Blog Post 4

[Ariana Kim]

This is my final biweekly blog post of the semester and I am happy to say I have made a lot of progress based on my lesson plan and what I hoped to accomplish. I have decided to stick with just my diary entries that I do twice per week and rewrite with corrections afterwards. I have done this in writing via iPad and sending it back and forth through and app that I can save the progress and have my tutor Rachel correct and this has improved my spelling and grammar. We also go over during lessons the common errors she has noticed in my entries and other collection of difficult diphthongs and common spelling mistakes that are made in Korean and that has proven to be useful. Sometimes I feel frustrated when I realize how many spelling mistakes and grammar errors there are in a single entry, which aren’t small, but rather couple of paragraphs so they are sizable and many corrections needed to be made, but as I progressed and throughout the semester, the number of corrections have gone down in number. There are still a lot of errors as I try to incorporate newer and difficult words and grammar, but I also try to include older words that I have messed up before so that I can practice spelling and using those words and the different grammar forms. This helped in my daily life such as writing and texting my family and friends in Korean. I have become more confident in writing and even if I make a mistake I like to think of it as a learning opportunity. I had a moment in November and until today in keeping up with my diary entries due to health issues and being ill, but overall, I think I did my best in keeping up with the diary entries and my penmanship has greatly improved as well as a result of writing by hand and I recommend anyone who is learning a language that has written form to practice writing it in hand and it helps to commit the mistakes and corrections to memory a lot better and also helps penmanship in that language. I learned that penmanship in different languages are also at a different level. I am proficient in penmanship in English as I am used to the stroke movements in English, but in Korean I have poor handwriting because the strokes and movements are unfamiliar to my hand, but I have been improving since the start of this semester! So this is a side effect of my lessons and practice that I didn’t expect, but am extremely happy with. My family had commented my progress and improvement in texting and writing and I am happy to say my lessons and practice have paid off. I think later when I continue to learn and continue my progress in learning Korean, I will choose to practice daily, in smaller increments in an efficient way instead of cumbersome multiple long sessions of practicing and learning. I learned that smaller and frequent practices and in depth is better than trying to bite off more than I can chew. Also, making a conscious effort to challenge myself in that time period I am practicing like I did with repeating words I have gotten wrong before or grammar and also trying newer words and grammar forms are a good way to always learn new things and get better all the time. And so the journey does not stop there! 

[Amy Jeon]

Hi Ariana! I enjoyed reading about your language learning journey! I was able to relate a lot to what you said, especially on feeling frustrated with making a lot of mistakes and grammar errors. It gets upsetting when there are so many but it feels amazing when the corrections go down in number as you progress. I also did not think about how handwriting could help your brain commit the mistakes and corrections to memory better, which would help improve writing skills. I wrote my summaries by typing, but I would definitely love to try writing them by hand next time.