In the past week we have wrapped up learning about Hangul, the Korean alphabet. We have now started learning about basic sentence structure and have practiced writing and saying easy sentences. In order to say these sentences, we have also learned new vocabulary that we can use in the context. The sentences we have learned so far are “hello what is your name”, “hello my name is __”, “I am a student”, “I am a teacher”, and “I am from __ country”. I was hoping to be better at saying these sentences, but I am struggling a little bit with reading the Hangul on the board while forming a whole sentence with the right pronunciation at the same time.
The strategies we are using involve a lot of repetition. We repeat the words a lot by reading and speaking. I am building onto that by listening to Korean lessons on YouTube and practicing my notes. So far, my strategies have been fairly successful, however, now that the vocabulary and sentences are getting more complex, I will have to practice even more on my own time in order to reach my weekly and monthly goals.
I will build onto what I have learned about in my target language by actually saying and writing actual sentences rather than just individual syllable. I will get to put the basics I have learned up to this point together to actually communicate. In order to build on my strategies, I will have to dedicate at least 30 minutes each day to review what I have learned and to expand on it. I have been fairly successful at learning the language so far, but since my goal is to have a basic conversation at the end of the semester, I will have to complete more work out of class.
During this week, I have felt stronger emotions while practicing the language than before. It progressively gets harder for me and even though I like challenges, it can get difficult for me to deal with a language that is so vastly different from anything I have learned before. I am more nervous every time I am asked to read a sentence out loud, because there are a lot of aspects to remember while reading and speaking.
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Hi Felicitas - I understand your sentiment in the final paragraph of your post. As I continue to study Maltese, I find that it is difficult to combine the elements of pronunciation and grammar. There are many grammatic structures that are different from English. For example, the word "is" does not exist in the Maltese present tense. A person might say this apple instead of this is an apple. Also, the endings of words change based upon what the following word is. I believe the second grammatic structure stems from the Arabic language, which I am not at all familiar with. In addition to these grammatical challenges, I find that I am still working on consistently pronouncing words correctly.
One thing that helps me is to focus more on phrases than piecing together vocabulary words. I search up how to say strings of thought and listen to them pronounced. Then, I look at how they are spelled and which components of sound are linked to which words. This is a more deductive approach to learning that helps me be more successful!