SDLC 110 Reflection #2

[Lorena Campos-Castro]

Throughout October, my focus was on learning vocabulary to discuss plans and traditions. Since it was October break and holidays were quickly approaching, I was keen on learning more about what breaks were like in South Korea. Particularly as a student, I wanted to at least be able to ask my Korean friends at the University of Richmond what their plans were for fall break and later on for Thanksgiving and winter break. I did end up learning some vocabulary to talk about my plans and with that, learned the seasons and some of the key holidays in Korean culture. With my language partner, we continued reading a short story that we had started in September, role playing realistic scenarios, and more grammar aspects such as topic/subject/ and object particles. I further reinforced this by rereading the short story on my own, studying on the TalktomeinKorean platform. I found this theme especially exciting because I was finally reaching a level where I was beyond the basic introductions and could now have a more interesting conversation with Korean students. I find I am still lacking significant vocabulary since I am not getting enough person-to-person practice. I definitely think it also has to do with the fact that I immediately gravitate towards learning the grammar of the language versus learning how to actually use the language. I think this is the case for me because grammar (while writing and reading) I can typically control since I have time to think through my responses. I stray away from practicing speaking because I am most insecure about my inability to produce certain sounds and my poor detection of subtle pronunciation differences. My language partner has definitely noticed and is thankfully pushing me to practice with him and is patient with me as I struggle to imitate him. My biggest issue with every language I learn is that I gravitate towards a Spanish accent since I do not want to have a thick American accent when speaking the language. I am struggling with keeping my tone of voice in a neutral level because it is my instinct to speak using a variety of tones where I constantly go up and then down. Since I speak Spanish, though partly because of my personality, I am used to speaking very animatedly. Now that I have realized this is holding me back from speaking Korean in a more accurate manner, I will be focusing on speaking more slowly so as to calm myself down and not rush through the sentence with a rollercoaster of tones. I only learned about this habit of mine because I started to practice having very short conversations with Korean natives/speakers. Given the revelation I had after speaking Korean a bit more compared to my last reflection post, I will now avoid ruling out speaking during sessions with my language partner because I have learned how valuable they are. Most importantly, I just need to let go of my pride and simply allow myself to make mistakes as a language learner and remind myself that speaking is a crucial part of learning a language.