I had my first meeting with my language partner, Jenna, this week. This is my third semester taking a Korean class, so I have more things want to learn about Korea. We have a more comprehensive plan on what I am going to learn this semester.
First of all, I knew that there were a lot of modern Korean slangs. They were usually much shorter than they should be. And it is also really hard to understand some of them as someone is currently learning Korean. For example, 남사친 (namsachin) which means a guy who is “just a friend”. 남 (nam) is short for 남자 (namja), meaning “man”, 사 (sa) is short for 사람 (saram), meaning “person” and 친 (chin) is short for 친구 (chingu), meaning friend. Put them all together, and you get man-person-friend, or a male friend. Same for 더럽게 (deoreopge) which means ‘Badly’. This Korean slang word literally means ‘dirtily’ (from 더럽다 | deoreopda), but is often used to mean ‘badly’, for example 더럽게 못생기다 (deoreopge motsaenggida) would mean ‘really ugly’ and ‘더럽게 느리다’ (deoreopge neurida) would mean ‘really slow’ (referring to a slow computer perhaps). I think it will be really good to learn these modern Korean slangs because they are the actual words that Korean young people use. It will be really helpful to me if I have a chance to visit Korea in the future.
Moreover, we also decided to practice my listening skills. I think my listening skill is much better than my other skills. So, I will start to challenge myself to watching more Korean movies and drama without subtitles. Also, Jenna will ask me to write down my reflections toward these movies. I am really excited for this part because I can not only practice my listening skills but also learn more about Korean culture though all the movies and dramas that I watch.
On the other hand, I will also practice more about my reading and writing. They are always hard to me. Since I did not study for Korean for a semester, I think it will take me some time to read and write in Korean. In light of this, I will spend first few weeks to review all the Korean alphabet. At the same time, Jenna will teach more daily conversations to me. I have learned a lot about how to ask a question as a visitor. But I also want to learn how to speak Korean during my daily life.
Culture will also be a really important part of learning language. I have noticed that when you watch a foreign TV show, even if it is really funny, you cannot have the same feeling as other native audience if you don’t have any background information of that country’s culture. I have already learned Korean for two years, but I think there is still a lot to learn. In the view of this, I will spend more time to learn about the deep culture of Korean this semester.
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