Reflection 7
In last reflection, I mentioned the benefits of making the connections between new words in vocabulary and the words that I already know. In the new chapter I continue to use this strategy, and I found more benefits. Firstly, it helps clarifies phrases in spoken sound and in written words. For example, 작다 and 짧다, which have similar meanings are to be small and to be short. Since they have similar pronunciations, I thought they were the same word before I search in the dictionary. Because of the awareness of the uncertainty towards it and the willingness to clarify this knowledge, I learnt these two words. Secondly, by making connections we can notice some language phenomenons such as, 비 has the similar meaning as suffices un-, non-, dis-, etc. When I saw the word 비싸다, to be expensive, I immediately thought of the word 싸다 in last chapter, which has an overlapped part with 비싸다 and have the exact opposite meaning, to be cheap. From my previous knowledge of Korean, one of the meanings of 비 has a corresponding Chinese character 非, which indicates negativity. Also, I collect other meanings of 비, such as rain and sad. By doing this small research, the knowledge of new words is no longer linear, instead, it has branches and leaves and has relationships with each other. Thirdly, you can make connections between the grammar and expression session in the following sections of the same chapter with the examples. For example, 고맙다 changes the ㅂ to 우, when it meets ~어요 for vowel contraction and becomes 고마워요. This exception is is not mentioned in the following contents of this chapter but by having this explanation when remembering the words makes the language phenomenon a lot easier to understand. Moreover, the connections between the dictionary form and the everyday usage of the word. For example, when me and my Korean speaking friends say good night after dance practice, we would say 잘자 to each other. However, when I encounter its dictionary form, 자다, to sleep, I didn’t recognize it at first. Now I know the character 잘 means good and well, and 자 means sleep. To extend this knowledge, you can ask someone to go to bed quickly by saying 빨리자 where 빨리 means quick.
Another thing that I really want to share with Korean learners who use the textbook Integrated Korean is that sometime the English translations besides the Korean words are not as accurate. There is one word in this chapter’s vocabulary list, 운동 which has the translation exercise and it is not accurate. This Korean phrase can be used in various place outside exercise, such as 운동선수 which means athlete where 선수 means player. However, Chinese has a similar word, 运动, pronounced as [yun dong]. I mentioned at the beginning of the semester about whether it is better to use Chinese textbook to learn Korean or English textbook for me. From my experience of using these two I would say they have both pros and cons. Using English textbook you can easily communicate with your fellow classmates and your language partner about the questions you have during your study, or search on Google. In contrast, using Chinese textbook for Chinese learners is definitely easier and quicker to read and remember, and more content can be conveyed more accurately.
Comments
Hi! I thought this was a really cool post and I learned a lot about how Chinese and Korean correlate. I think it would actually probably be way more efficient to use a Chinese textbook, since Korean builds a lot off of Chinese language and root words. Sort of like how English and Spanish are very closely related!