SDLC 110 Language Journal

[Ethan Han]

The task I worked on this week was memorizing basic vocab words. I started off with groups of words. The groups of words I memorized were food, weather, colors, numbers, activities/ hobbies, and family. What I hoped to accomplish was to memorize the vocab words not only from Korean to English but also from English to Korean, and my language partner would then quiz me at the end of the week to see if I was able to memorize the vocab words from Korean to English and English to Korean. I created flashcards on quizlet. Quizlet reads the word to me in Korean which I think will help me with my auditory skills. I didn’t sit down for an hour and memorize the words. On my walks to class, and dining halls, to meet friends I would work on my flash cards. Also, I would try to point them out in the physical world to help me create a real-life connection. After I memorized from Korean to English I would memorize it from English to Korean. After I would memorize the word both ways I would continue to review and then try to use the words in my normal day-to-day speaking. I think my learning strategies were very effective. Spitting up my study session into multiple short sessions a day helped me retain the information much better, rather than sitting down for an hour each day and running through each vocab word. Also, memorizing the vocab words both ways allowed the Korean words to flow through my brain much more fluidly. If I only memorized them from Korean to English then I would only be developing my Korean brain and not my bilingual brain. Each week I will continue to memorize more vocab words until I reach the point where I have enough vocab memorized that I can move on to the next step which is writing sentences. I will use the words I have memorized and write sentences describing an event that happened in my day. What I liked the most about how I learned the vocab words was a number of things. The main learning strategy I liked was the small consistent efforts I made throughout the day. Having many short study sessions spread throughout my day allowed me to be more concentrated on what I was doing and not lose focus and retain the information better. I was constantly reminding myself what the vocab words were so that by the end of the day I would not forget. Rather, if I just sat down for an hour and studied the words I would have most likely forgotten them within a few hours. Also, I like how the words were applicable to my daily life so I could use the words immediately after memorizing them. Therefore, when I move on I will pick activities and resources that interest me personally. Another strategy I like is how I would randomly think about the vocab word in my brain and then if I couldn't remember it then I immediately searched it up and repeated it to myself. For example, I was walking to the dining hall and was looking at the sky and saw some clouds. I remembered that I had to memorize the vocab word for cloud but I couldn’t remember what the word was in Korean, so I searched it up and then repeated the word in Korean out loud to myself until I felt confident it stuck in my brain. Another example of this strategy was when I dedicated a day to learning colors so as I was memorizing the flashcards I would also look for the color somewhere in the real world and then say the color out loud so that I could build a visual/ physical connection between the Korean word for that certain color and the actual color. Another learning strategy I used was learning one group of vocab words at a time. I would dedicate one or two days to learning only one group of vocab words at a time. I did this so that I could focus on one set of vocab words at a time instead of flooding my brain with all of them at the same time. This allowed me to learn all the words much more effectively.