Journal Entry #1
We began this week with our first assignment based on listening and writing. There are multiple major issues in Korea surrounding the politics, education, and even birth rate. I was assigned a video entirely in Korean that covered the current issue of the shortage of doctors in Korea right now. There is an especially major shortage of doctors in certain specialties like orthopedics and pediatrics. As I was watching, I realized my lack of vocabulary in the context of medicine and even politics. There was a portion of the video that covered a policy from the past, and there were multiple words that I had never heard before. Thankfully, there were subtitles so I was able to piece together what was being said. I wanted to challenge myself with this assignment by not over-relying on the subtitles, but by trying to understand what was being said by the context of the situation and the few words that I did know. It was refreshing to be challenged on my Korean skills and learning new vocabulary words. Another struggle I faced was the speed with which the narrator was speaking. When I speak with my Korean friends or my parents, it is definitely easier, but I think the introduction of new words hindered my ability to keep up with the speed of the speech.
Other than watching the video, I was also assigned to write a few sentences on other issues in Korea as well. These sentences were written entirely in Korean and focused on the political landscape. I wrote on the absence of an actual president in Korea currently and a little on how that came to be. There is also an ongoing problem of the extremely low birth rate in Korea. It's currently the lowest in the world and at this pace, Korea will actually begin to depopulate soon. This gave me a refreshed appreciation for writing and expressing my thoughts and ideas through a medium other than just speaking. This again revealed my weakness in vocabulary in this context. I had to use Google translate to be able to start my sentences and then to find very niche words such as, "birth-rate," "absence," and "population." Other than birth-rate, I thought these words to be fairly simple, but I found myself at a loss when actually having to express my thoughts on these subjects. I look forward to being challenged further and learning more nuanced words.
We began this week with our first assignment based on listening and writing. There are multiple major issues in Korea surrounding the politics, education, and even birth rate. I was assigned a video entirely in Korean that covered the current issue of the shortage of doctors in Korea right now. There is an especially major shortage of doctors in certain specialties like orthopedics and pediatrics. As I was watching, I realized my lack of vocabulary in the context of medicine and even politics. There was a portion of the video that covered a policy from the past, and there were multiple words that I had never heard before. Thankfully, there were subtitles so I was able to piece together what was being said. I wanted to challenge myself with this assignment by not over-relying on the subtitles, but by trying to understand what was being said by the context of the situation and the few words that I did know. It was refreshing to be challenged on my Korean skills and learning new vocabulary words. Another struggle I faced was the speed with which the narrator was speaking. When I speak with my Korean friends or my parents, it is definitely easier, but I think the introduction of new words hindered my ability to keep up with the speed of the speech.
Other than watching the video, I was also assigned to write a few sentences on other issues in Korea as well. These sentences were written entirely in Korean and focused on the political landscape. I wrote on the absence of an actual president in Korea currently and a little on how that came to be. There is also an ongoing problem of the extremely low birth rate in Korea. It's currently the lowest in the world and at this pace, Korea will actually begin to depopulate soon. This gave me a refreshed appreciation for writing and expressing my thoughts and ideas through a medium other than just speaking. This again revealed my weakness in vocabulary in this context. I had to use Google translate to be able to start my sentences and then to find very niche words such as, "birth-rate," "absence," and "population." Other than birth-rate, I thought these words to be fairly simple, but I found myself at a loss when actually having to express my thoughts on these subjects. I look forward to being challenged further and learning more nuanced words.
Comments
Good for you following such a directed language learning assignment. I wonder about what other things you've been up to with your language study this past month. How's it going? How do you feel about what you're learning and how you're learning? I empathize with the difficulties of niche vocabulary. I've recently been looking at tax vocabulary (dependent, abode, place of residence) in Portuguese and I have to say, it can be tough to stay motivated when working on such specific vocabulary.