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This course has actually won the title of being my favorite class this term!  I think the most interesting topic we discussed was the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.  My favorite part of linguistics involves psychology and I find it extremely engaging to think about the way humans are influenced by language.  I’ve especially appreciated the pace and discussions that took place in this course.  The constant feedback that was given by everyone was very helpful when questioning how others felt about what we learned.  I believe this class has changed the way I look at linguistics.  I know that I’ve always believed that language is a crucial factor in the way humans think, but now, I have actually learned about studies that can support this hypothesis!  I’m very excited to continue to learn about East Asian culture because of this course and am pleased to report that EALL has been influential in the way I now think about linguistics.

My Experience In Class

Throughout this course was really fun. I know I learned a lot. I know for sure I learned the stereotypes of East Asian languages like Chinese being the base of Korean and Japanese. It isn’t that Chinese is the base of both but it’s just that Chinese was borrowed in Japanese and Korean. That is something I learned. Some reactions I had for the readings were mostly surprised. Like the one reading for Korea, where children separate from their fathers to study English was very interesting to me. I never knew mothers went to the extent to leave their home country for a long time just to learn English. I know some families did it for a couple of months but for years was shocking. Also the other reading that surprised me was the Chinese Parenting Style. It seems harsh in a western point of view but it makes sense once I think about it and learned from the lecture. This term and class really helped me a lot in developing and learning the culture in East Asia. Especially in Korea when I worked in my research projects. It was very fun in general! Thank you for this great time and opportunity.

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After a systematic study, I am very interested in the gender differences in each of the three languages. It’s amazing to me how men and women can be called differently in different cultures. As far as I am concerned, there are not too many differences between men and women in Chinese. At most, there are differences between him and her in Chinese characters, which has updated my knowledge. The second is the different ways that American parents and Asian parents treat their children’s education. Since I spent my junior and senior high school life under high pressure, I really feel the pain.

Kaori has a great way of teaching, which is not dull, but vivid and easy to understand. The class discussion also increased my understanding of the class content, and it was easier to understand knowledge points with more examples than by rote. Because of the language problem, I still have some difficulty in reading, but I can even cope with it. I usually read the reading carefully before class, and write down the key points with the quiz before class, listen to the teacher in class and make notes, and review with the study guide after class and before the exam. In my opinion, this way of learning is handy for me.

This is my first class in linguistics. It has changed my traditional understanding of language, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which are not the same language system. In the past, I think they are all languages from Asia. This course is very similar to the CHN series of courses I have taken before, although they teach different content, the way to prepare is identical. I made the reading and quiz before class, and then explained them in more detail in class.

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One of the topics that interested me the most was comparing the parenting styles of American people versus East Asian people. I myself would not prosper at all if my parents followed the same course of action as East Asian parents. Constantly feeling beatdown and not good enough would do more to frustrate me than build me back up. I really like the lecture format, despite how annoying it may be to some people. I think that having iClicker questions every lecture is great because it forces me to come to class and stay engaged on days that I would rather be in bed.

 

This class has definitely forced me to change the way I do coursework, and my understanding of the linguistics field. Never before had I thought that because I might speak a different language than someone else, our thought process would be different. Also, I never thought I would take a linguistics class, but here I am and I actually enjoyed it! The class is challenging at times, but Professor Idemaru does a great job answering my questions and presenting the information in an informative and enticing way. Thanks for a fun term!

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My hope when I signed up for this class was to learn more background knowledge about Korea, Japan, and China. Even though I’m not majoring in linguistics this class did not disappoint. We touched on and discussed many cultural and linguistical aspects of these three languages and connected them together. Some of the new things I learned about this term were Japans girl graphs and maid cafes, Chinas tea culture and level of polite speech, and Koreas language started from Chinese and their polite speeches. 

Since I didn’t know too much about Chinas culture or linguistic features before this class, it was harder for me to grasp some of the concepts. For example how one character could have five different meanings just by saying it in different tones, left-branching vs right-branching ( in general), and some of the history of the language. That being said, it was fascinating to learn how politeness speech in Chinese changed over time depending on the leader. Compared to America where English says the same no matter who the president is. This class’s information helped me get a better understanding of the linguistics behind these languages. I am also taking Korean 101 this term and it nicely connected with what I’m learning in that class. I don’t think I’ll be changing my major to linguistics, but I would like to learn more about it.

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I am so happy that I chose to take this class. Eall 209 helps me to understand the culture difference in East Asia a lot. Especially the difference between Japan and Korea. The thing that makes me feel most interested in the basic sentence structure topic. Japan and Korea use SOV (Subject Object Verb). China and the United States use SVO (Subject Object Verb). The reason I am interested in this part because the Chinese could use a translation app such as google translate to translate English into Chinese. And the meaning of the content is mostly correct. However, My Japanese friend told me that if he wants to use the app to translate sentences to Japanese, it’s less correct than Chinese. This is because the basic sentence structure is different between Japan and the United States. I am so glad to hear many people’s opinions during in-class discussion. Sometimes when I confused about the topic. Classmates’ opinion is really helpful to me. I am so thankful that Kaori used many great examples in the PowerPoints and explanation of examples is easy to understand. The changing things to me are the quizzes and the research paper. There are many articles to read. And this is the first time I paper wrote except for the writing course. Eall 209 makes me want to explore more about East Asia language and culture. In the future, I will take a similar class again.

Some questions that are very intriguing to me are those relating to languages as a whole. Such as examples of gender in language, politeness, language acquisition and theories on language relativity and universal grammar. I found our recent lectures and reading most interesting, mostly because it related to a project I did on tonogenesis and a research study about tonal language speakers brains versus non tonal, in an MRI scanner. I was very surprised and interested in other people’s research, such as analysis photos, or grouping things together in certain ways, based off of native language. I found the readings especially nice, because not all were lengthy academic articles. Having a mix between new articles, research, book excerpts and more, was very cool. I feel that it helped me retain information better, and encouraged me to complete each reading. Although I have done some of my own research on these topics, many of our readings and examples were new to me, which made this class unique to the other EALL, Chinese and linguistic courses I’ve taken. This class has made my linguistic understanding, of especially Korean and Japanese, much stronger. I’ve taken Chinese linguistic courses before but never linguistics related to EALL. I also felt that mentioning big questions, such as, does language change how people think, helped me think about language in a very broad sense.

Open topic

The most interesting topic for me so far is the concept of new masculine gender identities in East Asia. The fact that men in East Asian countries are starting to go against the current and the traditional social norm is intriguing. My approach to learning in this course was to do the reading/quiz the day before the lecture to have some sort of understanding about the topic, then go to class and listen to the professor go in-depth about it to further my knowledge. This class definitely changed my view of linguistic as a field. Before the class I didn’t know much about this field and sometimes even thought there is not much to study about. But this class has shown me that language, just like any other subject, is very complex and fascinating. Languages are infused deep in our culture and society without we even know about it. That is amazing to me. For example, as an Asian, my parents were always very strict and protective of me. I always thought it’s just how my parents are but through this class, I found out that these behavior is to  be expected of parents in East Asian countries. The class also changed the way I think as I look at the world as a big picture now.

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What I am interested in is some interesting phenomena about Asian culture, which have different expressions in each country. I want to choose a course to get a precise and in-depth understanding.  Many of the readings offered in this course relate to the cultures that need to be understood. The reading provided by the course is equivalent to an additional extracurricular reading, which contains the reading content and related knowledge related to the classroom content, and is the expansion and extension of the classroom content.

For this course, I usually read the required articles and test them by sorting them out. The second is to learn the course by reviewing and watching the PPT repeatedly. This class in a lot of knowledge level changed my perception of “linguistics” in this area, such as Japanese men and women in the form of expression and tone words have very big different, in my previous cognitive, there is a lot of language in Japanese law, but for the division of gender has such a significant difference between the two is my new knowledge on the cognitive domain.

To some extent, this course did not change my way of thinking, but just added some different ways of thinking. Let me learn how to change the position to think and understand that different ways of thinking will lead to different events.

Open Topic

I’ve never taken a linguistic class before, so these lessons were refreshing, exciting and challenging. Throughout this class, I learned not only the language mechanisms of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, but also general linguistics. Learning new things I didn’t know is so interesting. Besides, it is also interesting to observe other students’ reactions about things that I already know.

As for how to proceed with the lessons, it is a good way to discuss with the small group in the class, and share some students’ opinions. These ways help me to find out things I was not able to understand, and it gives me a good opportunity to know other people’s ideas. I sometimes couldn’t talk with neighbors about our ideas because I was afraid to make mistakes and bother them with my poor English. Although this class will be over soon, I’ll do my best to talk with neighbors more without being shy in order to not waste this precious opportunity. Also, in regards to research papers, authentic research is effective to know the real opinion from native speakers. I was able to get a lot of information, such as specific examples and the latest information through authentic research.

The most interesting topic was the power of language, like in the example of the article about Amy Chua. Although in the reading, it was written that saying garbage doesn’t decrease their children’s self-esteem, I personally think that saying that will have an effect on their children’s self-esteem, even though children know their mothers are not serious, and that they love their children. For example, some research revealed that self-esteem of young Japanese people is lower than that of other countries young people. In Japan, modesty is considered a virtue, so many parents tend to say something bad about their children when introducing their children to others. It can be said such tendency might have something to do with the result of research. I would like to learn more about this topic.

It was so interesting to learn about East Asia from the viewpoint of an American university student. What I learned in this class would help my research. I like this class so much and I would like to take a class similar to this one. Thank you!