As the semester just started, my partner and I have done less language exchange and rather more structuring of our course/plan for the semester. After my first SDLC semester with my partner, I could feel my Korean conversational skills improved, or at least I felt more comfortable and at ease using it. However, after going to Korea, I realized I was far from fluency. So for this semester, I wanted to focus on 2 things: more strenuous/technical/niche/faster/complicated conversations, and writing skills. With writing, however, I will allocate more time outside of our sessions
So for the past 2ish weeks, my partner and I have been engaging in lengthy conversations in Korean, as planned. As with most conversational activity, it is much, much easier to select a topic and converse about it. Luckily, since I had the same partner as last time, we mostly talked about how each other's semester has been and caught up. I had told her beforehand that I wanted her to speak naturally, and that she didn't have to dumb down any words, and encouraged her to use harder/complicated terminology if possible. Immediately I could tell she had been slowing down her words for my sake, and our conversations became a lot faster paced.
As with writing, it is harder to meaningfully practice with a partner once past a certain level. So, my partner has decided to rather give out tasks/topics to write about, in which I complete for the next session. I have gotten used to typing in Korean, which often has suggestions and autocorrect, and therefore am a bit helpless when it comes to paper and pencil writing. I hope to improve a lot more in that regard.
Comments
I also struggle a lot to find a balance of skills whenever I talk to someone else who is fluent in Korean. I also told the native speaker to speak fluently to me and them also without even thinking about it "dumbed down" their language. I think it's just a normal thing we humans to in order to connect and understand each other better.
I like that you have two specific goals that you want to get out of the semester. It is great that you communicated to your language partner to not slow down for you so that you could really challenge yourself! The autocorrect is definitely a blessing and I hope that writing on paper gets easier.