During these two weeks, I definitely have been using Korean more than last year. Due to the more frequent usage, I feel like talking in Korean requires less effort. Also, I tend to stutter less while speaking in Korean.
I have been reading Korean Webtoons to better my reading comprehension and learn more about Korean culture. One webtoon is called the Tower of God and the other is called the God of highschool. I noticed that because webtoons are designed to have limited words, the words are very informal and concise. This makes it a lot easier to read and understand compared to a Korean novel. Reading the webtoons has weirdly led me to think more in Korean. When I say think in Korean, I’m talking about the voice in your head that talks when you think. It had been a while since I thought in Korean so that was very cool. I also have started studying a Korean song called Me Before You. On a google doc, I translated the lyrics into English and tried to understand each word. Now every time I listen to Me Before You, I will be utilizing active recall, and will help me memorize the phrases and words in the song.
I practiced my Korean conversational skills with my brother. We talked in Korean over FaceTime for several minutes. He was pretty surprised that I could speak Korean more comfortably since before coming to college, my Korean was getting worse every day. He jokingly told me that he will also have to improve his Korean lest my Korean will be better than his. I also practiced my Korean conversational skills with my mother. I could not talk to her as much as I have wanted to because she is recovering from surgery. But during the time that we were able to talk, she told me that she noticed how I seemed more comfortable when I was talking to her in Korean. Yet, I still have a lot to work on. I get stuck sometimes when I speak because of my lack of vocabulary.
I met with my language partners So Myung and Tommy. One week we just focused on our conversation skills and just talked about how our week was going, career goals, and family situations, etc. in Korean. During the second week, we read and analyzed two Korean articles. One article was about the weather forecast, and the other article was about how supermarkets’ sales of masks and over the counter medicine surged as COVID-19 initially hit South Korea. Tommy and I took turns reading each line out loud in Korean and translating them in English. The articles were definitely challenging to read because they use a lot of words that I did not know. I had to use a lot of context clues using the words I already knew to figure out the articles were saying. But I think reading the article out loud helped me be more intentional with my pronunciation and analyzing the text.
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