Since the beginning of the semester, I have started writing in the target language. We have practiced writing down and reading short sentences as our practice for phrases and also homework. I prefer to write freehand because the Korean keyboard is different from what is shown on the keys, which makes it much much more difficult to type. On the contrary, when I’m writing freehand, I can read out the sentences in my mind and write them down based on the pronunciations. However, since the pronunciation of two characters could be linked together, sometimes I have a hard time to figure out the right writing for a word or phrase.
In Korean, different from English and Chinese, the structure for a sentence is objects, subjects and then verbs. For objects and subjects, there are specific words to clarify them, such as “은/는”, “이/가”, and “을/를”. These characters help specify the subjects and objects in a sentence. We haven’t met many complex sentences yet, but I do know that complex sentences are composed of a few simple sentences and the linking or logical words in between. To me, writing out a sentence in Korean is like filling out blocks, since I know the basic structure of a sentence. However, I do need to build up my phrases and vocabulary to capture the meaning of a sentence.
I’ve practiced writing down my self-introduction and my likes and dislikes. Here’s a short paragraph. 안녕하세요. 통청양 입니다. 저는 열아홉 살입니다. 저는 오렌지를 좋아 하고 초콜릿 를 싫어요. 반갑습니다.
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I can definitely relate with you on the getting confused while trying to figure out the right way of writing a word or phrase that contains a pronunciation that can be mapped to different characters. This is the same reason why I too struggle while writing free hand sometimes. I got the standard Korean keyboard on my phone and that really helped fix this issue, because autocorrect still works for Korean too and whenever I’m doubtful about a word/phrase that I’m writing, I just quickly type it out on my phone to see how it is supposed to be written.
I love to write freehand when I study a new language because writing down the sentences and words helps me better memorize them. In your case, I have no idea how to type a Korean word in English keyboard, it looks complicated. But I guess it can be much easier to type Korean on a phone's keyboard than on the computer. It looks like one of the Chinese keyboards.
I always try to write freehand when I can, but I found it difficult to remember where the word spacings are. I think this further emphasized the importance of more practice in writing freehand.
I think vocabulary is really important for Korean, because the same word has different meanings in different contexts, which makes it difficult to understand a sentence without knowing other meanings. Although it takes a lot of time to memorize a lot of vocabulary, I am looking forward to having a large vocabulary so that I can play word games like in Korean TV shows. I hope to try those games for a long time.
wow that is super thoughtful and cool to hear about. It is interesting how you see it kind of like blocks when writing sentences!