How well did you achieve your goals? I am satisfied with the things I covered this semester. I feel like I have a much better understanding of Korean culture because of my experience with my language partner. Although my parents attempted to teach us about culture, their idea of Korea is based on their adolescence and time in Korea over 30 years ago, so it was great to learn about more current things. Although I wasn't able to work on reading and writing as much, I'm still happy with the progress I made. It was a long shot to try and not only learn the vocabulary and culture, but to write and read it as well. Hopefully that is something I can tackle abroad!
What were the stumbling blocks you encountered? I was surprised at how many times my language partner would correct parts of my speech that I had no idea were wrong. I realized throughout the semester that I say many things imperfectly, and my parents didn't correct me. Thankfully, she picked up on it and was able to help me work through them. It was difficult because it was so engrained in my speech, but ultimately, we made great progress for the little things and that will be very useful to correct in the future.
How were you able to overcome them? I made sure that I made a conscious effort to fix it whenever those issues arose. For example, I had been saying a word with a s sound rather than a double ss, which made the word change from meaning surgery to liquor. These subtle differences obviously have larger implications, and I think my sheer embarrassment was enough to motivate me to stop making those mistakes!
What was most/least interesting to you?I was least interested in grammar, as I predicted. I had a hard time remembering tenses, which is just a part of language that I am overall uninterested in. However, I was taken by the similarities that Korean had to other Asiatic languages. My language partner also speaks Chinese, and she was able to explain the origin of many words based on their Chinese roots. I learned that even my name is based on Chinese characters, which I did not know.
What would you like to do next?I definitely am looking forward to going abroad to South Korea and studying through immersion. I would like to see the differences between what I imagine to be Korea, and the reality. In my mind, Korea is very much a cosmopolitan and up-and-coming country, and I would love to be a part of it and experience it firsthand!
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