During this week's meeting with my language partner, he showed me a news article on naver, a popular Korean search portal, about some guy's altercation with the police (I don't have the exact link to the story). I read the article aloud so that he can gauge my reading level. I mainly had trouble pronouncing words that I hardly ever come across since my mouth is unaccustomed to shaping them. Reading an article like this on The Korea Times, about a Japanese scholar's criticism of Japan's claim to S. Korea's islets, is difficult because I may understand the barebones gist of a sentence but lack many important details. (That Korea Times article has a side-by-side translation so I see what I'm missing.) Written Korean is also much more formal than daily speech, which is something I'm more used to, having grown up trying to speak to my grandmother.
I will continue going through the Talk to Me In Korean curriculum (currently I'm on Lesson 2). As a supplement, I will continue to listen to Kpop music since the songs usually contain everyday speech / vocab, something that'll be easier for me to understand than the news or the radio. Weekly meetings with my language partner will also include one-hour dedicated to watching a K-drama together.
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