At the very first of this semester, I took learning style tests to determine my personal learning styles, and I found that I need to memorize vocabularies by writing them down again and again. During this semester, I wrote down new words on cards. From repeating and saying words, I was able to memorize and say them correctly. This is what I usually do to acquire English vocabularies. From multiple Intelligence test, I realized that I more math and logical person, but I need to do more interpersonal communication. So, I tried to aim my learning goal on Korean oral and daily communication. My language partner and I focuses on role playing activities and conducted several dialogues to learn vocabularies and phrases. This worked pretty well.
Another learning strategy that I used was to watch Korean dramas to memorize new words and phrases and also practice my Korean listening skill. Though my learning goal did not aim to learn phrases to express emotions, I found it was more interesting to learn that. The daily conversation in Korean drama would be fine to practice the listening part. My language parter and I began one Korean drama-It's okay, that's love, but after several weeks, we ignored the drama section. Since this drama was talking about one neropathist who did not believe love's existence met one crazy love writer. The neropathology and fancy writing words appeared largely in their conversation, we decided to give up watching this drama and shift the goal to daily conversation during our meetings. For my own interest, I watched a TV show called Running man once a week with English subtitles to both enhance my vocabularies in English and Korean. For example, one TV show called Running man always had one phrases "siro" to express that they didn't like the game punishment. After listened several times, I was able to identify this words and got the meaning and application when to use it. This was an effective way of building Korean vocabularies.
I found it was difficult for me to understand Korean k-pop music which fused with raps. It was too fast to identify words and sentences. The words I learned from songs sometimes overlapped with my learning goal. For example, my goal is to learn shopping and food vocabularies. One song called often Cafe incorporated all Korean terms for coffee. After listening this song, you would get some sense how to order expresso, cappuccino or macho in Korean.
Comparing my original learning plan with what I actually learned, I failed to meet the goal of writing in Korean, such as written vowel and consonants. It took longer time than I thought to study counting numbers. I spent two weeks to learn two different number systems in Korean. Maybe because in Chinese syllable doesn't have to distinguish the sound between il, yi, and I can not tell any difference when my partner say one and two in Korean.
The most useful tool is Mango. Mango divides courses into 10 chapters. I learned 5 chapters: 1. greeting, gratitude and goodbyes 2.names and introduction 3. drinks and dining 4.number and currency 5.what does it mean from Mango Language. I like how Mango structures lessons. First, it shows the conversational goals. Next, the grammar goals. Follow that, it teaches you a word or a sentence. For example, which country are you from? Mango explains this question in Korean-onul nara satameeyeyo? After that, it gives out the possible answers with the same phrases I am (
eeyeo). You can practice this I am phrases by simply adding country names before eeyeo. Mango repeatedly show what you learned before without answers and you can check pronunciation after you did self-assessment. This is a most interesting app that I've ever seen.
From my cultural project of Korean language history, I learned the history of Korean language and the the reason why Korean was created for. At the same time, I learned the rule of reading Korean from left to right and top to bottom. Although linguists were not sure the family root of Korean, I learned that Korean language had some influence from Japanese and Chinese.
From my cultural project of K-pop culture, I learned the origin of K-pop and the reasons why K-pop are popular around the world. The icon phenomenon started in 1992 since the debut of SeoTaiji and Boys. This is the first generation of K-pop bands. K-pop music has strong economic influence on Korean. Especially for the three top entertainment companies, they signed 7-15 years contracts with idols and tried to make profits from selling CDs, albums and other related products. From classmates' presentations on Korean fashion style and Korean music, I also learned the traditional Korean clothing Hanbok and current Korean issue of plastic surgery. This cultural project helped me to relate how Korean people view beauty and how much they emphasize dressing up.
I would like to continue study Korean by watching more Korean TV shows and listening more Korean songs. I think setting a specific and achievable goal for language learning is essential. In the future, I would like to follow my current learning plan to learn written system in Korean. Reading Korean words is my next step going forward.
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