The main focus of our lesson was to set the goals I had for this semester and what I hope to accomplish at the end of this semester. My ultimate goal is to become more proficient in Korean and be able to hold conversations well enough where I can freely be able to communicate my thoughts and opinions. I have some knowledge about Korean, granted that I am Korean, and I grew up in a household where my parents spoke Korean to me. However, I have no knowledge on how to read and write, and my vocabulary is limited, so my instructor and I came up with smaller goals to reach throughout the semester.
The first goal is to be able to confidently know the Korean alphabet. I am confident that I’ll be able to achieve this since I have a vague memory of my mother attempting to teach me when I was younger. To be able to achieve this goal, we will go through the simple consonants and simple vowels and memorize its name and the sound it produces. The second goal is to be able to read Korean words, given if I’m able to get down the Korean alphabet. She had stated that once I’m able to get down the alphabet, I’ll be able to sound out the characters to figure out what the word says. Furthermore, building up my Korean knowledge in this manner will also help in ensuring that I am properly pronouncing the words from the very beginning. The third goal is to be able to write Korean words. We kept it just at words for now because she wants to make sure I have the fundamentals down before we move onto more complex concepts—which I wholeheartedly agree with. In attempting to spell the Korean words, I’ll be able to gauge a better understanding with how certain characters are used for the composition of certain words. She stated that there are a lot of mistakes even Korean speakers make when writing, so it’s best to get into the habit of knowing how the words are properly spelt. Another common struggle she sees is that students come into learning Korean with poor pronunciation or spelling skills due to the romanization of Korean words—luckily, I never read stuff like that because I always found it to be quite complicated. For now, we kept it at three goals because that seemed like the sweet spot making sure I get in progress and improvement as well as not feeling too pressured to get the concepts down within a given time frame. Additionally, it seemed realistic enough due to my current Korean linguistic abilities and attainable to achieve by the end of the semester.
I’m excited for my language journey because I’ve been wanting to improve Korean for a very long time now. I believe my Korean background will help significantly during my lessons and will allow for easier comprehension. Additionally, I believe this will be successful because this is something that I want to do. I want to re-connect with my culture and be a proud Korean American.
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