SDLC 110: Reflection (Week of Sep 10th)

[Byambaa Khurelbaatar]

This week was the first week I met with my language partner. My personal goal for the week was to learn to introduce myself to people and talk a little about myself. I also wanted to master the alphabet. During our first meeting, my partner taught me how to greet people formally and informally. At the start of our meeting, trying to listen to him and to get the pronunciations correct was a little difficult but after repetition, things got easier. He suggested that I should not write anything down and that I should just keep repeating everything back to him until I memorize it. This was pretty effective since repeating everything sticks to the memory. After that, I did write down everything in order to practice it more on my own during the week. He taught me things like "Hello, my name is Byambaa and I am 22 years old. I am a sophomore at the University of Richmond studying Psychology. My favorite food is sushi and favorite color is purple. It's nice to meet you." At our second meeting of the week, we reviewed the alphabet and he wrote them on the board so we practiced saying them together. He also added more onto my self introduction. I learned how to say I was born in Mongolia but I am from New Jersey. I think our main strategy is repetition and it seems to be working pretty well so far. In between our meetings, I used youtube videos to instruct me in learning the alphabet further and how to put the symbols together to construct words. I now know how to write my name in Korean! The first week with my partner is off to a great start and I am eager to learn more things during the upcoming weeks.