My understanding of the Korean language vastly improved the past couple of weeks. Thanks to my self-directed language 110 teacher, Minkyung, I was able to learn more on not just the Korean language itself but the culture as well. I consider myself an Americanized Korean now and I have almost no knowledge of the current state of Korea in terms of culture, politics, new vocabulary, entertainment, etc. Studying with my 110 professor has helped me keep track and “catch up to date” about Korea. For example, I learned a lot about the Korean educational system. I learned that in Korea, students have to basically decide their major in high school and when applying to colleges, they can only take the “Korean SATs” once. Aside from that, Korean students study extremely hard in high school and receive much more freedom in college. Additionally, I learned that Koreans are even more self-insecure about their image than I originally thought they were. Not only does your physical appearance matter when applying to jobs, students have fun insulting each other about each other’s appearances a lot. This explains the high rate of plastic surgery in Korea, especially among the females. Another important subject area that I gained a lot of knowledge in is Korean politics. Korea is going through an extremely difficult and strange scandal right now with their current president, Park Geun Hye. It was revealed that she was taking part of giving highly classified information to a close friend of hers who was found to be a Shaman. Although this is an extremely unique and serious case, there have been numerous political scandals and stories of corruption in the Korean government in the past.
Regarding my learning process of the Korean language, I believe I got better at grammar and spelling, areas that I lacked in before. Twice a week, I meet with my 110 professor and do grammar exercises and even spelling-bees that improve my writing skills. In addition, I have learned so many new words that I have never known before. I came to America after only finishing the second grade in Korea. This means my level of Korean is that of a second-grader. I learned a lot of difficult vocabulary and even “trendy” words that are used commonly in Korea at the moment. These “trendy” words are usually abbreviations of two to as many as five words that are used to describe an individual, situation, or anything for that matter. I greatly improved in my communicative competence as I practice having conversations with my fellow classmate, Jin. I also noticed that I call my parents a lot more often to utilize the skills that I have learned in Korean. In order to further improve my communicative competence, I am going to speak in Korean a lot more often with my Korean friends I have in school and in church. I will also continue to keep up with current events, especially the stories unfolding in the government regarding the president which interests me.
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