These first two weeks I mainly spent my time revising everything that I learned last semester. I didn’t go over any Korean over winter break and one month is a long enough time to forget everything that you learn. Unsurprisingly enough, the things that I initially found difficult to learn were still difficult to relearn. Big ideas that I revised were:
- The Sino-Korean numbers and Korean numbers.
- Changing a verb from present to past tense.
- If we take a verb in its standard form and either add suffix -아요 to it if it ends with vowels ㅗ or ㅏ, or add suffix -어요 to it if it doesn’t end with these vowels, it results in a conjugation of the verb that can be used in polite informal speech.
- If we take a verb in its standard form and either add suffix -습니다 to it if it ends in a vowel, or add suffix -읍니다 to it if it ends in a consonant, it results in a conjugation of the verb that can be used in polite formal speech to formally declare the topic of the sentence to the listener.
- If we take a verb in its standard form and either add infix - 으시- it if it ends in a vowel, or add infix -시- to it if it ends in a consonant, it results in a conjugation of the verb that can be used in polite formal speech to place emphasis respect for the subject of the sentence.
- -은 and -는 are topic marking particles used with words ending with a final consonant and words ending with a vowel respectively, and -이 and -가 are subject marking particles used with words ending with a final consonant and words ending with a vowel respectively.
- A LOT of vocabulary including vocabulary for relatives, polite vocabulary, and more vocabulary from Korean songs, movies, dramas.
- Sentences that can be used by college students
- 뭐 (what), 언제 (when), 어디 (where), 왜 (why), 누구 (who), 어떻게 (how)
Revising all of this was good to get me used to Korean again and get me up to speed with my reading and writing skills. However, I do think that I didn’t practice speaking as much as I would’ve liked. I didn’t do it much at all actually. This semester I’m going to prioritize speaking Korean more and learning more conversational Korean alongside grammar, and writing. I’ll make better use of resources like iTalki to practice talking to people. I’ll also try to record more video of myself speaking Korean every week/ every other week to make sure that I’m actually practicing speaking Korean.
My overall goals for this semester are to become more comfortable speaking Korean, learn more conversational Korean alongside formal Korean learning, and dive deeper into Korean culture.
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