to communicate. Korean sentence structure is different from that of English. Unlike English sentence structure that follows an order of subject, verb and object, Korean follows an order of subject, object, and verb that is in the end of a sentence. I will learn from a website called How to Study Korean which contains a lesson on sentence word order (http://www.howtostudykorean.com/unit1/unit-1-lessons-1-8/unit-1-lesson-1/), and from Hill’s Learning website (http://www.hillslearning.com/2011/09/01/learning-korean-nyc/).

I think a reference grammar book can be useful because I can quickly refer to and check with the grammar book if needed. However, at the first stage of my Korean learning, I think focusing on expanding my understanding of basic Korean would be more helpful.

These cultural presentations from all my classmates give me a lot of information about diverse cultural background. Before this cultural presentation, I literally knew nothing about Urdo, which is one of the two official languages of Pakistan, along with English. I find the interesting point of Urdu is the writing system, which is written right-to-left in an extension of Persian alphabet. It is really different with other language written system, such as Chinese and English. There were also two students introduced Hindi, which is the official language of India and Fiji. 

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This artifact is me saying the Hindi alphabet and a word that starts with that letter, similar to "A for Apple, B for Ball.."

1. Focus on oral conversations, along with basic alphabet and reading
2. Learning Style: Listen to Korean radio, recording, practice long with recording
3. Materials: Textbook Talk to Me in Korea Level 1, traveling book from the OIE, Korean articles, recommendations to films/drama, YouTube lesson, Mango language, memrise.com 

4. Ultimate goal: At the end of this semester, I will be able to communicate with a Korean for at least five minutes. I would like to master the basic daily conversations, such as be able to ask a location of a cinema or shopping mall, ask and talk about identities, discuss food, tell and ask telephone numbers, discuss color and clothing, as well as being able to write simple sentences and emails. 

5. Tools to prove how I learn: Artifacts, recording, video
6. Topic:
   1. Learn classroom/life survival language
      1. Learn study supplies words and basic questions such as could you repeat once more, could you spell out the words, could you give an example, can you speak a little slower, etc.
   2. Greetings/Self-Introduction
      1. Learn how to greet people in different period of a day, how to introduce myself when I meet a new person, and what to say when I leave. Learn how to introduce where I am from and what I major in, and ask others where they come from and major in.
   3. Family
      1. Learn how to introduce family members, and ask others their family members. I will learn vocabularies of sister, brother, parents, grandparents, cousin, aunt, and uncle.
   4. Food, how to order things
      1. Learn vocabularies of basic vegetables, fruit, dishes, and snacks. I will learn how to order food in the restaurant, what I like to eat, ask what others like to eat, and ask about whether they like their meals.
   5. Hobbies, interests
      1. Learn how to tell others my hobbies, and ask what others hobbies are. I will learn at least ten words on different hobbies.
   6. Directions
      1. Lean at least 10 country names, several city names. Learn how to ask directions, understand how to say left and right and go straight.
   7. Numbers, colors, dates, birthday
      1. Learn how count from 1 to 100, tell others my phone numbers and ask their numbers. I will learn how to tell the date and day of the week, as well as months, seasons.  
      2. Learn how to say when is my birthday, and ask others when is their birthday.
   8. Cloth/Shopping
      1. I will learn the vocabularies of at least ten colors and different clothing. I will learn how to tell others what color I like, and ask others what color they like, ask what color is their clothing, tell what clothing I am wearing, and what clothing are they wearing.
      2. Learn how to ask how much a cloth costs.
   9. Time
      1. Learn how to tell others the time and ask what time is it now. Learn how to say I have class on the exact time, and ask what time others have class on.
   10. Jobs
       1. Learn how to ask what they do, where they work at, how do they like their jobs. I will learn at least ten job names. Learn what I would like to do, and where I would like to work at.
   11. Weather
       1. Learn how to tell others today’s weather, tomorrow’s forecast. Learn words of different weather types, such as windy, sunny, raining, cloudy, and windy. I will also learn how to express my personal feeling on different weather type.

The structure of Hindi is not like that of English. Where English is a subject -verb-object language, Hindi is different. For example, in English, I would say "I am going to D-Hall". In Hindi, I would say, " Main D-hall ja rahe hoon". Essentially, the object, D-hall, comes before the verb in Hindi. I will acquire the knowledge I need to learn the language, because it is already second nature to me, as I already speak another Indian language, Tamil. I do not think I need much effort to acquire the grammar rules of Hindi. 

Hindi Syllabus

• Week One: I will be able to pronounce vowels and consonants

  • Learn vowels, consonants, matras

  • Be able to:

    • Identify

    • Pronounce

  • Broaden my vocabulary

• Week Two: I will be able to identify and pronounce days of the week, numbers and some food items.

  • Days of the week

    • Identify

    • Pronounce

  • Numbers

    • Identify

    • Pronounce

  • Food

    • Identify

    • Pronounce

• Week Three: I will be able to identify and pronounce the numbers 11 and 12 and form basic grammar rules.

  • Revision

    • Alphabets, Days of the Week, Numbers

  • Learn the number 11 and 12

    • Identify, Pronounce, Write

  • Broaden my vocabulary

  • Be able to start forming sentences and grammar rules

• Week Four: I will be able to identify and pronounce fruits, vegetables and home vocabulary.

  • Broaden my Vocabulary

  • What are breakfast, lunch and dinner called? Is there an evening snack?

  • Learn about  

    • Fruits

    • Vegetables

  • Clothing vocabulary

  • Domestic vocabulary

• Week Five: I will be able to have a conversation about sports.

  • Broaden my Vocabulary

  • Start sports vocabulary

  • Compliments in Hindi

• Week Six: I will be able to have a conversation about holidays.

  • What are the main holidays

    • Broaden my Vocabulary

    • Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

• Week Seven: Revise: I will be able to have a conversation about the things I have learned previously.

  • Incorporate everything I have learned about culture together

    • Days of the Week, Time, Food, Clothing, Sports

• Week Eight: I will be able to give directions.

  • • How do I give directions?

      • Street Names

      • East, West, North, South

  • Act out different situations as if you were lost

• Week Nine: I will be able to have a basic knowledge of business professionalism in India.

  • Particularly focus on Business Professions

    • Be able to describe them in Hindi

  • How to talk about business related activities (money, selling, etc..)

• Week Ten: I will be able to have a conversation about family.

  • Family Vocabulary

• Week Eleven: Grammar: I will be able to have a conversation about Indian culture.

  • Learn the basic grammatical structure to form sentences

  • “Culture Talk”

    • Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words using the grammatical structure learned.

• Week Twelve: Writing (11/26 – 12/2): I will review the skills and grammar I have been learning.

  • Narrate a story incorporating:

    • Days of the week

    • Time

    • Food

    • Clothing

    • Holidays

    • Professions

    • Address

  • “Culture Talk”

    • Ask questions about Indian culture and have a cultural conversation utilizing basic Hindi words

• Week Thirteen: Final Revision (12/3 – 12/9)

  • Alphabets, Days of the Week, Time, Food, Clothing, Holidays, Direction, Professions

  • Assess speaking skills