공부합시다

My Korean study plan 2008 got off smoothly on Tuesday. I was in the Advanced 1 class in the Singapore Korean School with eight other students and a new teacher. I have very good first impression of my class and teacher though there was only one person whom I really knew in the class. We were previously in the same group that went for the one-week Korean language immersion programme at Kyunghee. Through the exchanges I had with her in class, I also discovered that she will be starting Intermediate 1 course with me at NEX next month. I wonder if there will be more familiar faces I will meet next month. 궁금해... 기다릴게

The Advanced 1 class was all the way up at level 3 - the highest level in SKS building. Since joining SKS, I never had class at level higher than 1. But then, at least the classroom at level 3 was many times bigger than the classroom I used to be in. Besides a new classroom and new classmates, I also have a new teacher, 장선생님, a Ewha's graduate who has been living in Singapore for the past one year. She is those kind of teacher whom students will like to study with. Firstly, she has a pleasant disposition. Her words are very encouragingly. She also speaks very slowly and clearly. Finally, she won us over by sharing common interest with us like watching Korean drama. In fact, her eyes sparkled and her voice excited when she was talking about how much she liked about the 1st Shop of Coffee Prince - both the cafe and the drama.

Upon the request of 장선생님, the Tuesday evening started with us arranging the classroom tables and chairs into a circle (동그라미). After we had settled in our seat, we were handed a "self-intro" form to fill up. We were asked to answer frequently-asked-questions like where and for how long we have been studying Korean, the reason we study Korean and what we hope to gain through the course. We were also required to fill in our name, contact number and e-mail address. After we handed in our completed form, 장선생님 went one by one, round the circle, confirming the answers which we had written in the form. By doing so, I thought she was killing two birds with one stone. Not only were we made to give a self-introduction to the rest of the class, she was also assessing our language ability.

Among the many self-introductions which I heard, one left a deep impression in me. One student said that she started learning Korean in 2000 and because it was an "on-and-off-affair" so it took her almost seven years to reach Advanced 1. At the end of the lesson, she was having a second thought about continuing in Advanced 1 after discovering that her Korean standard had dropped after a long hiatus. Her experience strengthens my determination not to lapse in my study if I can help it. Studying a foreign language is always an uphill walk. I will not be able to pick up at the same point where I last left off. The longer the break, the greater the slide. This was the main reason why I finally decided to repeat Advanced 1 rather than to wait for another 3 months for Advanced 2 to start. Furthermore, studying Korean just makes me happy and no other reason is not needed.

With self-introduction taking almost an hour, we were left with only an hour for lesson proper. We started with chapter 5 of the Kyunghee's Exploring Korean Intermediate 1 textbook. The topic was about weather and its close relationship with daily life. Though I probably had the answers to all the questions in the textbook, I was still paying attention to new words and expressions. I wasn't disappointed. I picked up a few "new" adverbs to describe weather. Like,

세차게 - 바람이 세차게 불다. (The wind blows heavily)
주룩주룩 - 비가 주룩주룩 내렸다. (The rain fell heavily)
펑펑 - 눈이 펑펑 내린다. (The snow falls heavily)

The first lesson was a good start. Everything turned out much better than I thought. I hope thing will continue to stay in good shape. I am now looking forward to the next class, looking forward to learning new things. Life feels so much more interesting with something to look forward to everyday. 온고지신이라는 말이 있잖아... 공부할 수 있어서 행복해.