In my last monthly journal, I mentioned how I wanted to change the webtoon I was reading because I began to lose interest in the storyline. However, instead of changing it, I tried to stick with it for the last few weeks of my language journey because I have been reading the webtoon since the beginning of this semester. I was happy with this decision because I ended up enjoying the rest of the webtoon episodes I have read, and I had a lot of fun writing summaries. In one of the summaries I wrote during this month, I made no mistakes in my writing and grammar, which made me feel really accomplished and happy.
When going through my mistakes and corrections, I realized that there were two main mistakes I made. The first mistake is getting confused about using the consonant ㄹ or ㅇ. She taught me that when the noun has a final consonant, the ㅇ is used. When the noun does not have a final consonant, ㄹ is used. For example, in my webtoon summary, I wrote 소리 크게 불었다, which means he screamed loudly. However, the correct grammar for the sentence would be 소리 크게 불렀다. This is because in 불 it ends with a consonant, so ㄹ would be used instead of ㅇ.
The second mistake I was making was confusing when to use the 를/을 and 이/가. I learned that 를/을 is the particle that attaches to the end of a noun to indicate that it is the object of the sentence, while 이/가 is the particle that attaches to the end of a noun to identify it as the subject of the sentence. I would switch these two particles, and it could make the sentence a little difficult to understand.
These webtoons have been the main source of my improvement in my writing skills. Reading the news articles in Korean has also helped me improve my vocabulary and reading skills since the writing style of articles is more formal than the webtoons. Reading news articles also allowed me to stay in the loop about South Korea’s current events.
Rachel and I also ate Korean food together once. We ate Bonchon Chicken, and we spoke to each other in Korean while enjoying Korean food. Although I wish we had the opportunity to go out and enjoy the Korean cuisine more, I was still glad that we were able to enjoy the Korean food from Bonchon Chicken and converse with each other in Korean. It allowed me to focus on my speaking and listening skills after focusing so much on my writing and reading skills.
Although this experience was outside of my usual weekly Korean lesson with Rachel, I wanted to include it in my monthly journal because it has been a major help with my improvement in Korean. I have been able to put my Korean to use outside of my lessons. An exchange student from Korea came to the University of Richmond this year. Because I can speak in Korean, I was able to become friends with her, and since she is comfortable with Korean, I have been conversing with her in Korean. I learned a lot because we would always text each other in Korean, and she would correct me if I messed up a lot with my spelling or grammar. I also learned from the way she texted me, and I also learned the informal and formal ways of texting in Korean.
Overall, I am really happy with the way that my Korean language learning journey went this semester. I feel like my goal has been achieved as I feel more confident about my writing and reading skills. The webtoon summary writing and reading news articles really helped me reach the place that I am at right now. I am excited to continue my learning journey until the end of the semester.
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