Learning Journal #6

[Tanjila Islam]

One of the goals that I listed in my PanOpto recording is being able to have basic conversations in Korean. And this is what my learning partner and I have been focusing on during our tutoring sessions. I have already learning a lot of commonly used phrases -- I can introduce myself, ask others about them, their names, where they are from, etc.. I have also continued to listen to Korean recordings to work on my pronunciation. One of the things that I have experienced the most difficulty with is learning the alphabets. In fact, I understand Korean grammar rules better than I can remember the alphabets. A lot of the times I need to refer back to my charts to remember which letter is which. One of the things that I did learn a lot about is Korean culture -- which isn't something I was planning to focusing on this semester. However learning more about the culture from my language partner has helped me understand why certain phrases and certain grammar rules are used in the Korean society. I want to continue to doing this to improve my communicative competence.  I believe having more interactions and conversations with native speakers will help me understand, and remember, the vocabulary and their context better.