Korean is always my interest to learn. As a country that preserves its millennia-old tradition and culture, Korea has developed many unique cultural heritage and traditions. Various feature of Korea’s deep-rooted culture, tangible and intangible, pervade every corner of Korean society and neighbor country to this day. So far, I have studied two foreign languages, English and Korean. Though learning Korean this semester, I found that I have totally different ways of learning these two languages. For English, I studies in China, and I was taught in a formal way with strong emphasis on learning the structure and grammar, building up knowledge of new vocabulary and doing a lot of exercises during primary and junior high school, like translating Chinese to English. I paid little attention on speaking and communicating in English with other persons. The learning method is just basically provided with theoretical frameworks, logical rationale and rules. Compared with learning English, I was more involved in the way learning Korean. Based on the calendar and guideline of 105 and 110, I set up my own learning plans and schedules at the beginning of this semester. In addition, Then I identifies I am the auditory learner, I can sound out and spell the strange vocabulary based on the whole sentence. Listening and talking with learning partner is the best way to learn every aspects of Korean, not only the language but also the culture. This self-directed language is what I pursuit. I am really confident and pleasant for achieving my goal, because I handle the basic conversation and travel in Korea no worried about the lost. I also expand my learning activities, such as watching Korean drama, listening Korean radio through Tuneln Radio apps and researching on how to cook Korean cuisine. in my opinion, learning vocabularies is important, which is the base of composing Korean. During the meeting with learning partner, we learned new words, sentences, and talked about some Korean culture. In order to pronounce correctly, Sun Yoon recorded the words and sentences that she taught us on class so that we can listen and repeat build the foundation for the future learning. It is always the difficulty for me to get rid of accent when speaking both Korean and English. The accent is obvious when I start to learn a new language, and trough talking with native speaker at the beginning of learning Korean I can work better on sounding more native.
Understanding Korean culture helped me learn Korean more easily. I tried to find the correlation of the language that I knew. Through the learning in 105, I realized that learning language requires an explicit awareness and understanding. Due to the long-term Anmerican and Chinese presence in South Korean, Korean borrowed some words directly from English and Chinese, just like what I introduce in my presentation. Moreover, through watching Korean drama, the one of noticeable characteristics of Korean is that Koreans used the word “our” a lot more than “my”. Some English phrase like “my home,” “my school,” and “my country” would be translated into “our home,” “our school,” and “our country” in Korean, even though you are talking about yourself without others. Because Korean culture is more collective than western cultures, Korean’s way of thinking that a group in which an individual is involved is more important than the individual itself. Under this kind of culture, the tendency to regard a group’s profit is more valuable than personal’s profit, which help Korean society grow to economically. Another noticeable point of Korean is its polite forms. Different from Japanese and Chinese, Korean possesses several different expressions for the same word. People have to choose different expression whom they are talking with. For example, we could say “Bab(meal)” to our friends, but we have to say “Jin-ji(meal)” to my father or grandfather.
Thus, my way to learn Korean is a really fun learning journey. I will continue to study Korean in next semester. I may focus on how to talk with other person in polite form, since it is important in Korea. Taking 105 will help me keep learning Korean in next semester. Because the ability of self-studying, and researching on the background of culture, making my own plan and writing learning journal to evaluate what I thought and the way I process. I am really looking forward my trip to Korea this summer, and I can use all I learned this semester to communicate with other people.
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