Blog 2

Hello everyone.

During the first month of my stay at the University of Oregon, I came across this restaurant that was intriguing to me. It is called “Uniquely Chengdu”. It is nearby the Duck Store if you walk down straight for a little bit, the restaurant is right near the Teriyaki Boy restaurant.  Below the English version of “Uniquely Chengdu”, the Chinese version is called “成都名小吃”. “成都” means Chengdu, “名” means popular, and “小吃” means street food. Although the English Version says “Uniquely Chengdu”, it could show that the restaurant wants to attract English-speaking people because of the authenticity, whereas for the non-English speaking people, they would be more intrigued that the restaurant is related to Asia, a different culture apart from America.

For this EALL class, I do not have any questions. My learning strategies in this class is that I am much more of a listener rather than reading, so I listen to alot to the class. I ask questions to my friends or those who are near me. I also take notes as well as go through the presentation. What I feel like I’m learning a lot in this class is the Chinese and Japanese language. Personally, I am Korean and I have been living in Korean for about 4 years, so learning through another Asian culture is difficult, however, I am interested in those two languages and the similarities and difference between all three of them. There are times that this class be difficult, only because I can not read Chinese and Japanese well enough. However, despite the fact of my limit understanding of the Chinese and Japanese language, I would ask my friends who are native speakers to Chinese and Japanese, as well as go read through the homework that Mrs. Idemaru would assign.

BLOG 2

Before school started, I remember going around in Portland/Eugene so that I could be associated with the area. As I was mentally being prepared, for the time being, thinking that I would not have any Asian food anymore, I came across this Asian market store. This King’s Asian Market in Eugene, Oregon is on the 2100 W 11th Ave, Eugene OR 97402. In this photo, there is a Chinese letter that says “君怡阁”. The first character of the word means “king”, the second “happy”, and the third “building/house”. Since people that can not speak nor write Chinese would not be able to understand the writing, it does seem intriguing enough for them to come so that way they would buy things that are from Asia, rather than the common stuff they buy in American stores. 

I find this class challenging yet intriguing and interesting at the same time. I am always looking forward to learn more about the three main asian language (Japanese, Chinese, and Korean) that we are learning in class. Although it can be complicated, I can understand how they are all connected, yet not connected at the same time.

However, as a Korean person, while I can understand the Korean language concept, I struggle to understand Japanese and Chinese because I do not understand their language and their cultural idea’s and concepts that well. Although I am taking Japanese 101 in order to understand this class, as well as speak another language in my behalf, it can be difficult to know the difference between the three languages. Though I attend to this class very often and finish my homework on time, every class that I go is just alot to take in under 50 minutes. Despite of the challenges I face, I still go over the past presentation and ask questions to people around me so that way I could get a better understanding of the class.

This blog

In this course, one set of your homework assignments is to write 3 blog entries on this course blog — (1) Hello class!, (2) Writing, and (3) Open topic.  (You can see them on the menu bar.)

In these blog posts we ask you to reflect on your own learning.  The reason I included these assignments for the course is because we have a lot of research results showing that students who monitor their own learning, are aware of how their learning is going, and make connections between class materials and issues outside the class tend to have successful learning experiences, gain deeper understanding of materials, and improve critical thinking skills.

In addition, the reason we selected this medium (i.e., blog) for the assignments is because we believe that sharing these thoughts with other students is helpful. By reading your classmates’ posts, you may learn different ways people connect with class materials and different perspectives people take on questions.  You may learn that you share similar thoughts with others or that you have a very unique view on some issues, either of which we hope would be helpful and interesting to know.

I encourage you to include what you think of the blog posts assignments in your entries too!