As I reflect on the progression of my Self Directed Language Class as of October 13th, I mainly focused on readings and class discussions. The main reading and discussion topics that Evelyn and I choose were Business and Politics.
I thought learning about Korean Business phrases and professional words would help me if I happen to have an internship over the summer, or eventually, get a job in Korea. As study in business school, I had a chance to talk a Korean accounting class with Professor Paik and I was not able to understand any of the terminologies. Therefore I wanted to gain my knowledge in Korean since I feel a disturbance for not knowing the phrase in Korean that I do know in English as a native speaker. Additionally, I was eager to learn more deeply about politics and political culture in Korea. The only way that I could be exposed to politics was to read news articles, but I gave up on it every time. From this opportunity, I hoped to learn more intermediate vocabulary words and politics in Korea.
The lesson started with learning business phrases for a progress report, market research and the prospect of business. Evelyn explained each phrases and the meanings of the word as we went over the powerpoint. After getting to know the meanings of them, we made up an example using the particular phrases and talked about the appropriate times to use those phrases in real life example. This activity helped me to gain a better understanding in each vocabulary words in the context of different situations. I also gained confidence in talking with business professional manner from these lessons.
Afterwards, we focused more heavily on the news articles that are related to politics. From reading many articles, I learned new vocabularies and noticed that certain amount of them is repeated throughout the article. By reading more, not only as the comprehension skills got better but the speed also got faster. Evelyn and I also had a discussion on the articles to see if I understood it correctly. We talked about the main topics and the issues from the article, and learned more deeply about related incidences. Discussion with Evelyn also helped with my speaking skills as I was able to utilize the new words that I learned from articles, and phrase them in organized manner.
Although I also wanted to focus more on writing and grammar structure, we did not get to this point as we were only focused on reading and speaking. I am in a progression of getting used to reading intermediate articles without having a frustration. I learned to look up on dictionary and to infer the meaning by thinking about the relationships of each sentence. For future lessons, I would like to shift the gear to listening and writing, and I hope to reach learning goals that I planned for at the beginning of the semester. I look forward to become a fluent speaker in all four dimensions of language skills.
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