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Every week goes by so fast but I feel that the past two weeks, my language partner and I have made a lot of progress. I have been consistently using Duolingo every day but not exactly for the same amount of time each day. The Duolingo app really helps me review and go over things every day so that I don’t forget the basics which is integral for my learning since I can’t meet with my language partner every day, it’s a good replacement. It communicates with me and tells me when I’m wrong or right and it also strengthens my listening skills at the same time. My language partner has been slowly easing me back in and we have started to learn new vocabulary. These past two weeks, we have started to learn household vocabulary which I think will be really helpful for everyday usage.

The household vocabulary is not too hard to learn. I learned words like 집 (jib) which means house, 아파트 (apateu) which means apartment, and 방 (bang) which means room. I think that I am strengthening in reading and listening to Korean. My weaknesses are still writing and speaking. I think that I am getting better at speaking but writing is still a major weakness. I think that the main reason it is a major weakness is that I don’t practice writing as much. For speaking other languages, I have noticed that the barrier for me is having that American accent that doesn’t disappear. It’s mostly because I don’t really know what I am doing wrong when I am speaking so it becomes a habit. Like when I am speaking Chinese, I didn’t notice my American accent at first but it gradually became apparent especially when I went to Taiwan and noticed that my Chinese sounded different from other peoples. I think a major goal for me is to strengthen my weaknesses so definitely focusing more on my speaking and writing skills. 

I think for the next two weeks, my plan will be to focus on practicing the new vocabulary that I have learned in all aspects of skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I will write the vocabulary down and practice writing as much as possible. I will practice reading the new vocabulary and utilize a quizlet for that and utilize the quizlet for listening as well. I will practice speaking with my language partner and repeat the words aloud many times to myself. I think that my language partner and I will also move onto more new vocabulary once I am ready. I think that was something that I didn’t do as much last semester. I didn’t practice the vocabulary in all aspects and moved on to new vocabulary when I wasn’t actually ready yet. I think that I am improving a lot more with Korean especially because I have more time. I will also continue to use Duolingo to practice daily and maybe be more consistent with spending the same amount of time each day. 

For this week, my language partner told me how to count in Korean from one to ten. There are three types of counting in Korean, which are used differently referring different objects and things. 

There are two sets of numbers in Korean: the native Korean system and the Sino-Korean system. The native numbers are used for numbers of items (1-99) and age, while the Sino-Korean system is based on Chinese numbers and are used for dates, money, addresses, phone numbers, and numbers above 100. Hindu-Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc) are used for most situations, but the Hanja numerals are sometimes used for prices. The chart below indicates the different ways to count from zero to ten in Korean. However, further learning told me that there is real confusion when dealing with the day, week, and month type dates. Often times people end up with a Korean/Sino-Korean mismatch. "This year" can be said both ways, but only if saying it with the correct match between the "This" and the "Year." My language partner told me that Sino-Korean is more widely used for describing days and dates. 

Based on the information mentioned above, we further learned some basic dialogues in Korean. For example, in Korean, the formal way to ask how old are you is "당신은 몇 살입니까 (dangsin-eun myeoch sal-ibnikka)? " The answer could be "저는 19 살입니다 (jeoneun 19 sal-ibnida)." Additionally, we learned how to give my phone number to others in Korean, "내 전화 번호는 (nae jeonhwa beonhoneun)...." 

I'm very curious about why there are two different counting systems in Korean with one based on Chinese counting system. In Korean counting grammar, there was an agreement: pure Korean counting nouns require pure Korean numbers, and Sino Korean counting numbers require Sino Korean numbers, which was made from the very old era. Another reason for this is that sometimes the meaning can differ by its numbers. These grammatical matters have different roots just as there are many plural forms in English. However, there are some customary pairs that don't follow the rule. Except for these pairs, any other use that doesn't follow the rules and the agreement will make no sense. Add on to the argument made previously, one has to use pure Korean numbers when it is 1–10, but over 10 and can use both pure and Sino Korean numbers. In other words, it’s not allowed to use Sino-Korean numbers from 1 to 10. 

My language partner is Jimin, who I met on Friday, February 14, for the first time. I was not in school for a week, and there had also been some scheduling conflicts since I was behind in all my other classes, so this is the first opportunity that we had to meet. During our first meeting, Jimin and I got to know each other since we had never met before, and I shared my background and past education in Korean. She explained to me what she had done during her first meeting with her other students, which was to create goals for the semester, so that she could get a sense of where I currently was and plan my language learning to meet said goals. 

Through my language learning partnership, my general aim is to become a fluent speaker. Within this overarching goal, I specifically want to be able to improve my communication skills in order to be able to hold relatively fluid conversations with native speakers. My grandmother and mother both communicate with me in Korean and although I am generally able to converse with them, I sometimes have to rely on English or informal language to get all my words across. I am mostly interested in developing my skills for everyday application, and am not planning on incorporating my future career interests yet. Although I would eventually like to learn Korean that I could use in my future career, I wanted to take this semester to ease back into my language learning, since it has been almost two years since I last studied Korean.

We decided to create 10 goals to focus on for this semester. They are the following: (1) general writing and speaking; (2) grammar; (3) sentence structure in writing and speaking; (4) vocabulary; (5) common expressions; (6) everyday phrases; (7) watch the movie Parasite, which recently won four Academy Awards; (8) learn about Korean news topics; (9) watch a variety of Korean shows; (10) slang. While I knew that I wanted to improve on my Korean in general, Jimin was really helpful because she took what I said about why I was participating in the Self-Directed Language Acquisition Program and made suggestions for tangible goals that are challenging yet still attainable.

At the school I attended before I transferred, Korean was my favorite class and I am very excited to get back into learning this language. I am also really excited to work with Jimin and I am glad that I finally got to meet with her, because I think that we were matched well as language learning partners. I know that it will make my family happy, especially my mother and grandmother, to improve my skills in Korean, and I cannot wait to go home after the semester ends and demonstrate what I learn. In high school, I had a lot of Korean friends and also just knew a lot of Koreans that lived in Hawaii since the community is pretty tight-knit, but I have not gotten the opportunity to meet many Koreans at UR. I am hoping that I will be able to do so, because I would enjoy getting to connect with students which whom I share a similar ethnic and cultural background. I also like to listen to Korean music and eat Korean food, so it would be great to make friends who share similar interests as I do, since my current friends do not.

I would describe the phonetic inventory to be fairly simple. There are 14 basic consonants and 10 basic vowels, so the Korean alphabet is technically shorter than the English alphabet. There are a few English letters that do not explicitly exist in Korean– c, f, q, v, w, x, y, and z. However, these sounds can be imitated, although it will sound a little different. For example, the hard use of [c] in Korean would be translated as ㅋ in Korean, which is actually [k]. However, Korean does have ㅊ, which produces a [ch] sound. Another example is [f], which is actually pronounced as [p] in the Korean language. The most difficult sound in the Korean language is ㄹ, which I would describe as a cross between [l] and [r].

Although I am now fluent in English, I grew up learning Korean first and I personally think that English is a much more difficult language. There are a lot of sounds that are difficult to make, whereas Korean is composed of mostly plosives. Since I speak Korean at home, I have noticed that I develop some sort of an accent whenever I say English words when speaking Korean. In contemporary Korea, there is a lot of English that is incorporated into their everyday language, and sounds that exist in English but not in Korean, like [f] as mentioned above, are pronounced in said Korean accent. I am not terrible at speaking but as I have said before, I am not the most confident speaker so I would like to improve speaking more clearly and articulating my words. I do not think that I will particularly struggle with this aspect of my learning since I speak Korean pretty regularly and the phonetics are simpler, but there is definitely room for improvement.

In the past two weeks, I've had two Korean classes. Every class I have a great harvest. Firstly, I learned 14 consonants, which are ”ㄱ”(Gi yeok), ”ㄴ”(Ni eun), ”ㄷ”(Di geud), ”ㄹ”(Ri eul) , ”ㅁ”(Mi eum), ”ㅂ”(Bi eub), ”ㄱ”(Si ot) , ”ㅇ”(Ie ung), ”ㅈ”(Ji eut), ”ㅊ”(Chi eut), ”ㅋ”(Ki euk), ”ㅌ”(Ti eut), ”ㅍ”(Pi eup), ”ㅎ”(Hi eut). For me, the pronunciation of Korean is a little special, because in Korean, the pronunciation of “r“ and “l” is the same, so the pronunciation of ”ㄹ” is between “r“ and ”l“, and closer to the pronunciation of ”l“. Therefore, when learning Korean at the beginning, we would read the Korean by looking at the Roman pronunciation, which would write ”r“ and ”l“ respectively. However, when reading, they were all close to the ”l“ pronunciation, which made me prone to make mistakes in learning. Besides ”r“ and ”l“, ”f“ and ”p“ are also very similar in Korean, and are represented by ”ㅍ”. Ms. Kim told us in class that the Korean pronunciation for pork is the same as for fork， and there are many foreign words in Korean, such as English words, but the pronunciation is somewhat different because of their different pronunciation habit.

After studying 14 common consonants, we learned 10 common vowels, which are ”ㅏ”(a), ”ㅓ”(eo), ”ㅗ”(o), ”ㅜ”(u), ”ㅡ”(eu), ”ㅣ”(i), ”ㅐ”(ae), ”ㅔ”(e), ”ㅘ”(wa), ”ㅝ”(weo). After learning the vowels, I could read simple Korean words by combining consonants and vowels. The composition of Korean is very simple. You can get the correct pronunciation by reading the vowels or consonants you see from left to right from top to bottom.Take “하” for example, ”ㅎ”(Hi eut) plus ”ㅏ”(a) then we get “하”, which pronounce as “Ha”. And if we add a ”ㄴ”(Ni eun) at the bottom, we can get “한”, which pronounce as “Han”. I can now read most of the words I see, though I don't know what they mean. During the class, Ms. Kim gave us the lyrics of “Arirang“, a traditional Korean song. When I got them, I could read most of the words. Ms. Kim showed us the BTS‘s version of Arirang performance video, we can correct our pronunciation by listening to songs. We also learned simple greetings like "hello" and "goodbye”. There are two ways to say "goodbye" in Korean, “안녕히 가세요” and “안녕히 계세요”. If I go out with my friends, I will say “안녕히 계세요” to others when I leave and I will say “안녕히 가세요” when someone leave.

I also watched two episodes of the TV series “Crash Landing on You” in these two weeks. In addition to South Korean language, I also heard a lot of North Korean language while watching. Although I could not understand it, I can tell there are many similar syllables. The TV series was just released and is still in serialization,therefore, many of the clothes the heroine wears are fashionable elements and colors. Ms. Kim said green, yellow and pink would be popular colors this year, as would flower patterns. In the next class, we will start to learn simple vocabulary and grammar, and we will start to learn the less common consonants and vowels.

Currently, my language instructor and I are studying material from the book “Learn Sign Language in a Hurry”  by Irene Duke. Reba and I have covered the alphabet, question words, describing family relationships, expressing emotions, colors, and dressing /clothing. We will soon learn the associated signs for sports, numbers, and telling time.

         So far, I have absolutely loved my classroom time with Reba. After each session, I feel as though I have learned a significant amount of information towards both the language and culture of ALS. I cannot wait to practice signing the words I learn each day, thus I find myself thinking about the signs I do know and putting them into practice when I say the English correspondent. I find this technique to be helpful as I am constantly practicing signs and I am also learning how to quickly recall said signs. I further develop my ASL skills through the use of Quizlet. I have made a study set of all of the words and signs I do know and I will use the flashcards generated to quiz myself on speed and accuracy of signing the associated word. Although I find this technique helpful for identifying signs I do not know, it can feel meaningless and tedious to only sign individual words and not complete sentences. I also find it more beneficial to sign sentences as it practices the usage of connecting one sign to another and really enhances one’s ability to communicate.

         Although my ultimate goal of ASL is to be able to use the language in a medical setting, I must learn the fundamentals of the language first, thus much of the vocabulary I have been learning is not medical-related, but rather, general conversation. I do hope to start learning medical terminology soon, but I understand that learning a language is a process and that it is crucial I have a strong understanding of the language’s base components.

         One aspect of the course I am struggling with is the usage of an interpreter. During my Wednesday meeting, an interpreter will accompany Reba to our classroom sessions. The purpose of Kay, the interpreter, is to increase communication between Reba and I so I can ask her complex and thoughtful questions about the deaf community and ASL as a language. I understand the importance of such things, and so far, I have had really personal and eye-opening conversations. However, Reba and I only meet twice a week and one of those meeting times is not allocated to language practice. Learning about a culture is just as important as learning about a language, but I worry I will grow tired of asking cultural questions in the upcoming weeks. Also, I do not have many times I can practice signing and receive feedback, thus it is crucial for me to be able to practice as much as possible with Reba. I hope to use Italki.com more in the future to further increase my language proficiency; however, I have trouble finding teachers who’s scheduled work with my own. I think my best solution to this issue would be to book a weekly meeting with a teacher during the weekend.

Jenna and I met twice in the last two weeks. The first meeting was on Feb 6 on a Thursday. During this meeting we went over bachims in Korean writing. Bachims are a singular or cluster of consonants that are placed at the bottom of words that changes the pronunciations of words in Korean. Jenna thought we should go over bachims based on what we learned the week before. The week before Jenna had me write a letter in Korean, where most of my mistakes were bachims. Jenna taught me different forms of bachims, the first being one simple consonant on the bottom, which changes the next syllable black. We also went over twin consonant bachims that makes the next syllable block stronger. Lastly, we talked about the ㅎ bachim which basically makes the sound of a syllable stronger and more accented. Afterwards, Jenna said some Korean words that had bachims in it, and I practiced writing these words out. I had trouble at first but began to get the hang of it after many practice words and phrases. Next Jenna and I reviewed Korean counting and currency/numbers. We talked about the different days and months in Korean and reviewed the difference between Korean counting and Sino-Korean counting. The second week I met with Jenna was on Feb 15. We talked more about bachims in this lesson. Jenna taught me about double bachim combinations, where two different consonants could be added together that changes the next syllable block. She taught me a couple examples of exceptions for bachims and further gave me practice words to try and spell. I had trouble with a lot of these since these bachims are much more complex than the previous ones we learned the week before. After practicing some more complex bachims, Jenna instructed me to write a letter to my parents about anything. She taught me the basic formatting of letters, where in Korean they say, “parents dear” instead of “dear parents.” In my letter, I talked about how my friend and I went out to eat dinner the other day and how I had a great time. Jenna corrected a lot of the words that I misspelled and helped me understand why I misspelled the words in the letter. On the positive side, Jenna did not correct any spacing errors in the sentences. In the first week this semester, I was making many mistakes with spacing in Korean writing, but I can already see the improvement in my writing. During this lesson, Jenna also helped me pronounce bachims better and gave me tips on memorizing the different accents and pronunciations of bachims. In conclusion, I thought that the last two weeks were very helpful in my Korean writing, because I have the most errors spelling Korean words with the correct bachims. If I can master and understand the spelling of bachims, I feel like I would be able to write a lot better than I have in the past. I hope to keep practicing on the aesthetics as well as the spelling of my Korean writing for the next week.

 Sign language is a unique language because the mode in which communication occurs is not through the typical means of sound. Sign language uses hand signs, facial expressions, and overall body movement to develop and establish communication. Now, many of the actions and hand signs, so far in my experience, are easy to sign – dexterity wise. I can move my wrists and fingers in all the appropriate formats and degrees without much difficulty. However, what I have found interesting within ASL is the speed and fluency at which signers spell. The ASL alphabet mirrors the letter of English and the designated spelling for words. Although, many proper nouns, abstract concepts, or specific terminology does not have a universal sign. Let us take the biological word “prokaryotic” for example. A prokaryotic cell is one that, in essence, lacks a nucleus. However, this is a word that is not often used in daily conversation if you are not in the sciences, thus the word does not have its own, widely designated sign. The sign for a prokaryotic cell is unique from person to person and unique from situation to situation. Because there is no sign for such a word, signers will often clarify their meaning through the use of fingerspelling. Using just their hands, singers would spell “P” “R” “O”… until the word was spelled out.

            When I read words on a page, I do not look at each individual letter to identify what the word is and it's meaning. Words are connected and read holistically. However, when I sign out spelled words with my language partner, this is not the case. I am reading each hand-letter sign as an individual letter, making it difficult to construct and find the signed spelled word’s meaning. With time and practice, I imagine I will learn to develop the skill of reading hand signs in a holistic manner, but until that occurs, I am baffled with those with the ability to can read these spelled words.

The Korean sounds overlap mostly with English and Chinese which are the two languages that I am fluent in. Plus I had been listening to Korean language for almost six years. These experience that I have helps me be more natural at pronouncing Korean phonology. Comparing to English and Chinese, Korean language has much more vowels. Just like the example video we saw in class about the tribe, it is hard for me to distinguish two vowel sounds which are close to each other. When I was learning the alphabet, my language partner have to explicitly explain the difference between those sounds for me to hear it. There is one specific vowels that I have never encountered in my language learning process before which is the vowel ㅡ. Neither of the language I spoke have the sound produced by the glottis area. However, since I have been listening to this sound for year, it doesn’t take me long to get it. 그래 which has the closest meaning of “correct” in English. About my target language Korean, I have to practice more on the vowels pronunciation, especially with such subtle difference between each one. To achieve that I would have use the website suggested in class having the audio playing and words on the other side. Also it is important to be able to distinguish the vowels in writing because it might make a huge difference on the meaning of the word. In order to produce these sounds correctly, I would communicate with my language partner that we will arrange not only one class only on correcting my pronunciation but also correct me whenever I was saying things incorrect.

This past couple of weeks, I have been focusing on my reading and vocabulary skills.  My language partner printed out a couple of news articles about practical and current issues including weather reports and a story on the Coronavirus outbreak.  We then read it together out loud and go over all the vocabulary words in the sentence before we translate each sentence.  It is interesting because these are complex and compound sentences in which the order of the phrases and figuring out the subject relationships are difficult to understand, even after translating most of the words on their own.  This is a good practice for learning the structure of a specific but widely used part of the Korean language.  The news articles are written in a very formal and official manner that almost sounds like a different language from conversational Korean when listening to it. 

My language partner included a list of important vocabulary words related to each article for us to study on our own and practice with.  Reading the sentences takes quite a long time because our reading rate is rather slow at the moment.  I hope that the more we read, the faster we will be able to go through the articles and the better we will understand them.  After we focus on reading for a while, we will then switch to conversation skill development.  Although the difference between the extreme ends of Korean (formal and informal) I think that going from more complicated to simpler terms is one effective strategy in learning Korean.  It allows us to understand the grander structures of words and phrases and focus on being diligent with our grammar.  Then, when we learn more about how to converse, we can note the grammar points that change and the particles that are no longer existent.  It’s easier to see what is missing than what should be there. 

Although learning Korean through reading the articles is difficult and there is a lot I don’t know in terms of vocabulary, I am happy with this setup of learning.  I think that fully immersing myself in something that is practical will lead me to be able to understand more in the long run.  Additionally, my language partner stated that the vocabulary and sentence structure in these news articles are fairly repetitive.  Although it is a bit difficult to grasp at the beginning, once we get a hang of it, we will be able to understand similar articles a lot more easily.  The repetition of the vocabulary is also helpful when trying to remember the terms.  I think that I am taking full advantage of my time with my language partner and I look forward to seeing progress as the weeks go on. 

For this culture post, I will be analyzing a video of an interviewer from the Asian Boss YouTube channel asking South Koreans about their opinions on dating statistics.  They interviewed three men and three women separately, and it was interesting to see what they agreed and disagreed on.  The interviewer stated to them that, according to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, the majority of South Koreans ages 20-44 are single.  Additionally, only a little over a quarter of the single population are in relationships.  The interviewees responded with some surprise, but each person could see the truth of the statistics from their daily experiences.  It was said across the board that one of the main reasons for not seeking a partner was the lack of time and energy due to work or school.  They explained that the job market is highly competitive, and it is difficult for young people to establish a career for themselves.  This is why most students entering college ask about future job opportunities and internships available instead of college life.  A top priority is resume building and gaining experience in the workforce.  This process of constantly trying to be the best, or at least better than the majority, is stressful.  The increased anxiety also contributes to not feeling as though they can dedicate themselves to a relationship.

One man stated that because he will be starting his military service soon, he would rather wait to start a relationship.  South Korea has a requirement that all men must complete two years of service.  Because the optimal age to do this is when you are younger and more fit, this could easily drive a wrench in the dating sphere.  The women responded with how they spend the little free time they have with themselves just to relax and unwind.  From what they were saying, I was able to hypothesize that they were implying if you don’t have enough time to give to yourself, you don’t have time to commit to someone else. 

              Something I found interesting about this video was when the interviewer mentioned the theory that CNN presented about the increased danger and risk of sexual assault when dating.  The women responded with either complete agreement or understanding that it could very well be true.  The men, however, did not think it was true at all and that the low dating rates were better explained by little time and too high of standards.  It is interesting to see the difference in perspective depending on gender.  My impression is that while the conversation about sexual assault is fairly open and common in the United States, it is not as widely talked about in South Korea.  It could be that women might talk about it more frequently with each other but not to men.  Therefore, the women in the video agreed with the previous CNN statement while the men did not.  This is just speculation, but it is what I think could be a possible explanation for the difference of opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=harDGAucqBQ

SDLC%20105-%20Discussion%20%233.docx

Although I learned Korean since I was younger, I was not aware of the structures that made up the language. It was eye opening to see the two different ways to learn a language through linguistics because before taking this course, I always assumed that there was one dominant way to teach and learn languages. The first approach was to start with the pronunciations and articulations which is the level of phonetics, move to organizing those sounds which is the level of phonology, go on to bringing those meaningful words into a sequence which is the level of grammar, then finally studying those patterns of meanings which is the level of semantics. The other approach is to essentially go backwards starting with the meaning, aka semantics, then going on to grammar, phonology, and finally phonetics. This is a general layout because you have to make assumptions about other levels to analyze a specific level of structure.

This made me think of the approaches I used when learning languages. Even though I am only comfortable using Korean and English, I have also had a chance to begin to learn both Spanish and French. I learned Korean and English in an environment where the language I was learning was the common language in the society while I was taught Spanish and French during school in a set classroom setting. I am not sure of the specific order of the structures I began with because I never needed to think about it. The way I learned Korean and English was through spoken words. I understood the meanings of the words they spoken and copied the way they spoke it. Yet when I was taught how to read and write, I first had to recognize the alphabet and know how to pronounce it correctly. I felt like I jumped around instead of following one disciplinary approach. For Spanish and French, I believe that we started with phonetics since they were unfamiliar languages that I needed to understand how things were pronounced.

Since most of what I learned in Korean was through hearing and listening to others, I believe that I do not have a proficient understanding of grammar and semantics. I am still able to write by using my knowledge of the phonetics of the Korean alphabet, but building complex, meaningful sentences that are structured correctly is still challenging. I do not have this problem with English because I attended school in the U.S. and was required to take an English class every year. I would like to strengthen my skills overall in each structure but focus a little more heavily on grammar.

I would not give a preference to one disciplinary approach over the others as long as the student completely analyzes each structure thoroughly. Now that I have been exposed to the language structures and methodologies, I am aware of the details that my target language is comprised of and that learning more in specific skills/structures will help me with the overall language of Korean.

It was interesting to read about the two different approaches to learning languages on Aitchison’s linguistics. One way is to move from inside the circle starting at phonetics to phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The other route encourages language learners to start from semantics before diving into vocabulary, grammar, phonology, and end with phonetics. As I read about this, I thought about the different structures in my target language and what my path was to where I am with the Korean language. Because I had never learned Korean thoroughly, I never had the chance to think about the order of structures I learned first. At my level of fluency, I only know some of the different structural aspects of Korean such as phonetics, phonology, and morphology. I know the pronunciation of words, understand the different arrangements and meanings of words, and also know how the consonants and vowels of the Korean alphabet are put together. However, I learned to speak the language from a young age without grammar, specifically syntax and structure of semantics. I also cannot say I know the So I don’t really know how to explain why I structure my sentences grammatically and I don’t utilize idioms and proverbs. But I do know when to use the different subject marking particles (I didn’t even know this was a thing) and how to guess the spelling of words through my understanding of phonetics (ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㅏ, ㅓ, ㅣ for example).  I'm glad that I naturally obtained phonetics and phonology by speaking the language at home with my grandparents because I think this can be one of the most tedious parts of learning Korean––sort of a building block to the language. However, I think because of my experience "learning" Korean through spoken word, I have an unbalanced proficiency of the language overall. I want to focus more on actually learning the syntax for sentence grammar structures in addition to expanding my lexicon. 

Learning about different language structures and disciplinary methodologies pushes me to look back on what I already know to categorize them into different structures. This is because I want to make sure I strengthen the foundations of my Korean language knowledge before I build on the different structures to make them equal. Although I do believe being able to speak the language is more of a priority than being able to know the specific reasons behind grammar and phonetics, my goal is to be able to use Korean in professional settings. This requires my language skills to be leveled out in all different aspects of the language. 

This paragraph talks mainly about how to divide languages into different "levels" in order for us to study them in an easier manner and to understand them better. Additionally, it presents how languages can be divided and where should we start to learn a language. I find it very persuasive since learning a language by learning as it is is very difficult. A good analogy will be familiarizing the inner structure of a grandiose palace by simply looking at it without entering it, which should be impossible since there are too many aspects and details that should be learned to master a language. The article mentions that the most common approach of dividing languages is by dividing them into four parts-- semantics, grammar, phonology, and phonetics. However, these cannot be comprehensive and cover all aspects of learning languages. Therefore, from my perspective, one must regard the language as a whole at the end to actually master it. It is like to know where the location of each room is in the palace, you have to take a step back and look at the palace. For my target language, it includes all these basic "levels" of languages. It has grammar, vowels and consonances, sounds and meanings. What's more, it also includes different structures for formal, informal and honorific language, which makes it more difficult for me to learn Korean. For me, I don't really have a preferred learning order. However, I would prefer not learning grammar first which bores me and burdens me since there will be so many to memorize about word structures, sentence structures and tense and so on. I learned how to speak English in this way by years of practice and memorizations which was compulsory and wasn't quite pleasant. From where I stand, everything that requires a huge amount of time to pursue needs to be interesting in the first place for people to persist pursuing it. Therefore, the most essential thing is to build interest by learning languages in an interesting and thus productive way by watching target language movies, drams or listening to music and so on. 

My Learning Plan

Where are you now?  What can you do?  What do you know?

Use the Levels of Competence document and the LinguaFolio® checklists to assess your current abilities in your language.  For more information, see the SDLAP Wiki.

Interpersonal Communication

Developing 1

Interpretive Listening

Developing 1

Interpretive Reading

Developing 1

Presentational Speaking

Developing 1

Presentational Writing

Developing 1

What is your ultimate goal?  What is your goal for this semester?
What do you want to be able to do with this language at the end of this semester and in the future?

My ultimate goal is to communicate fluently with native speakers. By the end of the semester, I hope to have improved my writing—spelling and grammar.

What tasks will you complete and what activities will you do this semester to meet your goals?  How will you document and evaluate your progress?

Novice learners should consult the ‘Language Tasks’ page of the SDLAP Wiki and incorporate the required tasks in their learning.  Be as specific as possible when planning activities, e.g., “I will watch YouTube videos to learn how to talk about the family.” or “I will consult a grammar text to learn about possessives.”  Make sure you include some tasks that are relevant to your interests, e.g., “I will learn to understand soccer commentary.” or “I will learn to talk about the stock market.”  Culture and language are, of course, inseparable.  It is expected that all your language will be culturally appropriate and that every task will contribute to your cultural competence.

Something that I always found interesting about sentence structure in Korean is how it differs from English. In English, sentences are comprised in the order of subject-verb-object; in Korean, the order is subject-object-verb. Since I grew up speaking Korean, I do not really struggle with grasping this concept but translating something from one language to the other can become complicated since some words do have to be moved around. I am also not the most confident speaker, and I have occasionally noticed that I use the wrong sentence structure in conversation. Although the person that I am conversing with usually understands what I am trying to say, I know that it is not proper Korean.

I think that when one is learning a different language, even though you might have a specific goal, it is always beneficial to have a holistic understanding of the language. Being cognizant of the different disciplines can complement your learning regardless, even if you think that what they cover might be unrelated. That being said, of all the disciplines in the diagram on page 9 of Aitchison’s Linguistics, languages and its corresponding subcategory of applied linguistics seems to be most applicable to my studies. My general goals include becoming a fluent speaker and developing the ability to communicate easily with native speakers, so focusing on applied linguistics in everyday Korean is most helpful for me. However, contemporary Korean language now includes a lot of slang words, so studying stylistics would also be helpful in learning the Korean that most people speak. 

In Korean, sentences contain subject, verb, and object just like Chinese and English. However, the difference is that the order of the sentences are subject+object+verb instead of subject+verb+object in Chinese and English. This might take time for me to get used to it. I do agree with the order offered by the graph. From my perspective, the study of language should follow the order of phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, other advance researches related to language. The alphabet is the first thing that I should learn for Korean. The next step should be learning vocabulary, however, I have already had some words and phrases in my head. Therefore, for me, phonology should be studied with the company of syntax and semantics. Nevertheless, I should start with the basic grammar rules such as simple sentences and present tense. 

I do have a preference of structural approach which emphasizes on learning the rules first, which is the way that I have been leaning English. I do like to keep the rules in mind so that I could switch parts and use them to express my own ideas. I do believe knowing words first would make the foundation for the other part of the learning process. By knowing language structures I would be able to better design my language learning plan and divide my attention to those three main parts more evenly.

Figuring Foreigners Out is a very interesting article. I partially agree with the content and against some of the ideas mentioned. The topics which have been discussed in the passage are: individualism/collectivist; nonverbal communication; monochronic/polychronic; internal/external. The main idea behind all these topics is that the cultural differences between people are causing misunderstand through communication in an underlying way. This article reminds people that there are people which have belief other than yours and suggests that people should be aware the differences during communication with people from other cultural background. Two of the ideas presented in the article conflicts my own belief which is about monochromic/polychromic and internal/external. As far as I am concerned, the standpoint of time is different foe each people no matter which culture he/she is in. Take myself for example, I have always feel like time is not limited and people should do things spontaneously and should not be constrained by plans and order. However, my father is the total opposite, even though we are all in the same culture. Besides, the conception about internal and external mostly depends on age and experience, especially in Chinese culture. The young people commonly do not believe in ‘fate’ or ‘destiny’ while the elders would state everything is all planned out. 

I have used the comparative cultural tool to compare Korean, Chinese, US’s cultural in those six aspects. The result surprises me. Comparing to Chinese, Koreans are less likely take risks which shows in uncertainty avoidance category. In other categories, Chinese and South Korean have mostly the same values. Comparing South Korea and the United State, except for the power distance, others are all opposite —individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, longterm orientation, and indulgence. Knowing this comparison, I would be able to understand Korean culture relatively to Chinese and American culture.

During the second week of lessons, Jimin and I met up at our usual spot. She had me read a news article on Naver.com about the recent Corona virus outbreak, and I thought that it was a great choice as the currency and relevancy were high. It was relatively easy to comprehend despite being a news article, but there were a few terms that I was unfamiliar with. I read it aloud to practice my Korean speaking as well. Whenever I came across a term that I didn’t know of, I asked Jimin for help in order to fully understand the article. It reported the rising alarm from the virus outbreak that started in Wuhan, China. I was quite familiar with the outbreak itself, as was my family in Korea. I recall my mom telling me to buy face masks to protect myself…Overall, I was pleased to find that I could read and understand the news article quite well. In our future lessons, I hope to read some more challenging news articles to improve my reading comprehension skills, as well as my speaking skills.

            Following the news article, Jimin and I watched a popular Korean drama that is currently airing and is available on Netflix. I was surprised to see how many Korean dramas are available on Netflix now, and I think it is very beneficial to my language and cultural learning as I can have easy access at any time to Korean dramas of different genres and backgrounds. The one we watched was “사랑의 불시착,” and it stars two very famous actors/actresses named Hyunbin and Son Ye-Jin. It is basically about a rich South Korean business woman/heiress who tragically lands in the lands of North Korea, where she meets the highly-ranked North Korean military officer Hyunbin. They become star-crossed lovers as Hyunbin tries to get Son Ye-Jin back to her country. It was fun watching Episode 7 with Jimin and being absorbed in the unrealistic story line. At times, it was difficult to understand the language as there was a lot of North Korean dialect, but Jimin would always help me out with that part. I found it to be an easy way of exposing myself to North Korean and South Korean culture, as well as the film style that is catered to a Korean audience. I found that it was very different compared to dramas in the US, as I think that the story line and acting is even more dramatized in Korean dramas. There certainly is a huge emphasis on wealthy heirs and heiresses, as well as on star-crossed lovers in Korean films. We kept Korean subtitles on throughout the episode, and this helped me to catch any phrases that I wasn’t able to keep up with. Overall, it was an entertaining way to end the lesson. I hope to watch more of the drama with Jimin, as well as explore other forms of media during our lessons.