As my first journal post, I have not been able to officially start studying yet. However, I do have some ideas for what I would like to focus on and some reflections on what has worked best with language learning before.
After spending last Spring semester in Chile, it is safe to say I am fluent in Spanish. There are still a lot of specifics I don't know along with some vocabulary, but I can carry on long conversations with locals and have been able to apply my skills in situations here in the U.S. As the first language other than English I have studied, I know some mistakes I have made and tactics that have worked for me in my learning process. While I was in Chile, I had a Spanish class 4 days a week for 3 hours. We went over grammar, did exercises, and got a mini-lecture on what would be covered in our classes later that day. Despite the 12 hours per week studying, I noticed little improvement in my speaking and fluency abilities. At that point, I understood essentially all of Spanish grammar in a classroom setting, but application was key in getting it to be natural with minimal thinking time. Practicing every day talking with my host family, people at the grocery store, and locals around the food markets drastically increased my fluency and understanding of the language.
When learning Korean, I don't want to make the same mistake by only learning out of a textbook and not producing the language extensively. Vocabulary is also an essential part of a language. I have learned that simple sentences can be categorized by structure. Once you know that structure, you can substitute several words to create countless versions of essentially the same sentence. I want to make sure I focus on vocabulary this semester alongside conversing and producing the language regularly.
Over the summer, I downloaded an app called Pimsleur which has pre-made 30 min lessons, but it's all auditory learning. There is a lot of repetition and you are given several opportunities to reproduce what you're learning in that lesson and in lessons to follow to review. I found that knowing phrases first and then being able to break them down afterward grammatically was an effective tactic in my learning of Korean. In just two weeks I was able to formally talk about the weather, if that person had eaten lunch/breakfast, if they speak Korean/English and to what extent, where I'm from, and phrases such as excuse me, thank you, I'm sorry, that's right, and how to incorporate small adjectives such as a little, yet, a lot, something, anything, nothing, etc. In other words, I learned a lot. If possible, I would like to continue something like this, but if not then hopefully a student here could go through that process with me.
I am very much looking forward to continuing my Korean studies, especially now since I'm not studying Spanish at the same time. I hope I can truly focus on it and I'm excited about the new opportunities with the Korean Church partnership.
Comments
Thanks for sharing your experience with Spanish! I think you have great experience and understanding that constant application of the language helps you to improve dramatically. I'm also very impressed with how you learned some phrases during the summer using techniques that work best for you. I think breaking down words grammatically after learning them is something that I would like to try while I improve my Korean. Great Post!