This week, I had my first meeting with my learning partner, Somyung Kim. At this first Zoom meeting, I learned that I will be having group lessons with Seokjoon Han! We were able to meet and discuss around roughly eight learning topics and initial ideas we had to put together a general syllabus for this semester. These topics and ideas include korean grammar, practicing enunciation, learning cultural aspects of Korean culture, delving more into Korean history, learning more about Korean language history, reading hard articles and a newspaper article from one specific source every week, improving Korean vocabulary, listening to Korean songs and being able to translate them, and speaking Korean for the whole lesson to improve language acquisition skills. I also mentioned my goal of taking a test for literacy like the STAMP test, which I was unable to take last year due to the unfortunate COVID-19 pandemic that ended up resulting in our school closing and moving to online instruction after spring break in March last spring. Somyung listened to my explanation on the STAMP test and said that I may be encouraged to take lessons with Jenna Lee if necessary to have more structured lessons to best prepare for the STAMP test through her experience as a Korean language instructor if possible. We decided to move forward with these goals for now and have our lessons in complete Korean to make sure we stay engaged with Korean since we normally do not speak it on campus due to instruction and everything else being in English on our campus. We hope to accomplish all of these goals as we believe that by exposing ourselves to Korean in many different ways we will be able to all improve as learners. We also decided our meeting times would be each Friday from 4-6 pm. I will continue to build my skills and build off my lessons from my first semester in the Self Directed Language Learning Program (SDLP) for Korean. I am very excited to also continue my language learning process and hopefully will be able to take the TOFL equivalent TOPIK exam this school year to assess and understand my level of the Korean language. Afterwards, I hope to be able to prepare myself and potentially take the STAMP test as that will provide acknowledgement of my Korean language skills in a professional setting and expand what and where I may be able to do work in my career in the future. I also do acknowledge that this semester may be harder than most semesters; however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling in class lessons and the lessons all being on Zoom or online platforms. The only potential problem/hindrance that I am worried about is technological difficulties as that is the only way to be safe while navigating the COVID-19 pandemic and outlined guidelines at our school. I learned from strategies freshman year in the SDLC class that I am an active learner so I will interact with books, practice with my learning partner and outside of classes either alone or with some friends, and will make the activities engaging by tailoring them to include hands on activities and writing as well.
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