I have learned how to read Korean and recognize the characters. I am still learning how to pronounce when I read. Learning about the different vowels in the English language, phonemes, and the air or tension helped me better understand sounds and how to pronounce them. It was helpful with Hangul because it showed how to shape your mouth when pronouncing them. To engage with the target language, I listen to Korean songs to train my ear to the different words. For the culture, I have learned simple words. Originally, learning words at this time was not in my plan, but having to learn a few has helped me understand what I am learning. To improve my communication competence, I will have to focus on grammar. It won't allow me to open the document, but I think my plan has grammatical competence and socialising competence.
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I find it really interesting that Hangul shows readers how to make the sounds for Korean. I'm curious to learn more about that and was considering it as I watched some of the final presentations when they showed vocab words and explained pronunciation. I spent my entire first lesson learning about pronunciation and how I could form the sounds for Mandarin, and it was extremely helpful. One of my learning strategies was reading aloud, and my tutor and I would alternate between focusing more on vocab and focusing more on pronunciation, but I've noticed that I speak much more slowly when trying to pronounce words more correctly. Did you find that you had to focus harder and maybe spend more time thinking about the Hangul you read when considering pronunciation, or has it generally made it easier to speak quickly?
Reading Hangul and understanding the characters was one of the first tasks that I worked on with Emily. The air and tenses were also something that I found a lot of value in when learning. To be completely honest, though, even after a semester of practice, I still sometimes have difficulty hearing the difference between j/ch or b/p. Whenever I struggle, Emily always tells me to just keep practicing and to not give up.