Overall, I think that my learning process has been a success. My goal was to strengthen my reading, writing, and speaking skills, and learn more about of history of my parent’s home country, South Korea. I was able to go more in depth about the language and culture while having a general interests in the topics that I have chosen. I was able choose the content of what I generally wanted to learn about, making the exercises more enjoyable. This allowed me to want to learn more and continue with the self-teaching.
I really enjoyed reading various articles, which I found from Naver, and reading the book, Please Look After Mom. Though I generally do not read for fun, I was compelled to read because topics were very interesting. My favorite part was reading the book because it was a very emotional and eye-opening. I never thought that I would read an actual book in Korean that was not a children’s book because I do not like reading in Korean due to my frustration of not being able to read fast. However, because I was reading so many texts in Korean, starting from textbooks to articles, I started to see the change in my reading pace. Seeing results really made me proud and motivated me to continue learning.
In addition, I liked applying to what I learned in real-life settings. I never speak Korean to anyone except for my parents, but talking to my language partner in Korean and having her critique me was a great way for me to fix my pronunciation. Even though I had another partner last semester, I was still feeling awkward about speaking to others in Korean so the practice made me become even more comfortable. When I went to Grand Mart to get rice cakes, I could not find them and so I had to talk to an employee in Korean to ask where it was. I did not feel as uncomfortable. I did the same thing last semester but I was anxious about the whole process.
Even though I will be graduating this semester, I will continue to learn the language and culture on my own. I will be going to Korea this fall and cannot wait to use the skills that I have accumulated over the past year. Although I am not perfect with the language, I feel as though I became better and relaxed with Korean. I think that I really took advantage of my time to progress and hope to utilize what I learned this whole year when I am out in the real world.
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