Here’s a little something to brighten up this very rainy week- another Open Conversation. This week we interviewed Tamara Casper and Yoona Kang.
Tamara is a second year undergrad student studying chemistry and French, who also enjoys volunteering. In fact, the very day of the interview, she cut her hair for Locks of Love, an organization that uses donated hair to create hair pieces for children who have lost their hair due to medical conditions.
Tamara’s partner, Yoona, is a second year graduate student studying cellular and molecular biology, she spends most of her time working in the lab. Yoona also enjoys playing frisbee.
Yoona and Tamara have now been Conversational English partners for three semesters! They especially enjoy talking about cultural topics.
Yoona says, “I ask [Tamara] many different things about American culture, like football or the university life in the US, and some kinds of English usage.”
On the other side, Tamara said, “I didn’t really know anything about Korea until I met Yoona, and now I know quite a bit!”
Tamara has learned about how you have to press three different keys to make one character while creating text messages in Korean. Additionally, Yoona explained to Tamara how addresses are written in Korean. Instead of starting with the most specific information as in addresses in the United States, addresses for locations in Korea begin with the name of the city. Next the district and sub-district are listed. Finally the apartment and the apartment number are listed.
Although it is easy to point out the cultural differences between people, it is also important to find similarities too! A similarity Tamara and Yoona have found is related to games they played when they were children.
Yoona said, “Actually, there are lots of similar games, of course the name of the game was different, but it was really similar.”
Aside from continuing to learn about the similarities and differences between US American and Korean culture, Yoona and Tamara hope to continue enjoy their time together. In the future they plan to try Ian’s pizza and hope they can go to Camp Randall to watch a football game together.
This week Tae-Joon Moon, 2nd year graduate student studying Journalism and Mass Communication, and Emily Piehl, a sophomore studying Spanish and Portuguese, are the featured tutee and tutor of Open Conversation! Tae-Joon and Emily meet Thursdays at the Rathskeller and enjoy talking about food and movies and trying new food together.
Before the pair met, both were nervous and not sure what to expect. Emily thought that she would have little in common with Tae-Joon, but after the initial meeting, they found that they really enjoy the meeting time.
“Tae Joon has opened up Korea to me,” Emily said.
In fact, Emily now plans to learn Korean and would feel comfortable going to South Korea.
Tae-Joon has also had a positive experience with the Conversational English program.
“For international students who have no difficulty in class, but have a hard time expressing themselves in everyday life, [this program] is very helpful.” Tae-Joon said.
By working with his tutor, Tae-Joon can learn about pop culture and American history, which are two helpful areas to know when trying to understanding the context of a language.
This pair has been meeting for over a semester and look forward to learning more about each other's languages this school year.
