Friday, September 7, 2012

Korean!

I know I haven't yet blogged about most of my vacation, but I wanted to shoot something up here about how I've been moved to class number two at the YMCA! I am officially no longer in the 'beginner' class. Cheongju's YMCA has several levels of classes, ranging from "uhhh, what sound does the little 2 shape make again?" (class zero) all the way to "I'm pretty darn good at this" (class five, I think?), and I am moving my way on up.
I don't think I've mentioned it before, but one of my goals before I leave Korea is to pass the beginner TOPIK (Test Of Proficiency In Korean) test. Depending on my progress by the end of this year, I may change that to the intermediate test, but I'm not gonna set my goals too high. One thing that has been disappointing about Cheongju for me is a lack of options for learning Korean outside of the YMCA.
Many cities have universities which offer courses for foreigners wanting to learn the language, but this is not one of those cities, unfortunately for me (but probably fortunately for my savings account). It's not that I don't enjoy the classes at the Y, but they're a bit too laid-back for my learning goals. It works well for people who want to go a few times a month and pick up a bit, but I definitely feel like I could have been working faster (and now I'll probably be in over my head in class two).
I do a lot of studying outside of class on my own, as well (I have a good amount of free time here), and I keep finding new resources to help me with more relevant vocabulary (I'm currently working on a reading activity related to housing, with words for rooms of the house, furniture, and things like 'real estate' and 'contract'

~language happiness~

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