Looking back to my learning plan, I found myself accomplished most of my goals that I had in the beginning of this semester. Now, things I could do in Korean includes greeting and self-introduction, numbers, colors, emotions, distinguishing formal and informal Korean, asking for directions. I think the first reason that I have achieved most of goals is that I had a very realistic list of learning goals. Before I actually started learning Korean, I know that time is limited, so I did not expect myself to learn everything. The second reason is that I have a very detailed plan of what to learn every week. My Language partner Sun and I assigned all the tasks into different weeks during our first meeting.
However, there are still goals that I have not been able to achieve. For example, I did not really learn a lot about reading and writing. Most of the readings I learn was from the subtitle of the Korean Drama I watched, It’s Okay. That is love. In addition, I was planning to learn at least three Korean songs. During this semester, I learned one folk song, Three Little Bears and a KPOP song, Gee, by Girl’s Generation. I learned all of the lyrics in Three Little Bears and had a presentation on it by introducing the vocabularies about family members. However, I did not learn every lyric in Gee. Instead, I picked out all the words that express emotions. I found that learning songs is actually help me to learn Korean in a very pleasure and spontaneous way, and it became a great complementary when I systematically learn words about emotion and family. In addition, I can expand my research based on these songs with a cultural perspective.
Watching Korean drama was not part of my original learning plan because I thought watching drama is only for entertainment. However, after watching several episodes, it became one of my favorite part of learning Korean. I realized that I could learn many Korean words if I pay attention to what actors say and how do the words correspond with subtitles. Even more importantly, Korean drama reflect many interesting cultural facts. For example, I saw that when Koreans are asking for forgiveness they usually rub their hands.
Another favorite part of learning Korean this semester is about presentations. I really enjoyed preparing for the presentation because it pushes me to do a lot of research on Korean culture, which often correlates to history and contemporary social consensuses. The first presentation I gave was about shopping in Korea, but there was too many points to be nicely structured. Therefore, I used PowerPoint in the second presentation, which was about history of Korean. In order to be more specific, I concentrated on the impact of Chinese characters on Korean. It not only illustrate the Korean history, but also help me to know more about own language as well. The relationship between languages and cultures amazed me. For my final cultural project, I talked about fashion in Korea by comparing the traditional Korean custom and current Korean street fashion, and reflecting on the transformation of fashion and its impact on Korean contemporary culture.
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My plan to continue studying Korean is to put myself into the environment that is full of Korean speakers. I believe that the best way to practice speaking a language is to use it everyday. Therefore, I decide to go to Korea this coming summer. I am now applying for the summer study abroad program in Yonsei University. In this way, I can stay there for 6 weeks and practice my Korean intensely. In addition to it, I will do more work on reading Korean next semester.
How will you continue to build your knowledge of Korean?