It has been a challenge learning Korean without a teacher or language partner. After all, the purpose of language is to communicate with other people. I have deviated from my learning plan to account for this. Instead of learning vocabulary terms for specific topics, I have been learning more general phrases that are used in everyday conversation. This is because my goal is to converse in Korean. Rewatching my presentation also reminded me that learning a language can be fun! A lot of people learn a different language by watching TV shows or listening to music. I may need someone to teach me the technical aspects of Korean, but I can watch Korean videos/listen to Korean music on my own. I won’t understand all of the words, but it will help me become familiar with Korean sounds.
The in-class discussions about sound have been helpful in learning how to pronounce Korean words. The Korean language contains many sounds that are not used in the English language, so learning about how different sounds are produced is helpful. However, overall, I feel like there are several areas in which I have not seen the connection between what we have discussed in class and my efforts learning Korean. Similar to music, I hope to see how studying theory and playing an instrument relate to each other. I want to focus more on discovering and developing learning strategies. I think this will be very useful in connecting the abstract aspects of language and the practical language learning we do outside of class.
I have learned that language and culture have a closer relationship than I previously thought. There are many areas in the Korean language that are dependent on the speaker’s age in relation to the listener. This reflects the cultural value of respecting one’s elders. This also relates to the connection between language and culture in Spanish, which uses masculine and feminine words. Lately, people have been using neutral-gendered words instead. For example, the term “Latinx” arose as a gender-neutral alternative of Latino or Latina. Therefore, learning about Korean culture in addition to the language will help me improve my communicative competence.
I am focused on improving my basic interpersonal communicative skills because there are people in my life who only speak Korean who I wish to communicate with. I have learned the hard and embarrassing way that my grammar does not need to be absolutely perfect in order to be understood. (When I was in Peru, I made a very silly and amateur grammar mistake. The person I was talking to laughed at me but was still able to understand me.) Hence, discourse competence is emphasized in my learning plan, but sociolinguistic competence is also important, particularly for Korean. My goal in learning Korean is simply to be able to converse with Korean speakers, so that I may have more meaningful relationships with them.
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