SDLC 105: Learning Plan

[Joseph Lee]

Learning Plan:

Approx. 12 Weeks remaining

Focus: Improvement of vocabulary, comprehension, and overall conversational ease.

Sessions: 

1. Topic based conversations
   1. Just conversations to improve my speaking proficiency, revolving around some topic. 
2. Review of proper grammatical structures.
   1. Because I’ve learned Korean at home, I never properly learned it. Lots of times when I speak I realize what I said didn’t make perfect sense, or I don’t know how to say a certain phrase due to unfamiliarity with the grammar structure - hoping to learn/improve

Independent Focus: 

1. Podcasts/Radio Shows
   1. Because I can already understand Korean fairly well, I’m hoping that listening to these more official/formal forms of media will not only improve my comprehension, but also expand my knowledge of current Korean events/culture.
2. Switching to Korean
   1. I watch a lot of Korean Dramas, and read a lot of webtoon. If I’m going to waste time on these, perhaps getting rid of subtitles or reading webtoons in Korean will help my progress? I can generally understand without subtitles, but it would definitely make me think a bit at times when I hear an unfamiliar phrase/word.
3. Talking more in Korean
   1. Although I will converse with the SDLC native speaker, I will also make more effort to speak Korean with my friends. Besides the few Korean friends on campus, I also often talk a lot with my hometown friends via facetime/discord. Most of them are very Korean and converse in Korean anyways, and I often use konglish - will try to use pure Korean.

This learning plan was organized to optimize my learning both in and outside the classroom, while not putting too much strain on my time. So far, I have been able to practice my conversational skills, but I plan to review more formal/official material, like grammatical structure and special grammatical circumstances. I think a great way for me and the teacher to connect and have a conversation is to focus on a topic, and so far I am thinking of using Kdramas as a start. Hopefully, with the increase in speaking proficiency, I will be better able to converse with people from the Korean community. Many older generational Korean Americans prefer to speak korean, making it hard to communicate sometimes. I am also hoping to study abroad in Korea, which means improving my speaking proficiency would be very beneficial.

Although I have yet to receive direct feedback from my classmates. reading their ning blogs allows me to get a sense of where I'm at, and what I can improve on.