I have been working with my language partner recently on conversation skills, listening practice, and the number systems. We combined the conversation and listening skills by recording two conversations of my language partner for me to listen to and pick out what I can understand. We then go over what I was unable to hear, or words/grammar points I didn't know. I then listen back to the conversations and practicing hearing the new phrases and making sense of the conversation. This has been an effective strategy in assessing how much I know and identifying things I need to work on. I hope that in the next couple of weeks, I will be able to have an informal polite and a casual conversation with someone about when and where to meet to do something such as studying or seeing a movie. Eventually, I want to try to have an impromptu conversation like this with one of my Korean friends. Next time, we will practice conversing in our group meeting with a written script and go through the same process of working through anything we don't know. It is helpful to have a session one on one with my language partner and one with a group so we may practice together and also get individual help.
We have also been working on the two Korean number systems. At first, I thought I knew Korean numbers fairly well, so I expected it to be more of a review. But I soon realized that the application of the numbers is much more complicated than I thought. One version is derived from Hangul and only goes up to 99. It is used when referring to the number of minutes, people, and years of age. Then there is Sino-Korean which is derived from Chinese and used for dates, money, hours, addresses and any number over 100. The months are also named by counting them. Sometimes I get very confused when I have to remember which way to say 23 for example. If I were to say that I am 23 years old, I would use the Korean derived numbers, but if I were to say the 23rd of March, I would use Sino-Korean. I have been practicing by coming up with a list of random dates and times and practicing writing them out and then saying them out loud. I feel that this strategy is helpful, yet to further my understanding, I will start to write out the date every day along with whatever time it is at that moment. While learning the numbers is a bit frustrating, I think that repetition is really going to help solidify it, so instead of spending time trying to remember what number system I should use, it will already be memorized.
Comments
I think your strategy of listening to recorded conversations is really good because you can listen to it several times and try to pick out more phrases. It also helps you identify what phrases you don’t know. It’s also helpful that you have very concrete goals for what you want to accomplish soon. Good luck with your language goals!