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.

This photo is from a restaurant in Springfield, very close to Autzen stadium. I looked up the restaurant to see if I could find out if the name was the same as the Chinese on their sign. Turns out it is called “Chopstix Chinese Cuisine” and the sign on front says “Zhu Kuai Xiao” then I could not identify the last character because of the font. The Chinese to English translation is “bamboo chopstick” then “small/little”. I thought this sign was cool because of the font, and the fact that there is not a sign in English, they only have the Chinese sign. It also appears that the last character may be in traditional writing and that is why I cant identify it. Ive noticed a lot of Chinese signs tend to use both traditional and simplified. This reminded me of how some Chinese characters are still used in Japanese culture, especially on signs.

So far I have felt that all the lecture material has been clear and is going well. I feel I learn the most in class when reviewing the materials from reading quizzes in lecture slides and when talking to classmates around me about the material. When we stop lecture to talk with others around me I feel like it makes me engage in the material more and keeps lectures interesting. I feel like I am learning more about things I have already studied. I have taken many EALL classes and linguistics classes for my degree but I am still learning new pieces of information about linguistics, EALL culture and languages in this course.