When I learned about the SDLAP courses near the end of the fall semester, I was excited to take the introduction and Korean courses. Although I came into the class with fluency, I realized that I could speak and understand the language but wasn’t aware of much of the culture. I haven’t attended Korean classes since middle school, so it was nice to learn with my language partner. It was also my first time learning from a fellow student and I enjoyed that experience because I felt that it was easier to ask her questions whether it was about grammar or the college culture in Korea.
One of the main things that became apparent to me was that language and culture are intertwined, so no one can really know too much about them because there is so much information to be discovered. When we first made a list of the targets for the semester, I had a difficult time coming up with the goals. After researching about Korean culture, I realized that there were too many things I didn’t have any knowledge of. I even became interested in Korea’s history and traditions, something I once ignored while attending Korean school in middle school. I found it difficult to see improvements in my language learning if I didn’t practice every day. Language skills only improve when the practice is in use and since the course is self-directed, I would have to motivate myself to write and read in Korean to progress in those skills. I also found that out of the four skills of a language, writing was the hardest for me to improve in a short period of time. I was able to fix many of my mistakes because I learned the grammatical rules, but like many rules, there are situations that are exceptions to it, so identifying those exceptions were a challenge to me. I found that I gained more vocabulary and expressions through watching Korean dramas, and of course, speaking in Korean with other students. I will continue my language learning through these activities and will do further research on Korea’s culture. There are also many websites online that can help me learn the vocabulary for pretty much any category.
In class, I enjoyed learning about the family trees and how time can influence a language to evolve. Playing around with the collectivism vs individualism comparisons online was insightful on how cultures differ from each other. The Western part of the world seemed to be more individualistic than the Eastern part of the world. The reading I found most interesting and useful was about the one on phonetics. I didn’t know that people could produce so many unique sounds. During class, I enjoyed learning the details of how we form these sounds and also trying to make new sounds that are not used in the English language. I would like to learn more about how the uncommon sounds came to be and if the location of the origin of the language influenced which sounds the language uses today.
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