110 Learning Journal #2

[Ann Pongsakul]

I definitely noticed that the first way they teach you how to say greetings in certain books is in the formal way first. Some books do not even go into the informal part. What confuses me sometimes through watching Korean dramas is that with complete strangers sometimes the informal way is used, someone with close people the formal version is used. So I think having a language partner will definitely help to clarify when to use what.  My learning goals for this week are to learn the greetings such as hello and goodbye and maybe follow the first and second lessons in Mango languages to do so. I have looked through various books and found Korean from Zero to be the best. The format is easy to follow and it breaks down the grammar concepts bit by a bit well. I really like Mango so far because it is not so much focused on the grammar but more on getting people to know how to say things. The first lesson went straight into saying things like I am a Korean person and not really breaking up the different parts that structure the sentence. I do see this being problematic a bit particularly if I want more in-depth grammar explanations. But overall for my learning goals, I really just want to be able to say certain things and not over focus on the grammar. I used Byki a bit, but I did not really like the format. I think it is useful for vocabulary but I did not find it so easy to find specific lists for specific categories I wanted to learn from. I think Diigo would be potentially helpful for finding other resources but I do not think I will actually use it that much to bookmark anything.