Summarize your work this semester, the progress you made and the difficulties you encountered.
Because I just began studying Korean this semester, I had to start from the most basic of the basics and establish a solid foundation first. While making my learning plan at the beginning of the semester, I underestimated how difficult it would be to start learning a language of which I had almost no prior knowledge. The pacing of the schedule that I initially outlined was much too fast, especially for the early phases of the semester. For instance, because I haven’t had to learn a radically different writing system since beginning Japanese in my junior year of high school, I had forgotten how long it takes to become adequately familiar with a new alphabet. I spent more time working on identification, writing, and pronunciation of the alphabet than I would have wanted to, but once I had a firm foundation in reading and writing the alphabet, I was able to learn more quickly.
In terms of grammar, I had a leg up coming into Korean with a background in Japanese. Because of my understanding of the Japanese language, I already understood fundamental elements of the Korean language, like different types of particles or basic sentence structure. For instance, both Japanese and Korean use a particle to denote an objects location (‘O’ in Japanese and “ae” in Korean) and both function in a similar way, so it was easy for me to learn how to describe location because it was just a matter of swapping out Japanese words for Korean ones while the grammar structure remained the same.
I also already knew some Korean vocabulary thanks to cognates between the two languages; however, I found learning vocabulary very difficult. I had to build a completely new vocabulary, and I also had to resist my involuntary reflex to use Japanese words in place of Korean ones. Sometimes, I would unconsciously use a Japanese word when I didn’t know the word in Korean, or I would use Japanese pronunciation when speaking. For example, for ‘coffee’ I would say the Japanese ‘ko-hee’ instead of the Korean ‘keopee.’
Overall, I think I learned a good amount this semester. I started off knowing very little about Korean and finished being able to read, write, and converse in basic ways.
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