For this month I focused on watching Korean shows. The popular Korean show 무한도전 (Infinite Challenge in English), has the people, basically celebrities, on the show do various challenges centered around a theme. The episodes s are largely unscripted, meaning that essentially all the dialogue and talking is casual and on the spot. By watching episodes from this show, I aimed to not just learn Korean speech, but just casual everyday dialogue. Reading articles and books in Korean does help me improve vocabulary, but watching a group of people just casually doing fun challenges shows the actual dialogue in context.
While watching the show, I would come across lots of words that I wouldn’t understand. I would write these words down as I watched the episode, but wouldn’t pause to search up the term. Instead, I would finish the episode so that the flow and momentum wouldn’t be interrupted. And also in case that pausing would make me momentarily forget what was going on before. Once I looked up the terms, I would discuss these words in a real world scenario with my language partner and try to use them as much as possible (if relevant) in actual dialogue in Korean.
The benefits of this was that I learned a lot about Korean culture while watching a lot of these episodes. The topics they touch upon are traditional customs and practices from the Joseon dynasty to to contemporary, modern trends. I've gained more knowledge about the richness of Korean traditions, such as the significance of holidays like 추석 (Chuseok) and 설날 (Seollal) and the intricacies of 한복 (hanbok) attire. Additionally, the show's dialogue certainly helped me learn more vocabulary that’s used in everyday speech. Not only that, but idioms that are used commonly in Korea were also used a lot in the show. Learning these idioms and common phrases helps me learn the nuances of speech in causal dialogue.
However, although I tried to use these new words and phrases in regular dialogue, I found myself struggling to actually apply them in real life. The real life scenarios where I would actually use these words were very limited. The only things I would probably use were (unsurprisingly) the lighthearted insults they used to each other in the show. Despite, not being able to expand my vernacular using the show, what did help a lot was the constant use of actual Korean dialogue. Speaking in Korean with my language partner and other Korean speakers/learners helped me get more comfortable with day-to-day speaking in Korean. Words that I usually would not say in Korean (rather English), would come out naturally in dialogue.
So while the show itself did not help improve my language skills in Korean, it did help me learn a lot about Korean culture. Which influenced me to do more research and learn about Korean culture and history as well as the language itself. Speaking Korean helped me improve a lot so that’s something that I’ll continue doing without a doubt.
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