Language learning is definitely an uphill battle. I felt very confident in my progress as soon as I had mastered the alphabet, only to feel discouraged when I realized that was only the preliminary step to even begin learning to read, write and speak. However, it is going well. It can be hard at times to find the motivation to study hard and dedicate all the time I need to in order to make significant progress in learning Korean. I really enjoy using Mango to help my language learning; it nicely builds off itself and makes sure you don't forget certain phrases just because you already "mastered" that chapter. It also makes you learn more complex sentences, which has helped me learn the sentence structures of Korean and notice patterns within the language. I think this is more helpful than just memorizing sets upon sets of vocabulary. That being said, I have been trying to do more flashcards and general vocabulary building, to give me more breadth when speaking the language. I really want to be able to get a point across if I try to speak Korean, and so I think knowing more words will help me more than having perfect grammar. I believe communicative competence, like H.D. Brown talks about in his article, is more important than linguistic competence, especially when learning a language without the purpose of using it in a strictly academic sense. If I were planning on writing academic or professional essays in Korean, I would probably focus more on proper grammar and whatnot. Learning grammar is very important when learning a language, but for me, I want to put more emphasis on the discourse, sociolinguistic, and strategic competence that Brown talks about. Grammatical competence is important for creating discourse, but mastery of grammar is not necessary. I don't even use perfect grammar when speaking in English, but I can obviously converse interpersonally because I know the sociological rules of the U.S. and how to get around my imperfect knowledge of the language in order to get my point across. I think learning a breadth of vocabulary across different topics will help me advance toward communicative competence.
Also there is definitely a relationship between culture and language, so learning more about my target culture can only help me improve my cultural competence. This is especially important for the sociolinguistic competence that Brown talks about because it is important to know how to talk properly given the setting and to whom you're talking. For example, knowing that Korea is a hierarchal society with a lot of emphasis placed on respect for elders, I know that learning the formal tense is a crucial part of learning the Korean language if I want communicative competence. It's also important to learn about the target culture so that you learn the most valuable words and phrases in the language. It wouldn't do me as much good to learn the word for "pizza" in Korean as it would to learn the word for "rice." Languages are created and developed from within a culture, so there is a strong relationship between the two.
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