Starting Korean was kind of out of the blue, and for reasons I still can’t pinpoint till this day. It’s almost 2 years since I first stared at the Korean characters and I’ve always wanted to write about it, somehow, but the time was not right then and I hadn’t experienced enough to be able to write my experiences. But now that my exchange in Korea is coming to an end, I feel that my journey in learning Korean is coming to its bloom pretty soon (don’t ask me what ‘bloom’ refers to IDEK it’s just the feels) if I keep up at it anyways LOL. So I want to write about how it all started and the things I encountered along the way. It turned out more personal than I expected but it was a relief to get all of it out and public like this. 🙂 Hopefully for those also learning this elusive language, you may be able to take away a thing or two from this post~
Long post ahead. You have been warned!
Why did I start learning Korean?
It’s a question I still falter in answering. I couldn’t answer it to my friends, to my parents, to my siblings, and I couldn’t answer it even more than a year later when facing my interviewer from Sogang University. I had stared at her completely helpless, and ended up saying I just wanted to be able to understand dramas and songs.
If the reason was really just that, I doubt I would have tried so hard, given the easy accessibility of english subtitles. A lot of my friends attributed it to my fangirling over SNSD haha, and perhaps that could have been true as one of the triggers, but looking back it’s no longer the reason, seeing that I’ve almost completely abandoned that fangirl life and am still pursuing Korean.
It’s also a question my brother struggled to answer. I asked him the same thing, why did you learn Japanese? And he gave me the same helpless gaze. In the end, I believe our answers are the same. Korean and Japanese for us are like personal goals, a personal project. There could be no absolute reason why, but if we like it and conquering it will give us a sense of personal pride, then why not?
Another fact that not everyone knows was that in this period in 2012, I was facing something like depression. I’ve never talked about it this openly, but i’ve off-handedly mentioned it to the BF, and perhaps a handful of friends. But I’ve never delved into it as a serious issue or anything. But regardless of whether it’s actually a medical issue, the feeling was real. I had tons of insecurities, ranging from not being good enough to do anything, not having a practical passion, losing close friends, feeling absolutely alone and abandoned, etc. I knew at that time I just wanted to run, but I don’t know where to. And perhaps that was when I found the crazy world of fandom life hahahaha, it’s really crazy out there and unless you’re in one i think you wouldn’t know what Im talking about. But it was a good escape and I made precious friends there, and it also give me a new motive: to learn Korean. I wanted to accomplish something I liked. Not for my career, not for my grades, not for the people around me, but entirely just for me. So I started.
Late 2012 – first Korean class and self-learning
I started by signing up for a Korean class at a local academy. The stint only lasted for 10 lessons and after that I was left wondering how I should pick up from there. Since I felt the lessons were too slow, I decided to follow my brother’s method of learning Japanese and do it on my own.
So I started utilizing resources like talktomeinkorean.com, textbooks i ripped off from online torrents (not proud of it LOL), and spending hours at Coffee Bean pondering over certain grammars. I remember clearly going onto the Sogang website and not being able to understand what they were teaching because the classes were so brief lol, and I remembered not liking Sogang’s way of teaching. The irony!
Perhaps the biggest flaw in self-learning so early was that I had no idea how to apply it at all. That time I didn’t realize how much of a problem it was that I was only learning to understand what a sentence means when the grammar or vocab was applied by someone else. I didn’t realize it was a problem that I couldn’t understand when the grammar was spoken by a native Korean, and I didn’t know how to string it into my own sentences. I thought it would come naturally but it became a problem that crippled me all the way until I went to Korea, and the entire first half of my exchange in Korea. I didn’t realize how important revision was in order to be able to apply what you learned, and I only wanted to keep learning new stuff and skip the boring old stuff. So my first advice to language learners now is: Revision is more important than learning. You could learn all the grammars and vocab that exist in the world but when you’re unable to apply any of them by yourself, you’re automatically considered less fluent than the one who only knows 5 grammars off-hand and a couple of vocabs, but uses them to get his message across. The thing about language is that it’s a form of communication, it’s not just knowledge, and my first mistake was treating it as knowledge acquired rather than a new way to communicate.
It is not impossible to learn on your own. But it does take a huge amount of discipline and an understanding that just learning is not enough. You need to keep reaching out to improve yourself, keep going back to the things you dislike but know they’re important, that’s perhaps why I would say self-learning, although the most accessible means of learning, is the most difficult path to achieving fluency. Hats off to all those who succeeded down this path!!
Late 2012 – Application to Korea for exchange rejected
This is a moment I constantly look back on, not with regret but with wonder. I’ve told plenty of people rather unrestrictively that I’ve been rejected before when I tried to apply to the universities in Korea for Y3S1, the fall period of 2013. I’m an average student and my GPA was something I’ve been kinda ashamed to talk about for a long time, and with this rejection I had felt even more worthless. But more than that, it had given me the strength to realize that things don’t get offered to me on a silver platter. Sure I can keep on lamenting about how the system is flawed and that sometimes no matter how hard you work you still can’t do well, or I can try to change that. At least try.
At that time, after rejection, my desire to go to Korea for exchange and the desire to achieve Korean fluency was magnified so much, to the extent that something in me probably changed for the better. I started putting in more effort into my work and kept my goal in mind while I worked my asssss off that sem. The results of that semester wasn’t fantastic compared to all the amazing achievers in SMU, but it was my personal best and in all honesty, the first A’s I’ve ever achieved in all my years in university came from that semester. It’s not even something to boast, saying i’ve achieved A’s only after two whole years in SMU, but I was elated and proud and it’s all that really mattered. My GPA was boosted by 0.1, an amazing feat not to others but to myself – I’ve been facing a constant downward spiral since my first semester and this was the first semester I managed to bring it up.
So then, does this guarantee I can get an exchange? Not even close because it was still a bad GPA compared to many others who wanted popular Korea as their destination. But so what, it allowed me to move forward with some hope in mind.
This is the second advice I’d like to give in this post: You deserve what you work for. Our fortunes are not always what we hoped or think we deserve, but I learned first-hand that if you never put in your due diligence, you can forget about hoping for anything. You might not get it even if you work hard, but it WILL give you hope that you might. And that alone is enough to give you strength to continue forward.
I mentioned earlier that this is a moment I look back with wonder, not with regret, and I’ll get back to that later on 🙂
Early 2013 – Korean class at SMU
I only realized how much I was not improving from my flawed self-learning method when I enrolled in the Korean elective lesson in SMU. That was my fastest progress that year, being forced to apply directly what I learned in class. I learned all the basics quickly in that semester thanks to an amazing teacher, and it was also the best module i’ve ever taken in SMU. It was a class atmosphere I couldn’t feel in any other modules. It was a class full of people who truly wanted to learn and enjoyed what they were learning, and that was their priority, instead of chasing to get their As and outing everyone else. Everyone was fascinated with the language and everyone was on equal standing.
Our group project was to create a Korean script and damn that was hands-down the best group projet ever in SMU! It was a whole lot of fun with Zenn and our unnies/oppas from senior year. Our unnies took care of us so kindly like their own sisters, and for the first time I felt such warmth in this school 🙂 We had a blast in that project, creating fake love stories and dramas all in Korean, spending hours of laughter and amateur acting.
I was sad when it was over, but I had so many great memories from it that it was impossible to not smile just thinking about it. Also, my Korean progressed drastically, which was why I began to realize how I had been learning so wrongly in my self-learning.
Mid 2013 – Acceptance of exchange application to Korea
I applied again after that semester that I still dub as the semester that turned my university life around. Haha. I wasn’t confident I could get in with the GPA and stuff, but I appealed earnestly via my study plan hoping they would read it and understand my feelings. I promised to write a Korean travel blog and I’m proud that I’ve done just that 😀 It’s nothing much and more of a personal record rather than a guide that will actually help others, but I’ve fulfilled what I promised.
At that time, all my friends were getting their offers from their universities and I was anxious that the letters from Korean universities had not arrived yet. However, just a day after my birthday, I finally received it!!
:’)
No words could express my excitement. 😀 It’s probably the time I also knew I was completely freed of this depression shit and inferiority complex. Granted I still have moments like that but i knew i would never go down that route again, not for the same reasons. I realized I had the power to change my own circumstances (sorry for the cheeesiness) and I definitely should, instead of mourning and thinking constantly that the world was against me, and expecting someone to take sympathy on me. I deserved none because i was just dwelling in self-pity.
This period was a hiatus period in my Korean learning. Haha. I almost totally abandoned it, only looking back at old materials once in a while, and sometimes when i have the time, taking to translating simple things on Twitter. I wouldn’t say my progress went downhill, rather it was maintained at that basic level. It’s bad that I abandoned Korean like this, I’d advice you to please not do this D: try as much as possible to fit it into your schedule.
I spent my semester mostly recovering from the weird depression stage shit, getting to know more people and improving myself career wise by taking up a part time internship (LINK) at the most amazing organization. And of course also, maintaining my grades or improving it if possible. It was an uphill journey from here onwards, and i realized how true it is that when you hit your lowest you can only go up. Hitting my lowest made me cherish the people around me better, made me remove the people that were toxic to my life, and made me solidify my goals and pursue them in a more focused manner.
I gained so much in this semester, and also it was an opportunity to clarify my relationship/commitment issues and settle into a proper long-term oriented one. That’s why I said I looked back on my exchange rejection with some fondness and a lot of wonder haha. Because if I had been accepted then, perhaps i’d never realize what went wrong with me. I’d keep on thinking “HA I was right, i’m capable by myself and everyone else was wrong to not have cherished me” you know something lame and self-entitling like that. Luckily i was rejected ruthlessly so I could think and realize that I was the one who was kinda screwed up. And also the rejection allowed me to stay for one more semester in the school, the semester that I gained friendships, gained back my strength, gained my faith in relationships, and gained so many more things that i believe made me better as a person.
So no matter how I think of it, the dots connected perfectly and I would never regret that rejection. It’s really true how things happen for a reason, and it’s often a good reason, if only you’re willing to wait and see how things play out instead of just living in resentment. 🙂 I can say this with confidence because besides being rejected for the Korean universities, i’ve also been rejected by SMU before and I got in through appeal, and only at the last minute when orientation was over. But that’s another story for another day 🙂 Point is that things really do happen for a good reason and you just have to believe it and make the best out of your situation.
Late 2013 – Korean lessons at CC
Moving on from all that self-development prep talk, I realized that going to Korea for exchange meant I had to go back to my Korean learning. So Zenn and I applied for an intermediate Korean lesson at BB community club, and I guess because I was busy I didn’t focus on revising properly so the entirely lesson didn’t turn out too useful 😦 it was my fault though, i do think CC lessons are quite okay for intermediate lessons, just that there’s no proper structure. If you’re the type to revise a lot on your own, CC lessons could be an affordable way to improve your Korean alongside your self-learning 🙂
As soon as my exams were over, I focused on listening to talktomeinkorean’s audio lessons on buses whenever possible, i borrowed Korean textbooks and I tried having conversations with myself as my brother told me to LOL. Previously I depended on grammar textbooks alone, but I realized the importance of a structuerd Korean textbook to help guide you and put you on the right path, instad of just learning from grammar book or vocab lists. I also started trying TOPIK papers. I will list later on the resources in another post soon, watch out for it! ^^
Time was short and before I knew it it was already time to go for exchange o.o I wrapped up my amazing internship nicely and started preparing myself for the most exciting journey!!!!
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/end spazz
2014 – Coming to Korea and the fastest progress in Korean
They all say that the best way to learn Korean is to come to Korea, and they couldn’t be more right!
The first times i was in Korea, i was really scared. I believe Zenn felt the same. We both spoke in English to people although it was a basic question that we could easily say in Korean. Up till this time we had almost 0 practice speaking and conversing in Korean in a natural setting outside the classroom, so we were frightened hahaha. After a few days we realized how bad it was and started to force each other to speak more often than not in Korean. So we did and just by speaking to staff in restaurants and cafes, cab drivers and asking for directions, our Korean improved much more than I think we realized. Because it was real application and we picked up things we never would have learned from textbooks. Like the terminology and all that are used to order food/drinks and the language used by service people. It was fascinating and also helped us to change our Korean to be more colloquial.
I also started lessons in Sogang and was put into Level 3A, a personal achievement that I’m still proud of. Upon first entering the class I was shocked at everyone’s level of fluency hahaha, and for the first time I realized how inferior I really was and how far I have to go. My entrance interview went badly in my opinion and I had already realized then how weak i was at speaking and how wrong my entire self-study thingy was at that time, so I was so grateful to be put in 3A, a level I deemed to be above me.
After a few lessons in 3A, that’s when I realized for good, how much lower my speaking level was compared to my grammar. Considering that I actually knew a lot of the grammars taught in 3A, but I struggled to keep up with the teacher who spoke in 100% Korean… I realized my learning so far had been almost futile because I didn’t know how to apply what I learned. So i swept all the things I’ve learned to the back of my mind and focused first and foremost in getting my speaking level up.
I tried a variety of ways for this, some succeeding and failing. I went on a hunt for language exchange partners (a handful I still keep in touch with), I talked to myself, I printed drama scripts to read (this failed), I noted the things people say in variety shows or dramas, and I spoke with others who were leaning Korean alongside me. Personally I was fortunate to have found people at my level and we helped each other out alot.
It is still very difficult for me to speak with local Koreans and at first I beat myself up over it… a lot. I lamented that here I am in a rare opportunity to Korea but because I’m not good enough I can’t even practice with all the local Koreans here. It’s like an opportunity wasted because of my lack of skills. But I realized I was expecting way more than my level, way more than the effort I put in. I have a conversation partner who is on her way to level 5 of Korean, but is speaking at my level. In my class, the ones who spoke fluently were those with Korean background. I realized how unforgiving i had been with myself, and how that had crippled me. My friend at level 5 acknowledges that her speaking needs improvement, but instead of beating herself up like I do, she does something. She went out there to search for help, she spent her time carefully formulating sentences in her head, and talking to her is always so refreshing because of the sheer determination in her voice. So I stopped beating myself up and tried to find a solution, like she did.
And so I jumped on every opportunity to meet or hang out with someone who is learning Korean at my level, and I found that talking to them in Korean helped me learn so much more than actually talking with native Koreans. This is because the people learning Korean with me were willing to speak slow, willing to help me find my vocab or grammar, corrected me with a smile and we spoke with priority being to improve our Korean. On the contrary when speaking with Koreans my age, the focus is of course to build a friendship, and I often felt that my slow Korean was a burden because it stopped us from chatting and creating a bond. So I often switched back to English after a short while of attempting Korean.
Thus it’s apt for me to say at this point: It’s okay if you are not confident with speaking to a native. Don’t beat yourself up over it like I did, yes it does make you feel unworthy and unable to take on a challenge like that, but it could well be that you’re not prepared at the level you’re at. Of course I’d encourage challenges in speaking with natives, but don’t make that your single-handed focus. Open your mind because there are other possibilities. If you’re more comfortable speaking with other people learning the language as well, by all means do so, it might be a better method at least for now, until you’re confident of speaking with a native.
My next advice at this point: You have to step out of your comfort zone. Learning a language is the exact opposite of staying in your comfort zone, if you’re gonna want to master a languge but remain too scared to go out there and create opportunities, then your learning is going to be very limited. It wasn’t easy to step out of my comfort zone too, i’ve never been the kind who liked to do that. I always try to find solutions that don’t require me to step out. But with Korean, that was impossible, and I was forced in the end to cross all boundaries to help myself. It’s not always what you’re comfortable with, but if it’s necessary and you’r determined, then do it whole-heartedly.
Speaking set aside, my listening has also improved tremendously. That’s a given because listening is more passive than speaking and living in an environment with everyone around me speaking Korean of course was the biggest help. Just by being here, I can now understand whenever my professors speak in Korean, whenever my groupmates discussed in Korean, whenever service staff spoke to me, and I found that my instances of blankly looking at people have reduced immensely. I often don’t let on on this fact that I can understand almost everything they’re saying, but in some instances I’ve acknowledged their words and hence received looks of shock from groupmates or professors that I’ve understood everything they’ve been saying all along hahaha. I live for these moments sometimes, it’s like proof of how far I’ve gotten xD
My pride 🙂
What now?
Now that exchange is coming to an end, I have to find means to stay connected to Korean. i’ve so far been prowling language exchange websites to find Koreans living in Singapore, and at the same time I’ve been searching for classes in Singapore. I found an interesting method of learning via italki.com, i haven’t attended the trial class yet so I’m not sure, but I did find a teacher who said she focuses on speaking the most, which was exactly what I need.
I’m nowhere near the end, I know that there’s a long journey ahead. I just feel like my affair with Korean and Korea isn’t going to end soon, and I hope for it to last long. Until now I still don’t know how it’s useful to learn a language, and I’ve been asked before why I would want to pursue it diligently when I’m not planning to make a career out of it. I don’t have a good answer to that, except simply that I like it. Perhaps that is the best answer instead. Sometimes there really is no other reason to pursuing something in life, except that you like it. Sometimes it’s really as simple as that, and I’m grateful that I have found something like that. I don’t know how learning Korean will take me anywhere, but I know that it’s so refreshing and self-fulfilling to learn it. Perhaps I will grow tired of it, but that’s a future that can worry for itself.
Thanks for reading up till this point. This post was meant to include the recommendations and resources but it ended up being more of a personal story to tell and a mega long reflection haha. Nevertheless, the actual receommendations and resources list is on another post that I will do soon.
Hope I didn’t bore you, if you’re reading this you’re pretty amazing for having read through like my life story lmao.
That’s all for now. This won’t be the last ‘reflection’ post on this journey!
darmawanders 