I created my learning plan for this spring semester through Microsoft PowerPoint as a standard mini presentation. I have some previous knowledge of Korean language and culture, but my language partner helped me with outlining a plan to improve on some of my weaker points and to also learn in areas I haven’t explored yet. Since we talked about the four skills of learning a language, I organized my plan into those points: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Within those categories, I tried to specify more in depth of what I wanted to accomplish.
My style of learning is tactile, so I know that I’ll have to use my speech and body and not just read to learn successfully. So far, my language group read some news articles together and tried to interpret them. Through this lesson, we learned many vocabulary words related to weather and also the supply and demand of stores. We also went over spacing rules when writing in Korean. Reading and writing are not my fortes, so I had some difficulty, especially the reading. I was able to read but did so at a slow pace since I was not familiar with that particular type of reading. I thought that learning the spacing rules were interesting but also learned that most native Koreans also have trouble doing it the correct way because the rules are flexible and have many exceptions. As for resources, my language instructor brings in copies of the articles, so I am not in need of textbooks. I found that a website called LifeinKorea to be helpful when looking for vocabulary words because they separate it into topics. I glanced over body parts and the health sections and was able to pick up a few words. My other resources would be my friends who already speak Korean or are learning the language. We try to speak in Korean so that we practice the language and so we can learn more through them whether it’s about culture or some current slang.
I think because we are reading current news, I will get to understand the culture of Korean more deeply. This also implies for the language since the way people speak in a society changes over time. Even though I was born in Korea and still consider myself as Korean, I was raised in the U.S., so I wasn’t completely exposed to modern Korea until I visited recently. It prompted my interested and motivated me to learn more about my country. I realized that I was missing so much information about their history and traditions.
I have yet to receive any written feedback from my classmates, but we did discuss about my level of Korean after my presentation in class. There are different reading levels in English and pronunciations can sometimes be difficult. In Korean, you should know how to pronounce it once you learn the basic alphabet. It might take a little longer, but there will most likely be one way of saying it. On the other hand, I also discussed with my peers that if someone says a word, there can be multiple ways of writing it. Overall, we discussed about the interesting aspects of different languages in general.
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