Even after the first week of being given materials and resources on how to self-teach, I realized that I did not know how to effectively self-teach in my past attempts. I did not exhaust all the resources out there, but I just thought sticking to one book would be enough. However, beginning this semester and having so many resources and different ways to go about learning, it was difficult to make a coherent plan. I tried out different websites and bought the Korean from Zero book and I ended up going weeks just doing different lessons on each and I was only learning bits and pieces here and there. I made my learning goals and I thought they were reasonable for a semester’s time, but I really forgot about what I had on my list. I was using Korean from Zero and I just wanted to go chapter by chapter because I was really just looking for structure, which I felt like my learning goals were not structured enough.
I was and I think I still am more accustomed to the structure of learning languages in the classroom where there is a set list and going through topics seem to flow naturally. But even with my learning goals, which are topics that a lot of beginner’s Korean books cover, I felt like I was jumping around and not really grasping everything I needed to know. So from here on out, I think if I learn another language or continue Korean, I will find a course to take. I like that in a course, the teacher will have activities where allowing you to learn by interacting with others. I do not know many Korean students on campus, so I did not have a language partner, which is something I really value when learning a language. When I was studying abroad, tandem language partners was a big thing. It is where you teach your partner English and they teach you French, for example. I learned better French abroad in one semester than I ever learned in six years of Spanish classes and although my grammar was not the best, I was confident in holding conversations. For Korean I am nowhere near that level of confidence.
I think the way I ended up learning as much as I could to complete my learning goals is sufficient for learning survival conversation topics for a short trip to Korea. I ended up just using online sources like Talk to me in Korean and Korean word/phrase lists to learn the basic vocabulary for each topic I listed and I liked those sources the best. I think when I created my learning goals, I had it in the back of my mind that I would go more in-depth than what I ended up learning for each goal, but in the end I just wanted to learn at least something in each topic. For most of the semester, I was learning more of the grammar rules and how to construct sentences using the Korean from Zero book and I was getting stuck and frustrated. I ended up learning half of my learning goals going through that book, but it was a much longer route because of the detailed grammar. I was getting confused because the book would say a phrase in one way and then another source would say it differently. In the end I realized there are multiple ways to say a sentence in terms of the formal/informal endings and I think I have heard enough of the different ways to be able to piece out sentences I want to say. If I continue Korean, I would like to learn past and future tenses so I can be able to expand the range of conversation to talk about future plans and my past experiences.
Comments