Overall, I felt that my experience learning Korean was very successful. With the help of the SDLAP, I was able to experience various methods of language learning and also have an in-class experience that helped to supplement my learning. I learned that I am a visual learner. It’s not enough for me to memorize something, I typically need to see it written down or spelled out so that I can perfect the pronunciation. Besides this, I’ve found learning phrases to be very useful, compared to simply learning a bunch of random vocabulary. When you learn a phrase, you get an idea of how sentences in that specific language are formed as well as vocabulary. In the past, I’ve found Rosetta Stone to be very useful when it came to learning vocabulary because it focused on a “matching” system, where the user would have to look at a picture and learn the word for the picture; however, with Korean, I’ve found things such as Mango and movies to be more useful.
Some of the difficulties from my experience included distinguishing the differences between Korean and Mandarin and also learning the Korean alphabet. Since Korean and Mandarin share so many similarities including culture and vocabulary, I often found myself applying concepts that apply to Mandarin in every instance of Korean. This was one of the problems for bilinguals that we discussed in class. Korean is a totally different language than Mandarin, so I eventually figured out that I had to learn various points separately and use my knowledge of Mandarin, not as a basis, but as reinforcement. Besides this, I also found reading and writing Korean to be very difficult. I love that Korean has an alphabet, but we learned in class that speaking is significantly easier to learn than reading or writing. Speaking is definitely the most useful aspect of learning a major language, however, reading and writing can help supplement the learning process.
My favorite aspect of the class was the fact that we were required to meet twice a week with a language partner. A language partner is a great resource to ask questions and to practice that language. This resource is not directly offered in the COM2 language classes, so I really loved the experience. I also liked how one of the two meetings was dedicated to direct learning time with the partner and the other meeting was dedicated to something less formal such as a discussion, watching a movie, or going to a restaurant. This helped to mix things up and reinforce previous knowledge through application. I will continue my learning of the language by continuing to “mix things up” by utilizing various software packages and also watching many movies/ shows and of course talking to my Korean friends.
Lastly, I found the readings on culture, time, bilingual intelligence, and language origins to be the most interesting and helpful. When learning Korean, I often was able to figure out why Korean people have certain customs because of discussions of the readings from class. For example, I was surprised to find out that Koreans are lenient when it comes to being late which shows that they are polychromic. As a Taiwanese, I figured that most Asian people valued their time and would frown upon lateness based on this principal and because it is disrespectful; however, this was not the case. Overall, the readings and discussions in class were super helpful and are things that I recommend for the future.
