The language structure of Korean is very interesting. The grammatical structure of this language is similar with Japanese with the verb at the end of the sentence rather than Subject-verb-object, like English and Chinese. Like the example that I have provided in my Learning Journal 2, the sentence “I am Chinese” in Korean would be read as I Chinese am: I (나는) am(이다) Chinese(중국사람), 나는 중국사람 이다. This could be quite difficult for beginner learners of the language like me to get into the mindset of a complete different grammatical structure. Grammar is on the third level of the Four-level model of language, Phonetics, Phonology, Grammar, and Semantics.
The article suggests that students should start with learning “meaning” when learning a language. Though I cannot read further on his/her argument, it is reasonable to guess that meaning is important for language learners because it is composed of the culture and historical background of the nation or region. Many of the semantics of words are directly related to the history of the country, for instance many Korean words came from Chinese words, such Grape which is 포도 po-do in Korean and 葡萄 (pú táo), with a very similar pronunciations. For me, placing more effort on semantics could benefit me very well in the process of studying Korean, because many words could overlap with my native language, mandarin, making it easier for me to remember vocabularies, even though the sentence structure is very different.
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