Based on a lot of goals I had in this learning plan, I honestly believe I did not achieve many of the goals as successfully as I would have liked. This is primarily because I was not provided a language partner which I heavily based my language learning and improving on. My main goal was to improve my speaking abilities by practicing with a fluent Korean speaker but since I was never able to, I could not really apply what I learned through oral practice and conversation. Thus, the lack of a language partner was the greatest stumbling block for me, and also the main reason why I had to adjust my goals to be more focused on reading and writing. Practicing my reading skills was fairly simple since there were many resources I found online that helped me practice correcting my pronunciation and accent. It was more difficult for me to practice my writing, especially writing in a formal manner since I relied heavily on messaging and texting through the HelloTalk app that I used to communicate with native Korean speakers. While the app was definitely helpful and challenged me to practice my grammar and spelling skills, I could not improve my formal writing skills as much as I would have liked to since the friends I made through HelloTalk preferred to communicate in an informal manner. This is because formality between friends creates a barrier from becoming closer in Korean culture.
The most interesting aspect of 110 that I enjoyed the most was researching about cultural topics and presenting them to the class as well as learning aspects of Korean culture that I never knew through other people’s research and presentations. For example, one of the presentations was about the architecture of traditional Korean houses which was very fascinating to me since there was so much history and intelligence behind the design that I always overlooked when I saw these houses in pictures and in real life. As for the least interesting aspect, the assigned readings were the least enjoyable to me. Though they were helpful in learning the components that make a language and made me more aware of what could be difficult to learn in a language, I do not think I actually applied this knowledge when improving my Korean.
I will continue my learning by not only continuing my use of the resources that I have found by taking this course but also by going to Korea and experiencing the language and culture firsthand. This summer I will be spending three weeks in Korea taking an intensive Korean language learning program at Yonsei University. There, I hope to improve even more in not just my ability to speak, read, and write, but also gain greater understanding of how Koreans my age interact, since the use of language often differs between generations.
In the future, I would like to learn more about the connections between culture and language, and go more in depth in the reasons why some words, phrases, or expressions are so difficult to convey in another language. I think it is intriguing how translations are often not as simple as they seem, and how in many cases understanding a certain aspect of a language has to come from one’s own intuition.
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