Wahoo~
It’s great to be back to actively learning a language again!
This week was mainly about planning out a rough idea on what I wanted to learn about this semester. Although I am a native speaker, there is so much information about Korea I don’t know about since I grew up and attended school in the U.S. I hope I learn a lot about my home country and can also share what I learn with others in the future.
It’s been about a year since taking an SDLC course and this will be my first time taking Korean after having the experience of also “teaching” Korean through the SDLAP program. While most of my language partners focused on learning the Korean language as an introduction, I want to focus on learning Korea’s history and the roots of the culture’s unique traditions. I enjoy watching Korean variety shows such as Sixth Sense or Running Man, and I realized that I didn’t quite understand some of the jokes or references. They frequently play games to “guess the saying/idiom” and although I could participate occasionally, I found that I needed to actively study to get a better and broaden my knowledge of Korean culture.
Another reason I wanted to take this course again was because of the influence of another course, Art & Asia. When I tried looking for a history gen ed, I was encouraged to take this course and discovered that the professor was Korean and studied art history, mainly that of China, Japan, and Korean. When I think of the “arts” in Korea, like many people, I think about the popular music or dramas that are recognized internationally. While those topics are relevant and interesting, I also want to dive into learning about Korean art history and how it shaped its culture.
This semester, I will mainly do my research on Korea independently, but use my community language partner (Vivian Shon) to continue conversing in Korean and help me keep accountable. Although this might seem simple, I understood the large impact of frequently using Korean while being a language partner. I find that when I come back to school after staying home, I sometimes am unable to find the right words in English. This also happens when I return home but seems to be more extreme such that I sometimes need to use a translator or describe the word I’m looking for. I haven’t informed Vivian about my plan yet, so that’ll be the first thing on my list I’ll have to do this week!
I’m looking forward to study the unique traditions in Korea and to explore both traditional and modern art. And since the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is close by, I plan on visiting too! This semester I hope to compile my weekly study in a Google Docs so that I can keep track of the topics I covered throughout the months. Since I’m also a language partner for others, maybe I can use this compilation of information and share them with my partners next semester!
Comments
It is so cool that you'll be a student while having previously been a teacher. I bet that is super helpful in shaping what you want your course to look like. It makes sense that you would want more cultural context to language fluency and I am excited to see how you create a course that helps you find that.