improve my korean

Picked up Modern Korean: An Intermediate Reader which was developed at USC. Began the first chapter and it seems to be just right for me. I can read through the reading selection and understand it easily without consulting the glossary or a dictionary, but there are at least a dozen words which I don’t know so it’s not too easy for me either. (I may have learned some of those words before, but I don’t remember anymore anyhow…)

I plan on reading the selection at least once a day to try to get my reading speed up. The passages seem to be of the perfect difficulty level for doing that kind of exercise.

공부 합시다!

After spending 2 months in Seoul, I’ve come back to the US with the glimmering of basics in the language and looking to learn more. The phonetics are getting easier, which is awesome, but I still need to know grammar. First things first: go review my Survival Korean book (with the doofy looking foreigner on the cover).

I’m embarrassed at how poor my Korean is and I always hesitate to speak in Korean when I meet native Korean speakers because I don’t want to sound to stupid and childish. Yet I know intellectually that the really good speakers are the ones who are fearless and take every chance they get to practice their conversational skills. It’s the only way I will get better, and yet I’m still too reticent to try unless I’m invited to…

I have some children’s books that I got ages ago and I’m finally reading through them. Our kids already like them and us to read the books to them. I’d like to be able to do that. The books are within my ability (just), but I just need to know them well enough so I can read them aloud comfortably and translate them accurately!