105 Learning Journal #10

[Ann Pongsakul]

Coming into this independent study course, I already knew how to read and write, but I didn't know how to speak, so whatever I read I wouldn't really understand. If I was told a word in Korean I could figure out how to spell it and write it. I learned this in 7th grade through my friend. She really only taught me the basic alphabet and from there I could figure out how to form the letters here and there through online resources. I first started by figuring out how to spell the names of Korean people I knew. The little special cases where some words that sound a certain way aren't spelled the way they sound were easy to figure out through seeing a variety of signs in the area I went to middle school. When I started learning Korean, I was able to skip the first couple chapters in the books that focused on learning how to read and write the letters. I found it easier for pronunciation if I read the example sentences in Korean rather than the romanized version. I think Korean has an easy writing system. The grammar and learning how to speak part is the most difficult. But I think it really helped me get through the grammar and achieve my lesson plans faster since I knew how to read. I think I am still pretty slow at the reading, just because they are different letters. I find that if they are written very small, I can't really tell what it says because the letters are all smushed together.