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As a speaker of Tamil, English and basic Spanish, the thing I enjoy most about learning a language is being able to playfully banter with another speaker. I feel like once you have reached that point in language learning, you are fluent. That is where I want to be when speaking Hindi. Expressions are the hardest thing to master in a language, in my opinion. I disliked learning long lists of vocabulary words in Spanish. While this is necessary to learning a language, I felt it was tedious. However, I am a reading/writing type of learner, so vocabulary words are one type of way that I learn well. By writing things down and memorizing them, I learn much easier. I want to expand my learning skills with my speaking partner by being able to hold good conversations and understanding expressions and language concepts through dictation and talking. 

Learning new languages has always been an interest of mine. I have taken French, Latin, and Spanish lessons/classes, and even attempted to learn Russian but didn't feel the same spark as I did with the other three. Having been born and raised for half my life in Manila, I grew up learning English and Tagalog simultaneously.  However, since it has been about 13 years since I lived in Manila, I've found myself slowly losing grip of my Tagalog, and often mix words and the language structure up while talking to my family. As someone who's attempted to learn a variety of languages over the years, I've learned that I like writing new words down and doing this repetitively. On the Learning Styles survey, I learned that I am a Reading/Writing learner, which comes to no surprise as I do very much enjoy reading and writing.  With this in mind, the survey suggested I make lists, and make good use of the dictionary, another thing I will enjoy doing because I tend to be a nerd and do that already with unfamiliar words I come across with. On the Multiple Intelligences Survey, I scored the highest with an 80% for Verbal/Linguistic, a 75% for Musical, and a 70% for Intrapersonal. From these surveys, I can improve my Tagalog, which is the language I have chosen for this class. Although I already know how to speak it, reading and writing it is a pretty difficult task for me, and I would like be able to understand its grammatical structure better. To be able to do this, I must look up the words' definition, and write them down as often as I can. Perhaps I can make grocery/to-do lists in this language as well. To make use of my musical and intrapersonal qualities, I can listen to Tagalog songs, as sappy as they are. Furthermore, re-learning Tagalog would force me to spend more time talking to my parents in straight Tagalog, rather than in Taglish (Tagalog-English) which is what I've done for the past 21 years of my life. I can also watch Filipino dramas centered on love stories between two people placed in very unfortunate circumstances, which tend to be unintentionally hilarious. The four things I want to be able to accomplish are: 1.) ease in reading and writing Tagalog, 2.) expanding more of my vocabulary that does not revolve around light, conversational words, 3.) learning the complex grammatical structure, and 4.) reading Filipino/Tagalog literature. 

I became interested in learning Urdu once I suddenly became surrounded by friends, of which are fluent speakers here at U of R. Hearing them converse was what first interested me in this language. I constantly found myself asking them, "What are you saying" or "how do you say [ ]?" knowing that there was no official Urdu class offered at this University. Once I found that this course existed, I immediately became interested in the possibility of finally being able to achieve a goal: Finally being able to understand what they are talking about! I want to be able to have simple conversations with a native speaker and have them properly understand me. I enjoy the challenge of having to learn another language that is completely different than that of my native languages. This means that I will have to make different sounds, as well as try to hear the differences in sounds of 'my new language'. I have discovered that I am a K/V learner, meaning that I have to be verbal and act in order to learn. I think that this is perfect for language because it is essentially the basis of all language. I will have to speak and engage in the act of creating dialogue in order to achieve my goal. For this reason, I am concentrating in only learning how to have a novice conversation and not how to read/write in Urdu. I think that I can expand my learning activities by continuing to surround myself by native speakers and this time, engaging them in conversation as well. 

At the very first of this semester, I took learning style tests to determine my personal learning styles, and I found that I need to memorize vocabularies by writing them down again and again. During this semester, I wrote down new words on cards. From repeating and saying words, I was able to memorize and say them correctly. This is what I usually do to acquire English vocabularies. From multiple Intelligence test, I realized that I more math and logical person, but I need to do more interpersonal communication. So, I tried to aim my learning goal on Korean oral and daily communication. My language partner and I focuses on role playing activities and conducted several dialogues to learn vocabularies and phrases. This worked pretty well.  

Another learning strategy that I used was to watch Korean dramas to memorize new words and phrases and also practice my Korean listening skill. Though my learning goal did not aim to learn phrases to express emotions,  I found it was more interesting to learn that. The daily conversation in  Korean drama would be fine to practice the listening part. My language parter and I began one Korean drama-It's okay, that's love, but after several weeks, we ignored the drama section. Since this drama was talking about one neropathist who did not believe love's  existence met one crazy love writer. The neropathology and fancy writing words appeared largely in their conversation, we decided to give up watching this drama and shift the goal to daily conversation during our meetings. For my own interest, I watched a TV show called Running man once a week with English subtitles to both enhance my vocabularies in English and Korean. For example, one TV show called Running man always had one phrases "siro" to express that they didn't like the game punishment. After listened several times, I was able to identify this words and got the meaning and application when to use it. This was an effective way of building Korean vocabularies.

I found it was difficult for me to understand Korean k-pop music which fused with raps. It was too fast to identify words and sentences. The words I learned from songs sometimes overlapped with my learning goal. For example, my goal is to learn shopping and food vocabularies. One song called often Cafe incorporated all Korean terms for coffee. After listening this song, you would get some sense how to order expresso, cappuccino or macho in Korean. 

Comparing my original learning plan with what I actually learned, I failed to meet the goal of writing in Korean, such as written vowel and consonants. It took longer time than I thought to study counting numbers. I spent two weeks to learn two different number systems in Korean. Maybe because in Chinese syllable doesn't have to distinguish the sound between il, yi, and I can not tell any difference when my partner say one and two in Korean. 

The most useful tool is Mango. Mango divides courses into 10 chapters. I learned 5 chapters: 1. greeting, gratitude and goodbyes 2.names and introduction 3. drinks and dining 4.number and currency 5.what does it mean from Mango Language. I like how Mango structures lessons. First, it shows the conversational goals. Next, the grammar goals. Follow that, it teaches you a word or a sentence. For example, which country are you from? Mango explains this question in Korean-onul nara satameeyeyo? After that, it gives out the possible answers with the same phrases  I am (

eeyeo). You can practice this I am phrases by simply adding country names before eeyeo. Mango repeatedly show what you learned before without answers and you can check pronunciation after you did self-assessment. This is a most interesting app that I've ever seen. 

From my cultural project of Korean language history, I learned the history of Korean language and the the reason why Korean was created for. At the same time, I learned the rule of reading Korean from left to right and top to bottom. Although linguists were not sure the family root of Korean, I learned that Korean language had some influence from Japanese and Chinese. 

From my cultural project of K-pop culture, I learned the origin of K-pop and the reasons why K-pop are popular around the world. The icon phenomenon started in 1992 since the debut of SeoTaiji and Boys. This is the first generation of K-pop bands. K-pop music has strong economic influence on Korean. Especially for the three top entertainment companies, they signed 7-15 years contracts with idols and tried to make profits from selling CDs, albums and other related products. From classmates' presentations on Korean fashion style and Korean music, I also learned the traditional Korean clothing Hanbok and current Korean issue of plastic surgery. This cultural project helped me to relate how Korean people view beauty and how much they emphasize dressing up. 

I would like to continue study Korean by watching more Korean TV shows and listening more Korean songs. I think setting a specific and achievable goal for language learning is essential. In the future, I would like to follow my current learning plan to learn written system in Korean. Reading Korean words is my next step going forward. 

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

At very beginning of this semester, I tried to learn Korean alphabet and the Korean writing system. I originally thought it would be easy for a Chinese to learn graphical language. However, I found the Korean alphabet was more complex than I thought. As for vowels, the written one looks similar but sounds different. I also found romanizaiton helped me a lot in understanding Korean words. If I cannot recognize the complicated written Korean word, I can follow the latin alphabet and read the words. 

My Can-Do Statements:

I can greet others.

I can introduce myself, my major and my hobbies.

I can ask others about themselves.

I can introduce my family members. 

I can use "survival" Korean in class.

I can ask for direction or words meaning. 

I can count numbers one to ten.

Week 9:

This week I am still doing review on counting numbers and introduce my family members.

-(gajokyi myut myong yiyeyo?) how many family members do you have?

-Saemyong yipnida. Apa, omma, jo. Hajiman (but), oppa unni yitgo sipoyo. (I want older

brother and sister.)

 Since number in Korean is complicated than I thought, so I took 2 weeks to finish my learning goals.

Week 10: 

Order food in Korean

안녕하세요 반갑습니다.
안녕하세요 어서오세요. 몇명이세요?
dumyeong yiyo.
여기에 앉으세요
 Gamsahapnida
 물 드릴까요?
boricha jusaeyo.
Kimchi bokumbab gurigo ddeokbokyijusaeyo
알겠습니다
Jeo giyo. yimo,kimchi chom tall jusaeyo
Ulmayeyo? (how much is it?)
 $$$ yipnida (it is)

This week, I learned a lot of Korean food names and were able to conduct food ordering conversation with my language partner. 

Week 11-12:

In order to prepare for the cultural presentation, language partner and I discussed the song "Love Song" made by Bigbang. Moreover, we discussed the K-pop in Korean and the most famous bands or singers in Korean. 

Love Song Vocabs:

한 여자가 (one woman) han yeojaga

남자는 (the guy is) namjanun

노래 (song) norae

부르지만 (singing) burujiman

사랑 노래 (love song) salang norae

싫어 (I don’t like) siro

지금 (now) jigum

우린 아름다웠는데 (we were good together) oorin alum dawotnundae

마지막 (last) majimak

멈춰 (stop) momchuo

외롭지 않게 (not feeling lonely) welopji ankae

웃으며 부르리 (singing while smiling) ousemyo buruli

Why bilinguals are smarter?

I found the study conducted by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin Rhee to ask bilingual and monolingual preschoolers to short circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins — one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle. The result that the bilinguals were quicker at performing the second task is surprising. The bilinguals are better trained for the executive function in brain, which directs the attention processes for planning, solving problems and performing mentally demanding tasks.  

Another article" Are bilinguals really smarter?" illustrated a good example for bilinguals to be more beneficial. When the monolingual look at the dog, they say dog. However, a bilingual have two alternative present themselves. The tiny decision making process for choose the correct dog word makes them smarter.  

How many new words have you learned in your target language?  How did you learn them?  Do you have realistic goals for your acquisition of vocabulary? 

So far, I have learned vocabularies for introducing family members, asking questions, directions, counting numbers. My main goal is to conduct a conversation and can understand the most meaning. From watching Korean drama, listening to Korean songs, I began familiar to the words expressing self emotions or love, because these words appeared really often in k-pop lyrics and drama scripts. Another way for me to learn Korean words is Mango. Mango is really useful tool to learn Korean words. I strongly recommends everyone to use Mango for self-learning. It puts vocabularies into different contexts and you learn and memorize words better in this case. 

Though I did not have the specific goals for my acquisition of Korean vocabulary, I tried to mimic the sound of high frequency vocabularies and asked my language partner for their meanings. In this way, I am able to motivate myself to learn Korean. 

In the reading Tribe Revives Language on Verge of Extinction, it has a really interesting idea. In order to save American Indian language with only five speakers left, a tribe member recorded audio and putting the online. It was sad to see how soon tribe language died due to globalization and technology development. I believe it is beneficial to keep the originality of tribal languages, which can be studied for anthropology, zoology and archaeology purposes.

In the reading, it mentioned another causes for language extinction. Government boarding schools, where generations of Indian children were sent, aimed to stamp out native ways and tongues. Now, the language is taught through the sixth grade at the public charter school in Siletz. If young children cannot speak this kind of language, definitely as time passes, the language would die. 

Korean language history

Although Korean is classified as an isolate language, many theories have been proposed to explain the origin of Korean. Many linguists believe that Korean belongs  to the Altaic languages of central Asia, a family that includes Turkish, Mongolian, and the Tungusic languages of Siberia. because of similarities in most grammatical elements, including articles, fusional morphology and relative pronouns. However, some argues that Korean might be related to Uralic and Japanese due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features. Korean and Japanese can be related due to sprachbund, that is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity and language contact.    

The creation of the Hunminjeongeum, the original name of Hangul, was begun in 1443, and promulgated in 1446 by Sejong the Great, the 4th king of the Joseon Dynasty.

Originally, the language consisted of 17 consonants and 11 vowels, and the established consonants and 1 vowel have fallen into disuse bringing the total number of characters to 24. Syllables are formed by the selective combination of vowels and consonants to create words. Now Hangeul consists of ten vowels and fourteen consonants.

In Korean, a combination of vowels and consonants makes up a syllable, and it is written in the left to right and up to down directional style.

The Romanization of Korean is a system for representing the Korean language using the Latin script. Romanization is based on standard Korean pronunciation. Symbols other than Roman letters are avoided to the greatest extent possible.

a ----u simple vowels in Hanguk long vowels are not reflected in Romanization.

consonant g,k- The sounds  and  are transcribed respectively as g, d, and b when they appear a vowel; they are transcribed as k, t, and p when followed by another consonant or form the final sound of a word. 

Knowing the creation of Hangul can help me to know the purpose of syllables and how I can correctly say a word by applying systematic rules: from left to right and from top to bottom. The romanization of korean is more like pinin in Chinese that as a tool for beginner to speak the word even if don't know how to write it. 

Culture shock is precipitated by the frustration that results from losing all familiar clues. When an individual enters a totally different culture, she or he loses the comfort zone. As for almost all of international student study abroad, inadequate knowledge before opening the way to a new culture causes an individual inadaptable. Language difficulties, building friendship, distinctive dining habits, and nostalgia are all obstacles that international students have to overcome.

Coming from other parts of the world, international students are hard to change the way of learning, and experience the overwhelmed academic life. As for me, I got used to the passive lecturing style, which professors stood in front and just talk. All students needed to do is to take notes, but never expected to ask questions.  This passive way of learning is totally opposite to the liberal art college learning style. At University of Richmond, students have to actively participate in the class discussion and have to show their personal ideas. Even some classes would have participation grade to encourage students to share ideas in classes. At my first year of college life, I was so worried about speaking poor English during the class. Moreover, writing a college paper is the most demanding task for international students who have never learnt writing a paper in my entire high school. Like me, I suffered a lot during my first year seminars. Since I did not write any papers in high school, it was a great challenge to write an English paper, which requires the proper MLA or Chicago citation style. To address those academic problems, when they are facing a new academic environment, I would advise them to talk with their professors and to get help from the Writing center. Professors can understand what students who English as their second language are going through. Getting help from your professors and writing consultants, international students will do better in class as well as writing papers.

Nuannuan-Cultural Presentation

My cultural presentation focuses on the Korean K-pop culture and its evolution. I talked about the term Hallyu and introduced the most popular bands and signers in Korean. Follow that, I introduced major theme of K-pop music and its economic influences.

Hallyu is the word for Korean wave. It refers to the flow and spread of Korean. Korean wave as the growing popularity of all things Korean from popular music, Korean dramas, Korean language, Korean technology, Korean film and Korean cuisine.

Most popular bands and singers

1. Bigbang
2. Psy
3. 2ne1
4. Winner
5. TVXQ
6. Rain

The idol phenomenon came about after the 1992 debut of Seo Taiji and Boys who fused American pop music with Korean lyrics. After Seo Taiji and boys came a renaissance period in which a first generation of idol groups, such as boy bands H. O. T became incredibly popular and amassed large, passionate and extremely competitive fandoms. Today, idols have gone international, performing concerts worldwide.

Economic Impact

Entertainment companies have taken over the basement with a pop-up store selling everything from bags, clothing, folders and postcards to collectors’ edition CDs.

For SM Entertainment company, it earned $260 million profits in 2013. Meanwhile, YG made 110 million dollars which was a 49% increase from 2011. 

K-pop industry generates a large proportion of income for the Korean nation. 

I added these photos as an artifact because they are a good summary of what I have learned this semester. After writing my Can-Do Statements, I created a page for each one and outlined the major vocabulary and concepts I learned for each task. The only task I still haven't done yet is family-related dialogue, but I may also continue to create these review sheets for other things I learned such as music vocabulary and adjectives. Creating these has been a good way to remember and organize some of the things I learned a while ago and need to refresh in my memory.

This is in reference to weeks 3+4. I may have already talked about them, but I cannot find my posting, so i have re-posted.

For this week, I focused on greetings and introductions. I want to learn five sentences in order to use in a conversation. I want to learn how to introduce myself, follow-up greeting, who I am, that I am a student, and then a salutation. 

In order to learn these things, I will Google, them and practice with my Korean roommate. Lastly, I will evaluate my success by listening to feedback from my language partner and friends. My final chance for evaluation will be at the oral exam at the end of the year.

Over the semester I have struggled with being consistent on how much time I put into studying french. Once I started using the Duolingo app, which I have on my phone, I found it much easier to get a little bit better everyday. I also found it difficult to use a number of different resources because my knowledge of french was so limiting. I tried listening to french music, but I think that method will help far more in the future when I know more french. My plan for learning french going forward is to continue with Duolingo—after that, I really don’t know how proficient I will be so it’s hard for me to predict my next step. I might decide that I want to learn more french, and find another learning resource to do so. Or, I might want to use Duolingo to start learning another language—dutch or italian—and gain a basis of knowledge for that language/culture. Regardless of those decisions, I know I want to continue to learn a new language because I love having the ability to speak in multiple languages. 

My favorite part of this semester was the discussions in class because of the new perspectives that I heard of on culture, language, and where they intersect. There are so many vastly different cultures in the world that I will never know of until I meet someone that is a part of them, and this class has made me appreciate even those that I am unaware of.

I enjoyed discussing the future of language, and the idea that if everyone spoke just one, universal language that many barriers would be broken down worldwide. I find the idea rather exciting that everyone could potentially speak just one language. Imagine the changes and the connection that the internet brought for people across continents, and how close we can feel to people we know in Europe or Africa right now. Implementing a universal language would create the same change in how close we are to our fellow humans, only on a more personable level. I would enjoy learning more about any person or organization whose goal is to implement or even propose a universal language. Looking at it from an outside view, if I was an alien, I would think that humans are bumbling idiots for not agreeing to communicate under the same terms with one another. From the insights I have gained throughout this course, I understand the power that language has in effecting how we see the world. While many people would be scared of just having one language, and losing all the cultures and languages that we have now, I think that the new language would promote a worldwide culture and only bring compassion and innovation. After all, it is far easier to hate or fear someone you can’t understand than one who you can ask a question. 

I have enjoyed learning french thus far. I think that learning french culture is very intertwined with learning the language, as it would be more difficult to learn french without knowing who speaks it—just as it would be harder to learn any language without knowing which people speak it. Perhaps the most difficult part for me in learning french is trying to learn the pronunciation of the words. It’s a very soothing language phonetically, which differs the most from all of it’s romance language counterparts in sound. This is why TV5Monde, or TV cinc will be such a valuable resource for me as I continue on with learning french. I need to improve knowledge of syntactical elements of speech and reading. French is fairly similar to English in that it uses the same subject, verb, object format for the most part. In order to communicate in a language that I have limited knowledge of, which I have only been able to do with spanish, I need to master the art of circumlocution. Circumlocution is a skill that we never really need to use if we only communicate in one language, but becomes absolutely crucial when we don’t have a full vocabulary at our disposal. I will continue to get better at circumlocution with continual expansion of vocabulary and understanding how someone fluent in french would communicate an idea they did not have the word to express. One interesting way of getting better at circumlocution would be to communicate with someone else who has a limited knowledge of french. This would require both of us to use our finite vocabularies to talk about deeper topics than just by using the words we know.

Learning to read and write in french has honestly not been my focus for this semester. Since I really didn’t know many words besides ‘oui’ and ‘bonjour’ coming into the semester, my learning plan focused on acquiring a knowledge of the french grammar and a basis of vocabulary necessary for future attempts at reading and writing. Writing is definitely more difficult because of the nature of creating the language rather than interpreting it when you read. With both reading and writing, I have found it difficult to understand the use of the different accents because I have never encountered them in any language before french. One example of a french accent is the cédille, which is only used on the letter c. It’s used to indicate a soft c sound (an s sound) in words like ‘garçon’. In theory the accents make sense, but since they are such a new concept to me and I rarely ever think about using them in writing, I will probably forget to use them many times before I know just which words they belong on. Another issue I have found is in understanding the way that pronouns attach to the verbs they refer to. When reading I come across a word like ‘m’aider’ (help me) and have to recognize both the verb and that the ‘m’ refers to the pronoun for me. They are similar to contractions, so it’s not like I have never seen words like these before, but I have had trouble understanding them. One thing that is much harder about learning a language independently rather than in a classroom is that I have to only use online resources while trying to figure out information on when to combine words, when not to, and any irregularities with the rules.

It makes sense to me that learning a foreign language has great cognitive benefits because it allows you to think in a whole new way. I have a friend who grew up speaking spanish, but now primarily speaks english since he lives in the US. He’s told me about how the different dreams he has are in different languages depending on what the mood of the dream was. He didn’t fully understand it, but described his dreams in spanish as being more intimate and personal, while his dreams in english were more stressful and exciting. I found this really interesting as we learned about the effects of learning a second language. My friend subconsciously (or maybe even consciously) associated each language with different types of experiences. 

As Professor Bialystok explained in the article, bilinguals aren’t necessarily smarter than those who know one language. I would think that they have a unique experience in learning, comparable to learning how to program a computer, or calculus, learning a new language gives you another unique way to interpret the world. I think of it in the same way I view the experience you gain from reading a book. After you finish a book, you become a different person because of the experience, but you aren’t necessarily smarter than you were before. 

I found it weird that the article brought up the question of why bilinguals never slipped up and used the wrong language at times. If someone is bilingual then they can effectively communicate in both languages, so why would they get confused as to which one they were currently using? Rarely, if ever, do people use two different languages within the same sentence or even conversation, so it makes perfect sense that bilinguals would be able to use only their desired language.