Despite growing up in Washington, a predominantly white and English speaking state I was surrounded by non-English influences. My grandmother, who I lived with for most of my childhood immigrated to the US from the Philippines and was followed soon by most of her immediate and extended family. This close relationship has meant that I have been raised in a mixed Filipino-American household where Tagalog was often present. Despite this I failed to pick up more than a few phrases and a little profanity. It wasn’t until tenth grade that I enrolled in my first language course, French. I performed pretty well in French, and after one year I continued taking courses in community college during my dual enrollment program. My college French class was a large step up in engagement and teaching as the environment was full of students actively trying to learn French as opposed to the high school population fulfilling their mandatory one year. Unfortunately the Covid pandemic hit and my French courses moved online which incentivized me to rely on google for assistance, and the weekly skype calls with the professor did little to keep my oral skills sharp. Once I got the UR I picked French back up and the 221 course helped jump me back into the study. However as I was taking the 301 and 305 courses I didn’t feel like I was improving very significantly. The classes involved a lot of writing and the limited speaking felt like I was just falling back on repeated phrases and according to my French roommate Henry I still sounded super American when I spoke.
However, Things turned around during my study abroad at Yonsei in South Korea. Before flying out I spent the summer trying to learn basic phrases and the alphabet which wasn’t great, but it made my arrival a little easier. Arriving in Korea I realized that learning Korean was going to be a necessity in my survival and ability to thrive during my experience abroad. I got regular practice outside of the classroom, and during my classes there was a stronger focus on speaking than in my prior French courses. We would repeat each word and sound that was shown on screen, which was tiring but did the trick as far as making us comfortable speaking. I do regret not making a stronger attempt to have friendships with Koreans who weren’t perfectly fluent in English because it meant that my learning outside the classroom became limited after the first month because I was just regurgitating the same phrases I needed at restaurants, shops and other contact with strangers. After coming back and reflecting on the whole experience I think that I need exposure to new words and uses of the language in order to grow my skills. I definitely find value in classroom learning, but I think that once I get to an upper intermediate level then it requires some further level of immersion. For French I try to get that through setting my phone to French and listening to French videos and reading articles, but I get lazy often and default to English media. Korean shows and movies have been a big help for me, but really only for reminding me of the words I already know and the common conversational phrases. I think I should expand my learning by putting the subtitles in Korean so that I am forced to stretch my knowledge to its limit, and take in new knowledge. In the future I plan to live in Korea, so I’ll take what I learn in this course to help me engage with Korean more, and hopefully be able to achieve fluency.
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