2/2 Interview + 2/4 Observation
2/2 Interview with the librarian
Allison and I reached out to the librarian, Ethan Pullman, to get available and helpful resources from the hunt library according to Peter’s suggestion. As he is familiar with the library search system, we were able to get a tons of resources that might help us a lot. He searched resources that are relevant to our topic with keywords of culture, language acquisition, and encyclopedia. He then suggested us read through resources including:
- Encyclopedia of language teaching and learning
- The handbook of language and intercultural communication
- The handbook of second language acquisition
We, through these resources, are anticipating to narrow down our topic which might also lead us to not only find target users to conduct more detailed research but also move on to generative research process, for example brainstorming various ideas based on specific situation or interactions. Team members and I split up these resources and started to read over.
2/4 Korean Class Observation
Nurie and I also visited Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in order to observe the overall language class and casually meet learners and teachers at there. The class basically was for very beginners who are learning basic Korean alphabets and some of words and simple sentences.
Teacher, who is one of my friends, especially struggled in a situation when teaching certain sentences that can not be translated directly into English, which results from cultural differences. For example, Korea has respectful words and phrases used for elderly and people with higher social status. Koreans also assume they have to be polite and respectful to strangers. As Korean, I think using terms of respect in Korea society comes from Confucianism rooted in our culture and history.
In addition to that, interesting thing that I thought was, because it was beginner class, teacher taught very basic words like milk, strawberry, cat, dog, puppy, and so on. I understand those are so basic that we can’t end up not learning, but instead, I thought it would be better to teach certain words/phrases based on each one’s interest, which might eventually motivate people to learn new language consistently.
