The semester is going by so fast and my Korean is improving just as much. Jimin and I began to study some Korean idiomatic expressions. Even though I try to study these expressions as often as I can every semester, there’s just so many out there to learn. Because it is not often used in a regular, informal conversations, I feel like it is hard to retain them once I learn them. Making vocabulary cards does help a lot but it is hard to find practical use of them. I do find some expressions in some of the videos that I watch, but some are expressions that I have never heard before. To be more interactive with these expressions, I began to watch Korean variety shows with quizzes related to these expressions. It is a lot more exciting and easier to retain once I engage myself to follow along a game. In addition, it is helpful to see many examples and different usage of these expressions. It helps me learn when and how these expressions are appropriate in different conversations. Jimin helps me so much in finding significant hints to learning these expressions. Identifying same letters used in different expressions can generally help me lead to its meaning. As I start to remember more letters, my learning speed improves by a lot.
In celebration to the new Korean Oscar winning movie Parasite, we watched some of the movie and read articles about the movie. I truly recommend watching this movie if anyone did not watch it yet. It depicts a lot of controversial topics of Korean society and it is very engaging with all the details put together in every scene. There are several debates about the meaning behind the movie. Although the title itself represents the message of the movie, it is up to the audience to decide whether the poor or the rich is the parasite. It was really fun and exciting to read all the thoughts on the movie and reading something so interesting really helps with my motivation to read Korean articles. I already feel like I have improved so much and found myself much more comfortable reading Korean.
Finally, I continued to speak Korean as much as possible with Jimin and other students. My parents were really surprised and proud that I was using so much Korean with them. This past week, I was helping my parents translate some documents that they needed, and I was surprised how I was able to handle both languages so comfortably. It took a bit of time to do it, but I felt comfortable doing it. I have always avoided these kinds of tasks and asked my brother to help my parents. In order to expose myself to more Korean usage, I gladly assisted my parents. I felt that the exchange between Korean and English in my head was very natural and it didn’t feel like there was a barrier in between. Although I had to look up some technical terms that I didn’t know, I was able to learn a lot of new vocabulary through this process. I think it is a significant improvement that I am taking more initiatives and am willing to use Korean whenever possible.
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