This is my final biweekly blog post of the semester and I am happy to say I have made a lot of progress based on my lesson plan and what I hoped to accomplish. I have decided to stick with just my diary entries that I do twice per week and rewrite with corrections afterwards. I have done this in writing via iPad and sending it back and forth through and app that I can save the progress and have my tutor Rachel correct and this has improved my spelling and grammar. We also go over during lessons the common errors she has noticed in my entries and other collection of difficult diphthongs and common spelling mistakes that are made in Korean and that has proven to be useful. Sometimes I feel frustrated when I realize how many spelling mistakes and grammar errors there are in a single entry, which aren’t small, but rather couple of paragraphs so they are sizable and many corrections needed to be made, but as I progressed and throughout the semester, the number of corrections have gone down in number. There are still a lot of errors as I try to incorporate newer and difficult words and grammar, but I also try to include older words that I have messed up before so that I can practice spelling and using those words and the different grammar forms. This helped in my daily life such as writing and texting my family and friends in Korean. I have become more confident in writing and even if I make a mistake I like to think of it as a learning opportunity. I had a moment in November and until today in keeping up with my diary entries due to health issues and being ill, but overall, I think I did my best in keeping up with the diary entries and my penmanship has greatly improved as well as a result of writing by hand and I recommend anyone who is learning a language that has written form to practice writing it in hand and it helps to commit the mistakes and corrections to memory a lot better and also helps penmanship in that language. I learned that penmanship in different languages are also at a different level. I am proficient in penmanship in English as I am used to the stroke movements in English, but in Korean I have poor handwriting because the strokes and movements are unfamiliar to my hand, but I have been improving since the start of this semester! So this is a side effect of my lessons and practice that I didn’t expect, but am extremely happy with. My family had commented my progress and improvement in texting and writing and I am happy to say my lessons and practice have paid off. I think later when I continue to learn and continue my progress in learning Korean, I will choose to practice daily, in smaller increments in an efficient way instead of cumbersome multiple long sessions of practicing and learning. I learned that smaller and frequent practices and in depth is better than trying to bite off more than I can chew. Also, making a conscious effort to challenge myself in that time period I am practicing like I did with repeating words I have gotten wrong before or grammar and also trying newer words and grammar forms are a good way to always learn new things and get better all the time. And so the journey does not stop there!
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Hello again!
I have been doing well in my lessons and have kept up doing the diary entries twice a week and sometimes I forget to do an entry or two but so far I have been doing well in doing my entire and corrections, most importantly, since as I stated in a previous blog post that the corrections is what truly helps me to remember my mistakes and to prevent me from making the same mistakes. I have learned that the activity sheet booklet proved to be inefficient since most of which contained content I was very well versed in and had simple fill in the blank grammar and vocabulary and to be honest, the diary entries worked better by itself since I wasn’t hard pressed to complete my tasks and rush anything and thus get subpar quality in writing or not enough. I decided to focus just on my diary entries and corrections and I noticed I make a lot of vowel errors and diphthongs in Korean and I decided to use words that contain that more often so that I am more exposed to making errors and thus make corrections to them and then learn from my mistakes. I confuse the different “e” sounds in Korean and it is confusing for me sometimes and it is something that one has to memorize when they learn Korean, but thankfully I am slowly getting the hang of things, but like I said, diphthongs are difficult for me to “sound out” thus I try to use new ones every entry and think of more words like them to write out and try my hand in spelling it correctly. Thus far everything has been working well and I am happy with the progress that I made!
I’ve been continuing the diary entries (twice a week) and then having it corrected and rewriting the corrections to commit them to memory still. It has proven to be a useful way to learn for me and especially the rewriting part. I noticed that not rewriting the corrections don’t help and it doesn’t commit the errors and corrections to memory if I don’t do that. As I have predicted, I dropped doing the vocabulary and I picked up doing activities to help my penmanship in Korean such as writing by hand and retracing the alphabet and my penmanship has gotten better and more legible. I have started doing activity sheets on top of that as well and I want to see how well I manage to keep this up. I might have to reduce the load of how much I do, because it is a lot. But I will continue to do my diary entries so I predict that the activity sheets might have to come to a halt or at least reduce the number of pages I do. It has been gratifying to see my progress and my recognition in corrections that were made before and prevent me from making the same mistake again. I hope to be able to continue doing so and so far I am happy with the progress I have made.
I decided to come with a plan for learning written Korean better and I decided with my language partner Rachel and who is also my tutor to write diary entries twice a week and then have it corrected and then rewrite it corrected and then write new diary entries as well the following week. It has been working well and I have learned spelling and grammar a lot better now than before and common errors and being fixed. I have also been doing vocabulary tests and memorization, but I think next time I post I might have dropped that lesson because my Korean vocabulary is pretty sporadic and random and I know certain difficult words and don’t know some simply vocabulary, so it is inefficient to try memorize and paw through all the vocabulary that I might not know. I’ve been excited in writing Korean and I write it by hand since I have to truly know the spelling without spellcheck. I feel like the spellcheck makes it easier to not remember the spelling of the Korean words so I try to write by hand on my iPad and then send it to Rachel and have her correct my entries and then I rewrite the entire thing. Hopefully, this strategy continues to be successful!
Hi there,
Attached below is the link for the SDLAP 110 podcast with my language partner, Somyung Kim.
Julie and I have transitioned to the topic of Indonesian prefixes/suffixes because she realized it is something I have been struggling with recently. We started the lesson by watching a video that explains a few of the main prefix/suffixes in Bahasa Indonesia. The only one I was very familiar with was the di- prefix which indicates passive form. As for the other prefix and suffixes, I have heard of them and used them, but was very unsure of their actual meanings and when to use them.
The practice assignments that Julie gave me were sentence practice with the prefixes ber- and me- as well as some exercises from a workbook. The sentence practice was quite straightforward, as it was meant for me to show my understanding of the two different forms. Though this, I learned a very important point about the prefixes ber- and me- that I had never learned nor realized while using them. When using the prefix ber-, it only applies to intransitive verbs and me- only applies to transitive verbs, meaning that me- must precede the object. I had never made that distinction before so it was extremely helpful in determining which form to use when composing sentences. It made me realize that one of my weaknesses as a heritage learner is using my own “instinct” and not learning the proper grammatical forms. I still struggle with the suffix -kan, which is often paired with the me- prefix. So for our next meeting, I want to ask Julie what the difference in meaning is when using -kan, because in some sentences it seems as though the meaning does not change.
The workbook exercise was in the form of an article that had the root form of a verb and had me fill in the correct prefix or suffix in order for the sentence to make sense. At first glance, it seemed easy because it was essentially fill in the blank, though I did have trouble because I did not know some of the root words that were used. As a result, I had to use an Indonesian dictionary to (1)look up the meaning of the root word and (2)look up the different forms with the prefix/suffix. This is because some prefix/suffixes aren’t simply attached to a root word due to the linguistic composition. For example, memasak is masak (root word) with the me- prefix attached and memakai is pakai (root word) with the me- prefix. With masak, the prefix is simply attached, but pakai is changed to memakai instead of "mepakai" due to the linguistic rules.
Other than this, I have slowly been reading the novel Bukan Pasar Malam that Julie gave me at the beginning of the semester. The book itself is very short, though I have trouble reading it because the author uses a lot of difficult vocabulary and I have to constantly look up the meaning in order to understand the sentence. As I get farther, however, I have become better at using context clues to infer the meaning which speeds up the process.
My cultural artifact for this month is a documentary titled The Act of Killing which centers on the Indonesian genocide in the 1960s. I actually watched this documentary for my global studies senior seminar class, though I found it coincidental that Julie and I have discussed this topic (from a different perspective) in one of our meetings.
The documentary is fully in Bahasa Indonesia with English subtitles. I could understand what they were saying for the most part, even without subtitles, though it was part of the documentary and could not be turned off. The director employed an approach that I have never seen in another documentary, which is essentially tricking the subjects. This documentary focuses on a man who actually participated in the mass killings in the ‘60s and he details his actions as well as expresses his view of the events. The director tricked him by saying that the documentary was actually for the purpose of creating a Hollywood-style cinematic recreation of the mass killings. To give context, the genocide was carried out by the Indonesian Army against those their accused of being part of the Communist Party, though it later extended to entire ethnic groups such as Chinese-Indonesians, since they associated the ethnic Chinese with the Communist party. The fact that the subject was okay with filming a (fake) recreation shows how much he believed in the cause. The perpetrators of this mass killing genuinely believed their actions were justified and decades later were still proud of what they had done. By the end of the documentary, the main subject eventually showed remorse for what he had done, only after filming the recreation. In the recreation, he played the role of one of the victims and through that he finally realized how atrocious his actions were.
While watching this documentary, I realized that I had talked about this topic with my language partner in one of our meetings. We read an article on G30S, the Thirtieth of September Movement, which was an attempted coup against the Indonesian Army. We did not get through the whole article, though I do remember reading about how the media outlets in Indonesia were taken over before several generals were kidnapped and assassinated. I did not know at the time, but this attempted coup was the main reason why the mass killings took place. Communists were blamed for the coup, which resulted in the purging committed by the Army.
An interesting aspect of this genocide is how well the Indonesian government is able to cover it up. As a result, this documentary had very negative reception in Indonesia and I imagine there is heavy censorship related to the topic. My language partner, Julie, also stressed how many Indonesians are unaware that this genocide actually took place, or they view it as something other than a mass killing. She encouraged me to ask my parents and other family members about this topic and see if they know about it, which is something I plan to do when I see them again.
Recently, Julie and I have been spending our meeting time reading and translating news articles. Since one of my main goals is to formalize my Indonesian vocabulary, much of our practice consists of studying through articles that use formal language. Something I noticed is how I think I understand the main point of a sentence because I understand the subject, etc. though my lack of understanding of one or two words completely changes the meaning of the sentence. As a result, I have been keeping a list of commonly used words in formal news articles. I like how Julie includes a variety of topics to read about which have included music, the Thomas Cup, Indonesian-Australian politics, and more.
In addition to articles, Julie also had me write an essay on an Indonesian artist, which was one of the bigger writing assignments. She chose the topic of Indonesian artists due to the fact that she had plans to travel to Amsterdam to visit her brother who is in charge of an Indonesian exhibit at an art museum. Coincidentally, I had actually gone to the VMFA the week before for another class, so the topic worked out very well. I chose to write about Raden Saleh because some of his paintings allude to historical events which I thought would be interesting to research and incorporate in my essay.
While writing the essay, I found the process to be more difficult than I thought. Julie had given me a few links as reference in order to conduct research on Raden Saleh. All of the websites were in Bahasa Indonesia, so even though I could read and understand them, I still had to write my own composition and it was hard to paraphrase from the sources because they were all historical facts. To avoid plagiarizing, I had to summarize the facts in my own words and a big part of that was looking up synonyms. It was very helpful, however, because I learned a lot of new vocabulary in the process. Finding appropriate synonyms was tricky because sometimes some words are only used in certain contexts, so I had to look up example sentences. Another difficult part was making the essay flow nicely with the use of transition words. I felt like I kept repeating certain transition words such as setelah (after) and karena (because). I also felt that I used the word dan (and) a lot and wanted to know if there was another word I could use to connect two nouns or clauses. Julie sent my essay back with corrections and there were fewer mistakes than I thought. One mistake was my use of informal language in the essay. I used the informal word bilang (say), which is only used in spoken Bahasa, instead of berpendapat. Another mistake was my incorrect use of prefixes. When discussing this, Julie remembered me saying that I wanted to work on them at the beginning of the semester, so our next big topic will be lessons and practice with prefixes and suffixes.
I used to listen to a Brazilian podcast on Spotify. It talks about K-Pop and cultural issues related to it. This week, I was listening again to one of the most important episodes, in my opinion. It talks about Yellow Fever and how Koreans are sexualized because of the Hallyu. K-Pop idols have to be perfect for their audience. Perfect face, body, skills, and behavior. Some of them have to get plastic surgeries or extreme diets to fit in this pattern. Because they are 'perfect,' their fans might create the illusion that they are the perfect ideal men/woman to fall in love with. Inside the K-Pop, they have something called "Fan Service," things the idols do or say to please their fans. Things such as skinship with other idols and never assuming if they have a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with someone are common types of fan service. Also, another kind of fan service is telling people that their fans are all they need or even that they are their boyfriend/girlfriend, and it really affects the way the fandom understands their relationship with the idol.
A reasonable part of the Korean dramas also focuses on male characters that fit into a prince's way of behaving. All the series' romantic atmosphere creates the ideal of a "right-man" for the viewers. These people can sometimes interpret the characters' personalities and behavior as common Korean man's ones. This Oppa ideal is the idea that any Korean man will be the same as the ones from the dramas. Some K-Drama fans, then, seek these kinds of connections in real life and, sometimes, look for famous Koreans or even ordinary Koreans in their countries to start a relationship. Again, Koreans are not seen as individuals, but as an object that represents the ideal of perfection.
One of the most well-known cases of Yellow Fever is Oli London, a British man who decided to do surgery and identify as Korean. He had already been in South Korea and, because of that, he pretends he knows how to speak Korean although his pronunciation is pretty bad, and he knows just random basic sentences. He sometimes makes videos trying to teach other people how to speak Korean even correcting native speakers' pronunciation. He is obsessed with Park Jimin, from the K-Pop boy group BTS, and he made a bunch of surgeries to try to look like him. Now, he really believes they look alike. He now identifies as a trans-national person, a term that he invented to try to justify his attempts to "become Korean."
I decided to bring this discussion here because it is essential to understand that being a fan is not a justification to generalize and idealize Korean people. Having respect for other cultures happens when you understand and appreciate their diversity, being also aware that you are a foreigner. As a foreigner, you can love the culture, speak Korean and even live there, but you will never be a Korean person. By drawing this line, I believe it is possible for fans to step back and do not fell into Yellow Fever's stereotypes. This is a deep topic that needs pages to de discussed, but I hope this brief reflection would help!
I have started the Italki classes this month. I have two classes per week focused on TOPIK writing. I have realized that although I know a lot of vocabulary, I need to learn a lot more, mainly those commonly used in the exam. I also have difficulty with passive verbs, so I am practicing more of them. I did not know how much I improved in Korean until I had to speak for 15 minutes in a row to record the podcast. We always talk a lot in Korean during our weekly meetings, but it is so natural that I did not realize my progress. I am still shy to speak Korean, but I am way better than when I started.
My Korean partner also focused on exercising my writing. Because of that, I feel that I am pretty capable of writing simple texts and having daily talks with Koreans. However, when it comes to TOPIK level 4 writing, things get complicated. In one of my exercises, I had to practice the 수강 신청 어휘 (Vocabulary for enrollment in classes). 수강 (sugang) means "signing up," and 신청 (shincheong) means "application, requirement." This is a very important issue for students since it is a vocabulary commonly used in universities. For my next Italki class, I have to memorize the vocabulary related to it, such as 수강 정정을 하다 (make a course change) and 학점을 따다 (get a grade).
During these next two weeks of classes and finals, I will focus on finishing studying the two books related to TOPIK that I borrowed from Global Studio. I will also focus on doing my homework for Italki classes. After coming back to Brazil, I will try to keep close contact with the Korean friends I have met here not just because they are my friends and I will miss them, but also as a way to practice my Korean. In Brazil, I will also study Korean through 'How To Study Korean' website and by reviewing the Italki classes I had here. I hope to take the test in the middle of 2022. As a way to enjoy learning Korean, I will during vacations keep translating the Encounter drama until I get to watch this series without subtitles. I do not know if I will be able to translate all the episodes from the end of December to the beginning of March, but that is my goal.
When my classes restart in March, I will be in my last year at the university, so I will be busy with a lot of big projects. For this reason, I will focus entirely on the TOPIK vocabulary and on knowing how to answer each TOPIK question on time. I still have a long way to go when it comes to learning Korean and unfortunately, I will not be here next semester to get this SDLC class, but I will do my best to study alone and achieve my goal that is to score well on the exam next year.
The Korean culture heavily emphasize on education, and this can be seen through their rigorous education system and extracurriculars. Prior to researching in depth on the Korean education system, I would stumble upon information every once a while on “Korea produces top and high achieving students” or “Korea education system is too stressful”. Not looking too much into Korean education, I thought it would be like the Chinese education system because the rigor, selectivity, and competition is seemingly similar across both systems. The mentally taxing exam in China is called the “高考” (gaokao) and is equivalent to the SAT in the United States, but unlike the SAT, the 高考 is taken once during the final year of high school. The same goes for Korean university entrance exam called the “수능” (suneung). During this exam day in China, noise level is brought down to the minimum including delaying public transportation and having police officers patrol the streets to ensure quietness and no disturbances that can affect the test takers. Similar procedures are used in Korea as well to ensure students get the best chance to obtain a high enough score to get into top universities.
In Korea, the top universities are abbreviated as SKY that is Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University. These universities are equivalent to ivy leagues in the States, and graduates from SKY are almost guaranteed a future / well-paying job. However, the path to get into the university is not a simple one. Middle school and high school students in addition to school, most of them attend private tutoring commonly known as “cram schools” or “학원” (hagwon) until late at night. These cram schools are for-profit and tutor many subjects in the school system such as math, science, English, etc. A typical schedule for middle and high school students is wake up early in the morning to go to school, attend a 학원 (hagwon), complete school homework, and eat meals somewhere in between. Sleep is often compromised in middle and high school because the amount of academic work they must do to attend top universities so that students can have a bright future.
I watched a few Youtube videos on various Korean student schedules, and the schedule seems quite intense for high school students and middle school students. I watched a video from Buzzfeed, and it contrasted the school schedule of a high school Korean student and a United States student. The contrast is quite big and was interesting to see what the respective education system focuses on. For an example, the Korean student mentions that she works on questions/problems every day while the American student follows an average student schedule from the American perspective. The American student did also attend a specialty high school that focuses on the arts, so the coursework was different than that of the Korean student. Nevertheless, as a viewer, I could feel both students have their own stresses, but the Korean student made me feel as though she was under an enormous amount of stress, which is most likely attributed by how the Korea education functions.
In my opinion, I think the United States education system should adopt some of the same aspects in the Korean education such as 학원 (hagwon) so that students are given the best resources they can to achieve a better future. However, there are opportunities for people that don’t go to college and go directly into a vocational school, and can still have a well-paying job in the States whereas in Korea, that may not be the case.
SDLAP 105 was a comprehensive and interesting introductory class on language acquisition. Because I am concurrently enrolled in the SDLAP 110, I was able to apply SDLAP 105 material that was learned to SDLAP 110. One of my favorite aspects about the half-unit course was the discussions. Dr. Marsh-Soloway effectively lead our small group of students to discuss about language, and this is a topic that many of the students could offer additional insight to. I believe most of the class are bilingual speakers, so we all have something to offer about learning a language whether that be English or their native language. Through this class, I support my opinion that the best way to learn a language is through immersion and acquire social competence. My goal to learn a new language is to have effective conversions with the other party, but if a language learners’ goal is to gain professional/business level in that language, then perhaps grammatical competence may be more suitable.
SDLAP 105 helped me feel comfortable speaking out aloud and sharing my thoughts because our class has seven students. The small group allow students to participate frequently and be inquisitive about language learning. One of my favorite topics that we briefly touched on was on bilingualism. I wish we could investigate bilingualism in terms of how the brain functions when different languages were spoken/heard. Cantonese is a dialect in Chinese, but the pronunciations of characters are so different that I don’t believe a Mandarin speaker could easily deduce what the Cantonese speaker is saying. This is also vice versa for Cantonese speakers. I speak fluent Cantonese while I can speak intermediate conversational Mandarin. However, my reading and listening skills in Mandarin is at a much higher level than my speaking. I wonder how Cantonese, Mandarin, and English is stored in my brain and which areas are activated when using these three languages.
The one activity that we did in SDLAP 105 that I found was the most useful was recording our learning plan presentation on Panopto. This recording revealed how I am not that confident with public speaking as I hope to be because I produced too much unnecessary hand movements and eye movement. Nevertheless, this activity gave insight into how I can improve myself to speak comfortably in front of another and in front of a crowd. I need to start becoming more comfortable with being uncomfortable because speaking a Korean is the most effective way in learning Korean.
I hope with the materials and information that I learned in SDLAP 105 I can apply that to future SDLAP classes. Through SDLAP 105/110, I found iTalki tutoring service to be quite useful in learning Korean or any other language because I can hear feedback real-time from an expert. I am quite pleased and satisfied with the outcome of both courses and hope to continue my Korean language learning journey during the school year and during summer break.
This past semester was a tough semester I believe that many students and faculty members can agree. Juggling with classes for my major and with learning Korean from the very basics was not as difficult as I thought. Yes, there were times when my goal of working on Korean once a day was not accomplished but compared to when I first started to learn Korean, I accomplished several language goals. Most of these goals were accomplished with my language partner, Somyung, and my iTalki teacher, Yazi. They helped me identify what I was having trouble with and taught me Korean from introductions to honorifics to the Korean number system. I met with my iTalki teacher once a week usually on a Sunday, and we would learn Korean through the Yonsei University textbook. The textbook contained numerous graphics to help me understand the meaning of the words.
Upon this reflection of the semester, I recognized the difficulties I encountered with learning Korean such as pronunciations and grammar. I am not comfortable, yet, with Korean sentence structure because unlike Chinese and English, Korean follows S-O-V structure while English and Chinese follows S-V-O structure. This difference is enough to confuse me and get me mixed up when forming sentences. Nevertheless, I believe grammar in any language is one of the important if not the most important in learning and speaking a foreign language fluently. Even though I grew up in the States ever since I was three years old, English grammar continues to be somewhat difficult for me. Therefore, grammar is one of my most difficult aspects in language to master.
This past month, I learned Korean vocabulary about different spaces such as restaurant, classroom, bathroom, office, etc. Most of these spaces have the common character “실” which I believe means “space”/ “setting”. In addition to these spaces, I learned location words such as behind, in front of, inside, etc. The pronunciation of these words doesn’t have any similarities to Chinese, so it is hard for me to retain the information. I also learned classroom vocabulary and student supplies vocabulary such as pencil, eraser, notebook, etc. The supplies vocabulary was easier to learn because of their resemblance to the Chinese pronunciations.
With my language partner, we discussed several cultural topics such as the educational system in Korea and compared with the States’ education system. This inspired me to do my cultural presentation on Korean’s education system, and during my research, I stumbled upon several intriguing information such as this huge fascination and emphasis on “cram schools”. Cram schools are after school private tutoring academies that tutor a variety of different subjects in school. We also watched and analyzed the award-winning film Parasite. Parasite highlights the socioeconomic inequalities between the ultra-rich and ultra-poor families, and the film contains many themes that resonates with a large audience.
In the past month, I have difficult time distinguishing the soft and hard sounds of certain consonants. For an example, the consonant “ㅅ” is softer than the “ㅆ” form. I feel as though I can distinguish the sounds when comparing them together but when the consonant is in a character, I don’t know whether I am saying the “ㅅ” sound (softer) or the “ㅆ” sound (harder).
My language learning thus far has been wonderful and I am grateful for the opportunity to further build on my Portuguese knowledge before I head out to Brazil for my study abroad experience. The task I worked on for this cycle of the class was my final podcast/interview for the course. It was great to look back at all the work and topics that my language partner and I covered since the beginning of the course. I also found it quite useful to see everything that we covered because it served as a refresher for the Podcast/Interview that I had with my language partner. We were actually able to record the entirety of the podcast using only Portuguese, which I think shows how much more comfortable I am in holding conversations now compared to when I first started the course. More specifically, I was able to talk about my experience in self-learning Portuguese as well as discuss several academic and cultural topics like the history of carnival in Brazil.
Throughout the podcast my language partner really wanted me to reflect on my language journey since the beginning, explaining how it is that I first started learning and got interested in Portuguese up until the recording of the interview that we made. In addition, I was asked to build on the concepts and perceptions that I had about Brazil based on all of the topics we covered during our sessions. For example, I had to talk about three words that I would use to describe Brazil, my favorite Brazilian holiday tradition and the biggest cultural difference compared to the United States. My language partner decided to create a script and set of questions that I would be asked during the podcast, but going into the recording session I had no clue what I was going to be asked. My language partner and I decided on this strategy so I could answer the questions in the most natural way possible, although this method definitely led to some less detailed responses than I would like. I still think it was effective because I had to dig deep into my Portuguese vocabulary on the spot in order to talk about culture and history in Brazil. Although being able to have some background knowledge beforehand would have allowed me to give more comprehensive and exhaustive answers.
This was definitely a successful experience and honestly a learning strategy that I hope I get to use more in the future. Being able to sit down and have a one-on-one conversation with someone about things that have been learned, and read about is much different than having a regular day to day conversation with that same person. For the creation of my final cultural presentation, I am going to use the audio from this interview as an additional resource when choosing the cultural topic that I want to explore. The podcast will also serve as a reminder that I am indeed capable of having an in-depth conversation with a Brazilian and in the future, I hope I can integrate more one on one audios or recordings in general when I am reflecting on my learning experiences.
For our last meeting before Thanksgiving, Somyung and I decided to have an easy day by watching Korean Englishmen videos. I actually was well aware of the Korean Englishmen channel before. I knew all of the hosts including “조쉬”, “올리", “가비,” and e.t.c. For our meeting, Somyung asked me to choose any video I wanted to watch. I chose the video with “하하.” The reason is that I knew “하하" also known as “HaHa,” from an extremely popular variety show called Runningman. HaHa was one of the casts in Runningman and he was one of my favorite comedians in Korea which is why I chose this video to watch. The setting of this video was in HaHa’s own barbeque restaurant and it was cool to see a famous comedian own his own restaurants as well. Somyung and I searched up to see if other famous celebrities owned their own shops and we discovered that this was a very common thing for Korean celebrities. For instance, a famous rapper named “로꼬" owned a famous burger joint and kpop stars like G-Dragon and Kim Jong Kook also owned their own cafes. I do not think this is a common thing here in the States. We see very few celebrities opening up their own restaurants/cafes, so it was cool to see that such a famous celebrity like HaHa had his own restaurant that he carefully managed and oversaw. In the video, HaHa was also talking about this idea of “정" pronounced “Jeong.” Somyung and I tried to find a translation for it but realized there was not a direct translation to this word. It is similar to “aegyo” in a way that it also does not have a direct translation in English. From the video, they describe “Jeong” in a way that means affection and caring. It is something different than love.
I used to watch a lot of variety shows while growing up because it helped me to learn a lot of Korean used for casual conversations as well as catch up on slang. Without variety shows, I do not think I would know a lot of the slang I know today. On Runningman, HaHa always came out as a childish character who always made jokes and was never serious. I always thought HaHa would be the same in real-life but by watching this video, I realized how different he actually is outside of the screen. He was very mature and grounded and the way he talked about certain topics was extremely poised and well mannered. Something I also learned is that Korea has an even more 2 faced tendency than the U.S. culture. Celebrities are set to the highest standards, so they cannot run into any scandals or problems or they will be permanently “canceled.” This is why I think it was even more interesting to see that HaHa was so completely different from his character on Runningman.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L58JexuiOxzmf5nHINWTz1OZhKrNO2B_MNlAeUTKWDA/edit?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TNKw4kJ5f_IuqRx6ODibLF82P3s9WWcE/view?usp=drivesdk
Taekwondo (태권도) is a Korean form of traditional martial arts. It is a discipline that shows the ways of enhancing your spirit and life through the training of your body and mind. It is unarmed combat based on the earlier forms of taekyon, which is Korean self-defense. The tae in taekwondo means “leg” or “to step on,” and kwon means “fight,” and do means “discipline” or “way.” All these meanings are put together to demonstrate the important concept behind the word taekwondo.
Starting with the history of taekwondo, it has been developing for 5000 years, and it has been called many different names throughout history. In the ancient kingdom of Koguryo, it was known as the training of body and mind. In the Shilla period, it was the backbone of producing leaders of the country, as young men developed strength, speed, and survival skills through unarmed combat techniques. However, in the Joseon Dynasty, people followed Korean Confucianism, so martial arts were looked down upon by scholars. However, it was still taught in the military. It slowly started making its way back as time passed on, and people studied different martial arts and incorporated elements, and it became what is known today as taekwondo. In the 1950s, a group of Korean martial artists unified their forms under a single style of hand and feet fighting, and taekwondo was recognized as a form of self-defense. In the modern days, it is known to be a discipline that gives you the art of integrating your mind, body, and spirit while also allowing you to defend yourself.
When training in taekwondo, you first train in individual techniques of kicking, punching, and blocking. After learning the basics, you practice these individual techniques combined in traditional sets, known as Hyung. When you practice taekwondo, you have to make sure that your mind is at peace and your movements are synchronized with your movements. You then extend this harmony to your life and your society.
Taekwondo practitioners wear dobok (도복). With the dobok, you wear belts with it. The belts are separated into the junior and senior sections. The junior section ranks are indicated by 급, and they wear belts from white (the lowest) to red or brown (the highest). They typically range from 8-12 급 rankings. The senior section (black belts) of ranks is generally made up of nine ranks, and each rank is known as 단 (dan). The degree of the black belt is indicated with stripes, Roman numerals, or other methods. In order to advance from one rank to the next, the students complete promotion tests to demonstrate their proficiency in the different aspects of taekwondo. Some examples of what is tested in the proficiency tests are breaking boards, sparring, self-dense, physical fitness, and history.
There are five tenets of taekwondo, which are courtesy (예의), integrity(염치), perseverance (인내), self-control (극기), and indomitable spirit (백전줄굴). Along with these tenets, there is a taekwondo oath that Choi Hong Hi, an important figure in the history of taekwondo, created. The five components of the oath are (1) I shall observe the tenets of Taekwondo, (2) I shall respect the instructor and seniors, (3) I shall never misuse Taekwondo, (4) I shall be a champion of freedom and justice, and (5) I shall build a more peaceful world. With this philosophy, taekwondo helps you lead valuable lives while also giving you the ability to defend yourself for safety. I hope that taekwondo becomes even more well known than now throughout the world, and that people can get to know about the beauty behind the art of taekwondo.
To learn more about the history of taekwondo, click here https://www.rpi.edu/dept/union/taekwon/public_html/history.html
To learn more about taekwondo, https://www.encyclopedia.com/sports/sports-fitness-recreation-and-leisure-magazines/taekwondo
In my last monthly journal, I mentioned how I wanted to change the webtoon I was reading because I began to lose interest in the storyline. However, instead of changing it, I tried to stick with it for the last few weeks of my language journey because I have been reading the webtoon since the beginning of this semester. I was happy with this decision because I ended up enjoying the rest of the webtoon episodes I have read, and I had a lot of fun writing summaries. In one of the summaries I wrote during this month, I made no mistakes in my writing and grammar, which made me feel really accomplished and happy.
When going through my mistakes and corrections, I realized that there were two main mistakes I made. The first mistake is getting confused about using the consonant ㄹ or ㅇ. She taught me that when the noun has a final consonant, the ㅇ is used. When the noun does not have a final consonant, ㄹ is used. For example, in my webtoon summary, I wrote 소리 크게 불었다, which means he screamed loudly. However, the correct grammar for the sentence would be 소리 크게 불렀다. This is because in 불 it ends with a consonant, so ㄹ would be used instead of ㅇ.
The second mistake I was making was confusing when to use the 를/을 and 이/가. I learned that 를/을 is the particle that attaches to the end of a noun to indicate that it is the object of the sentence, while 이/가 is the particle that attaches to the end of a noun to identify it as the subject of the sentence. I would switch these two particles, and it could make the sentence a little difficult to understand.
These webtoons have been the main source of my improvement in my writing skills. Reading the news articles in Korean has also helped me improve my vocabulary and reading skills since the writing style of articles is more formal than the webtoons. Reading news articles also allowed me to stay in the loop about South Korea’s current events.
Rachel and I also ate Korean food together once. We ate Bonchon Chicken, and we spoke to each other in Korean while enjoying Korean food. Although I wish we had the opportunity to go out and enjoy the Korean cuisine more, I was still glad that we were able to enjoy the Korean food from Bonchon Chicken and converse with each other in Korean. It allowed me to focus on my speaking and listening skills after focusing so much on my writing and reading skills.
Although this experience was outside of my usual weekly Korean lesson with Rachel, I wanted to include it in my monthly journal because it has been a major help with my improvement in Korean. I have been able to put my Korean to use outside of my lessons. An exchange student from Korea came to the University of Richmond this year. Because I can speak in Korean, I was able to become friends with her, and since she is comfortable with Korean, I have been conversing with her in Korean. I learned a lot because we would always text each other in Korean, and she would correct me if I messed up a lot with my spelling or grammar. I also learned from the way she texted me, and I also learned the informal and formal ways of texting in Korean.
Overall, I am really happy with the way that my Korean language learning journey went this semester. I feel like my goal has been achieved as I feel more confident about my writing and reading skills. The webtoon summary writing and reading news articles really helped me reach the place that I am at right now. I am excited to continue my learning journey until the end of the semester.
My focus for this cultural post is carnival or “carnaval” in Brazil. More specifically I tried to learn as much as I could about the origin, history and evolution of the event in Brazil. Additionally, I researched what the current plans are for hosting carnival this year under the conditions of COVID and how the celebration is being altered or modified.
One of the first things I learned is that Brazil is not the only country to celebrate carnival in such an animated and large manner. Places like Venice, Italy and Nice, France also celebrate in such fashion. I also discovered that the Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, Louisiana is a form of carnival. More importantly I had no clue that the two (or any of the aforementioned celebrations) were in any way commemorating Lent and the commencement of Ash Wednesday since I am not familiar with any religious customs. This made reading about the tradition in Brazil really interesting because of my limited background knowledge.
In Brazil, Carnaval originated with an event called "entrudo", which was brought over by the Portuguese conquistadors. The event was a form of a game where people threw water, flour, eggs, and paint at each other during the days leading up to Ash Wednesday. I mentioned this aspect of the origin of carnival to my language partner and she hadn’t heard of it before and instead told me that afro-brazilian customs, culture and traditions contributed to the development of the event. A research article by Reginaldo Prandi, a Brazilian anthropologist who works at University of Sao Paulo, mentioned the event of “entrudo” by the Portuguese as the basic foundation of carnival but also highlights the importance of african culture to the evolution of the event. For one, during the entrudo enslaved Africans entertained themselves to the sound of drums and rhythms brought from Africa, which would eventually be mixed with Portuguese musical genres. This mixture would be the origin of the “marchinha de carnaval” and the samba, among many other musical rhythms that are a staple to Brazilian carnival. The creation of this type of music and dance then led to the establishment of “escolas de samba” or samba schools in which different congregations of cities practice and organize their dance routine, music playing and floats for the carnival. These dance communities in cities now are critical to the celebration, as they often require year-round preparation and heavily involve large parts of the community.
In terms of celebrations and plans for this year in Brazil, most major cities are currently planning to host the event again after a one year hiatus in 2020 due to COVID. Most cities have outlined that they plan to have little to no restrictions in terms of social distancing or masks.. In some of the interviews and comments for news programming, some Brazilians call for no carnival to be hosted as COVID has not been resolved and the event is considered one of the largest parties in the world. Others fully support the return of carnaval as they state it is a cultural staple and that regardless of the governmental decision people will celebrate at large.
As a whole it was great to learn about the origin of carnival and its evolution across time. Having a discussion about the perception of the event and its history with my language partner was also helpful, as she has a more personable and open perspective about Brazil and answered/clarified any questions I had throughout the process.
