Progress Report:

For In-Depth 2021, I have decided to learn the language of Korean. Over the course of the past few weeks, I have decided which 25 commonly used Korean words I want to learn for the upcoming weeks. But, due to schoolwork, I haven’t been able to practice these new words as much as I wanted to. With my set of chosen words, I have a category titled personal pronunciation. This category was purely added to aid in my pronunciation of the terms. I believed that connecting Korean pronunciations with sounds that are better for me to understand would allow me to better replicate and piece together the proper Korean pronunciation. Through this process, I ended up learning that the letter used for a Korean consonant may have the sound of a different letter. For example, when the character ㅂ(b) is linked together with the character ㅏ(a), most English speakers would gravitate towards saying bah (like a sheep). Instead, ㅂ(b) sounds more like a ‘p’. (Invalid after inspection check blogpost #5 for details) I have started to create an audio log of my progress with pronunciation, but my audio log and 25 common vocabulary will have to be put on pause for a while, as my plans have changed a bit. This will be elaborated on later in my blog post.

 

Chosen set of words:

 

1. 안녕하세요

• Pronunciation: Annyeonghaseyo
• Meaning: Hello

 

2. 저기요

• Pronunciation: Jeogiyo
• Meaning: Excuse me

 

3. 죄송합니다

• Pronunciation: Joesonghamnida
• Meaning: I’m sorry

 

4. 안녕히 주무세요

• Pronunciation: Annyeonghi Jumuseyo
• Meaning: Good night

 

5. 만나서 반가워요

• Pronunciation: Mannaseo Bangawoyo
• Meaning: Nice to meet you!

 

6. 어떻게 지내세요?

• Pronunciation: Eotteoke Jinaeseyo
• Meaning: How are you?

 

7. 네

• Pronunciation: Ne
• Meaning: Yes

 

 

8. 아니요

• Pronunciation: Aniyo
• Meaning: No

 

9. 고마워요

• Pronunciation: Gomawayo
• Meaning: Thank you! (informal, still polite)

 

10. 저는 (name) 입니다

• Pronunciation: Jeonun (name) Imnida
• Meaning: I’m (name)

 

11.잘 가요

• Pronunciation: Jal Gayo
• Meaning: Goodbye

 

12. 나쁜

• Pronunciation: Nappeun
• Personal Pronunciation: Da-peun
• Meaning: Bad

 

13. 좋은

• Pronunciation: Joheun
• Meaning: Good

 

14. 예쁜

• Pronunciation: Yeppeun
• Meaning: Pretty

 

15. 못생긴

• Pronunciation: Motsaenggin
• Meaning: Ugly

 

16. 쉬운

• Pronunciation: Swiun
• Meaning: Easy

 

17. 어려운

• Pronunciation: Eoryeoun
• Meaning: Difficult

 

18. 가까이에

• Pronunciation: Gakkaie
• Meaning: Near

 

19. 멀리

• Pronunciation: Meolli
• Meaning: Far

 

20. 작은

• Pronunciation: Jageun
• Meaning: Small

 

21. 오늘

• Pronunciation: Oneul
• Meaning: Today

 

22. 어제

• Pronunciation: Eoje
• Meaning: Yesterday

 

23. 내일

• Pronunciation: Naeil
• Meaning: Tommorow

 

24. 주

• Pronunciation: Ju
• Meaning: Week

 

25. 년

• Pronunciation: Nyeon
• Meaning: Year

 

Meeting my mentor

Due to problems with sending emails and conflicting schedules, I was only able to meet with my mentor earlier today. During our very first meeting, Ms. Kim began by asking me about my plans for my project, and then recommended that I start by learning the basics before jumping towards expanding my Korean vocabulary. She expressed that learning how to read and write in the Korean alphabet first would make memorizing and learning new vocabulary much easier. Because of this, I may have to change my timeline and goals, as I underestimated the time required to learn a new language. This would also help Ms. Kim better support my learning. As well, Ms. Kim and I shared information about ourselves to get to know each other better. I ended up finding out that we both share a common passion for the arts, as Ms. Kim majored in visual arts during post-secondary, and I’m going to be taking Studio Arts 2D 11 this year. At the start of our meeting, Ms. Kim gave me a few pieces of paper which included Korean consonants and vowels (complex and simple). For our next meeting, she asked me to practice the Korean consonants and vowels, as well as create a more broken down version of the SMART goals from my proposal.

 

“How to Have a Beautiful Mind”

This year, we will be incorporating the contents of the book “How to Have a Beautiful Mind” written by Edward De Bono into our blog posts. “How to Have a Beautiful Mind discusses how to have effective and meaningful conversations with others.

 

Agreeing, Disagreeing, and Differing

Ms. Kim is a native Korean speaker who grew up speaking Korean at a high school level in Korea. When looking at the situation from this angle, there isn’t much that we can disagree upon, as I have had no experience learning Korean in the past. I believe because of how much more experience Ms. Kim has, especially considering that she teaches Korean at Gleneagle, I have a lot of respect for the insight she provides. We both agree that my ability to reach the goals outlined within my proposal is based on how much time and effort I put into slowly reaching them.

 

So far, the only minor disagreement I’ve had with Ms. Kim was caused by a technological error which was resolved during our first meeting today. Ms. Kim had sent me an email confirming that she could be my mentor for In-Depth 2021, and I sent an email response in reply. As I had not received a response back, I emailed Ms. Kim the following week to confirm that she was available to mentor me. Ms. Kim said that she had never received an email response to her confirmation email asking me to confirm my decision, but my outlook said the email had been sent. I tried to be as polite as possible during the situation, and when sending another email to Ms. Kim, attached the missing email. At the end of our meeting, Ms. Kim came up with the solution that if I sent an email and received no response, then I should assume that she never received the email. Ms. Mulder also provided a really good solution of sending the email to myself as well, in order to ensure that the email was sent.

 

So far there hasn’t been any differing, but I’m sure that some will arrive in future conversations, because Ms. Kim and I have different outlooks based on our past experiences. From what I’ve gathered by reading chapter three, overcoming a difference in opinion can be done by finding a middle ground. While Ms. Kim and I were scheduling a time and date to meet, all the times which she was available were only suitable for students who have flex blocks. This did not work for my current schedule, as the TALONS 10 class had block 1A and block 1B every day. I ended up choosing a date which worked best for my schedule which ended up being today in the morning. I was able to find a middle ground, and we were able to have a really great discussion today. The issue of scheduling shouldn’t be too much of a problem next quarter, as I will have a blended block schedule in quarter 3.