Reflecting my learning experience this semester, I learned a lot about what I wanted to achieve, but I could have done a better job on being efficient and utilizing the learning materials. In the beginning, I decided to sign up for Self Directed Language Class to further develop my skills on Korean as I believed my language level has not improved since I moved to America. I wanted to focus especially on reading and writing on the topics of business and politics.
As a language learner who did not start with a new language like other students in class, it was hard for me to get more in depth with the language skills that I achieved already as a native speaker. Some of the goals that I set up in the beginning of the semester were hard to achieve since I could not practice writing skills as much as I wanted to. On the other hand, I strongly believe that my reading skill has improved a lot over the course of reading the articles and journals. Reading them with the dictionary helped me to understand the sentence structure and their relationship in context as well as it gave me a better sense of comprehension. Having a discussion with Evelyn after the reading also helped to organize my thoughts. Conversation assisted to clearly comprehend on topics of the articles and let myself to express my thoughts in organized and clear manner. I enjoyed getting to know the political aspect of my country as I did not know much about it before taking this class. Evelyn explained very passionately and I decided to research further on this topic of political culture for my final cultural presentation.
I eager to continue the learning process in my level of language achievement in the future by reading more articles by myself and watching the news more often. I noticed that I could get better at it as I expose myself more often to political news and business professional articles. Moreover, I will strive to enhance my writing skills by practicing the grammar rules and structures in real life examples as I hope to become a better written communicator in the future.
The most useful language learning tool were my language partner, dictionaries, and news articles. Having a language partner guided me in a way to achieve my learning goals more efficiently. I was able to learn new vocabulary words by utilizing the dictionary well as well as it taught me to use the words in right context. Lastly, practicing reading with articles challenged me to learn more professional and intermediate stage of language, which contains a totally different content from daily conversation I am used to.
At last, I would definitely like to take this class again if I get a chance in order to develop my language skills further. Furthermore, I am interested in taking a language other than Korean as I watched my classmates enjoying it. It was a great opportunity for me to know my level of language skills and to be motivated to strive for further development.
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