SDLC 105 Learning Journal #8

[Jessica Crouser]

Ten weeks into my self-directed language study I think I have learned a couple hundred words. By this I mean I've been exposed to them through my online study or with my language partner, not necessarily that I'm a master of all these words. I learned these primarily using Mango, Memrise, KoreanClass101.com videos, the internet, and my language partner. Mango teaches lots of words and then helps build grammatical structure by putting them together. I've used KoreanClass101.com videos because they have some specialized ones like "25 Important Nouns" or "How to Talk about Food." I like these because it uses visuals and I get to hear the words pronounced by a native speaker. In addition to this, I've looked up a couple vocabulary sets like "50 Important Nouns" or "Introductory Phrases" to try to specialize my vocabulary learning. With these new words I've been putting them into flashcard form on Quizlet in an attempt to master them. Quizlet is great because it is able to read many different languages so I can have it pronounce the Korean word for me while I'm studying. It's hard to have a realistic goal of an exact number of words I want to learn. Also, in my learning plan I have certain sets of vocabulary I hope to learn such as food or weather or families, but it isn't realistic to believe that I can learn every word regarding food and drink in one semester. That's why I like the specialized lists made by native speakers about the Top ___ Words about ____, because that way I can try to learn at least the most important ones. For example, I think mastering the words for popular Korean dishes and drinks is more important than learning how to say nearly every word for a type of food at a very surface level.

[Sarah Kwon]

I think using websites like KoreanClass101.com is a very useful tool to broaden your vocabulary. I also think that assigning priority to the Korean words is an efficient way to learn Korean quickly.