110: Bi-Weekly Journal #2

[Ellie Yoon]

Since the last Bi-Weekly post, I was able to meet up with my language partner Jimin and also Tommy because we decided to learn as a group. During our weekly meeting, we also watched a variety show on YouTube that uses a lot of slang before diving into the lesson. All three of us actually already watched the show before, which was fun. Our first lesson covered the most commonly used Korean slang words. Because of my previous Korean knowledge, I knew of a couple of terms such as 치맥 (“Chimaek” = chicken and beer), 핵노잼 (“hecknojam” = extremely boring), and text abbreviations (ㄱㄱ, ㄴㄴ, ㄱㅅ, ㅇㅈ, and ㅇㅇ). It gave me a little confidence to already know of some words. Jimin gave Tommy and me a list of terms to memorize along with the meaning behind each one. I have always wanted to learn more slang, as it is one indicator of proficiency. I also struggled with understanding content in Korean (comments on YouTube, text conversations, and more) because I didn’t have much practice and knowledge of contemporary phrases/abbreviations. To get used to the new words, Tommy and I copied down the terms in Korean and the definitions on our own notebooks. Jimin would ask us to guess the meaning. This is possible because most slang terms are abbreviations and therefore the meanings are somewhat predictable. The term for slang in Korean, 급식체 is a reflection of the culture in Korea: it is a fusion between the word for school-provided lunch (which elementary, middle, and high school students eat at school and the language is made by young people) and handwriting. To add some current events into the lesson, Jimin prepared a reading comprehension session with an article about the Coronavirus. Tommy and I read the article out loud and translated the sentences to Jimin. This helped me not only show my language partner my skill level but also some practice with vocalizing more advanced vocabulary. Jimin is a great language learning partner because she is always open to questions, understanding of mistakes/confusion, and good at readjusting our meetings to fit my learning needs. It also helps that I am well acquainted with her outside of our Korean class. She is someone I can always practice my Korean with. After the meeting, I went over the words I learned on another sheet of paper. I think I always remember content better if I handwrite it down over and over again. So I tend to study for classes by rewriting notes, questions/answers, and diagrams. I plan to continue using this method to review material for my SDLAP courses. I might also utilize online resources like Quizlet to create study sets. In terms of building on what I’ve learned, I am trying to use abbreviations in my text conversations with friends and family who speak Korean. I am also looking up more commonly used slang online to create a larger list of vocabulary for me to review. As I continue learning the Korean language, I want to shift my focus more towards writing and higher-level content such as slang, idioms, and vocabulary before I begin learning business terms.