This month, I continued to write summaries about the webtoon I have been reading, 랜덤채팅의 그녀! (Random chat). As I kept writing summaries, my language partner told me that she noticed my writing has been flowing a lot more smoothly compared to the first couple of times I wrote my summaries. I learned some new sentence connectors to help my sentences flow and used them throughout my summary. Something she pointed out in my writing is how often I use 는데, which means but, however, or though. For example, in one of my summaries, I wrote 시작했는데 which means it started. However, she taught me another way to write it, which was 시작했다. 하지만…, which means, “it started. However.” Using a method like this helped me a lot because I tend to write very long and continuous sentences. Therefore, it has helped my sentences flow better while writing my summaries. I also learned a new sentence connector, 그래서, which means so, therefore, and thus. I found it interesting how I did not use these sentence connectors while writing, but when I am talking with my parents, I use sentence connectors a lot. I also tend to forget to mention the subject of the sentence while writing my summaries. My language partner always comments on who I am referring to. I tend to skip the subject of the sentence, but it could be hard to understand for people who are not familiar with the story of the webtoon. My language partner also pointed out to me that the written language and the speaking language are different. I tend to use some words that are not really meant or appropriate to use for writing summaries. I have been struggling with not writing like I talk because I have never had the opportunity to write “formally” in Korean other than when I used to live in South Korea. As my language partner kept correcting the words that generally should not be used in writing, I learned different vocabulary words that have the same meaning but are more formal to spell out.
The summaries have been showing the areas in which I am lacking the most. As I kept writing mine, I did realize that there were fewer errors of sentence connectors which I was very happy about. I hope to continue improving my writing skills through writing summaries.
My language partner and I also watched a couple of Netflix’s Squid Game episodes together. For the episodes we watched, we discussed in Korean, and we also discussed the different Korean games the characters played, such as carving out the shape in dalgona, and red light, green light game. We discussed other children's games that we used to play while growing up because she went to high school in Korea while I went to elementary school in Korea. We knew different kinds of games since we lived in Korea at different ages, so it was really fun getting to know how to play different kinds of games.
Comments
Great insight on the benefit of writing summaries and maintaining a record of the progress across time. Writing is something I definitely did not work on a lot this semester as I focused more on speaking, but I am glad to see that you found noticeable improvement through repetitive writing and feedback from your language partner.
When I watch K-dramas, I realize that 는데 is one of the most common forms of speech. 시작했다. 하지만 or 시작했지만 are not that common, although I learned it first in my Korean classes back home. It is very difficult to adapt our writing to a more formal one. I am also struggling with it while I practice for my TOPIK exam.