My earliest memory of learning language comes back to my primary school, and English was taught in a formal way with strong emphasis on learning the structure and grammar, building up knowledge of new vocabulary and doing a lot of exercises during primary and junior high school, like translating Chinese to English. I paid little attention on speaking and communicating in English with other persons. The learning method is basically provided with theoretical frameworks, logical rationale and rules. During the international high school, I tried to stress on listening and speaking with other people. I realized that communicating with native English speaker is the most efficient way to learn language, and what you studied in classes are applied to the real scenario in the life. For having more practice on English, I got used to watching American drama and listening English song without subtitle so that I can focus on listening. For me, the aim of studying language is to communicate and integrate in local community; it is necessary to get deep understanding about the local culture and custom. For example, through watching drama, people can get the fundamental idea about what the city looks like in different countries, and what the living habit they have and so on.
I am the auditory learner, and I can sound out and spell the strange vocabulary based on the whole sentence. Listening and talking with native speaker is the way to learn different aspects of language. For instance, the raising-falling tones represent the different meaning. Evaluated the learning method before, I dislike instruction which seems rigid and didactic, being told what to do, what to think, how to do it or what do you think. Therefore, self-directed language is what I pursuit. I can establish the learning plan and set the goal for this semester. It will be quite confident and pleasant after achieving the goal. For the goal of this semester, I prefer the part of communicating and listening (novice-medium). Throughout this semester, I am looking forward to handling the basic conversation, and then I am looking forward to travel to Korea with my friends in the future. Getting confidence from speaking Korean can motivate me to continue study the complicate grammar and writing.
Expanding learning activities is to increase the motivation in foreign language learning. Motivation has traditionally considered an independent variable, which impact the time length of studying language, the expected grade, and whether I will continue to study the language after this semester. I think the interests is the important clue to go deep into high level of Korean, watching fun drama and listening music is the efficient way for me to combine lecture studies in the classes and entertainment in the leisure time.
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