Overall, I am proficient in listening, intermediate in reading and speaking, and weak in writing. I can comfortably start a conversation without much thinking and express my opinions and feelings to a certain extent, but conversational topics are limited to casual everyday chats. The most I can read are short passages. Anything longer and more complex, it becomes difficult to keep up. Writing is a struggle. I can send text messages and write short statements, but that's about it.
Since I grew up hearing Korean all my life, I’ve been speaking it intuitively without actually learning grammar and vocab. So, my ultimate goal is to expand my vocabulary and learn actual grammar. I've always wanted to learn in a classroom environment, but since that is not available here, I want to improve my reading and writing skills by using textbooks. I want to be able to read chapter books for kids and also want to be better at spelling. For speaking, I want to be able to speak comfortably in formal language with people other than my family because I tend to only use casual speech. Essentially, I want to just gain a strong foundation in the language.
As I continued to take the Japanese class here at UR, I happened to wonder about one day becoming better at Japanese than Korean. Yes, it is great to improve in another language, but as a Korean American, I want to be more than just okay or good in my parents' mother tongue. I want to become fluent, and become truly bilingual or someday even trilingual. Also, after realizing how learning a language in a structured course was effective for me, I want to be able to learn Korean in a similar manner.
Because I want a solid foundation in reading comprehension, writing, grammar, and vocabulary, I will learn Korean through a structured manner, so my tasks and activities will mostly be based on textbooks.
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