August 10, 2011

Korean Language Course

Hello everyone!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for not giving up on my blog.

In today's post I will talk about the Korean Language course that I took while I was at SNU.As a Korean major student I had to take this course and I had a great time.When you start learning a new language you start with level 1 and the more you study the more you advance in knowledge.The same principle applies to when learning Korean too and most universities in Seoul that I know of teach from level 1 to level 6 and sometimes level 7 or the Academic level.Each course is 10 weeks long and very expensive,around 1500 dollars (not including the Korean book and workbook for which you have to pay yourself and together they cost around 30 dollars).

I don't like exams!!!

The tuition fee includes the extra material handed in class by the teachers (we had 2-3 teacher per course and up to 16 students in a class) and trips to the Seoul Art Center,cooking class or other activities that required of us to use our Korean language skills and lets not forget about food.Every time there was a lesson about food or a Korean holiday where we had to try special dishes we ordered food.
When you enroll for a Korean class,unless your knowledge is zero you have to take a test so that the school can establish your level.
We had role plays,3 home works every day,dictation,lots of food and laughter.
break time
While in Korea I studied for three semester  and each time I made more friends and over the time we became very close.Through these courses I met amazing people from all over the world : Hong Kong,Thailand,China,Japan,Mongolia,Germany,Kazakhstan,Poland,Russia,Malaysia,Canada and the list can go on. The teachers were  all very nice and funny and they used power points to help us remember key grammar rules or words and most of the time they put pictures of famous Korean actors/actresses and  singers.They even used songs (Kim Jong Kook-Loveable)
Tea Ceremony
What I liked most about these classes is that each lesson had a topic and we had to speak about our own culture,that way by the end of the course you get to know your classmates pretty well.
The classes were run Monday to Friday,from 9am until 1pm,with 10 minutes break every 50 minutes.
Noarebang
We had mid-term and final exams and we all looked like zombies during these time.We had speaking,listening,writing and reading exam and most of the time studied the night before and after everything was finished we went out to noraebang (karaoke) and sang our hearts out.

As I mentioned earlier we went to a cooking school and made some yummy Korean food called bulggogi made with beef meet and japche made from sweet potato noodles.
cooking class

 
One of my best friends that I made during my stay in Korea
We had a lesson on marriage and dating in Korea and I ended up with two husbands
Husband no.1 Korean from China and husband no.2 Korean from Kazakhstan

Our wedding invitation hehe
Sometimes we had to make role plays and even had speech contests with students from other classes

Don't we look lovely?

Your eyes don't deceive you,they are guys dressed in hanbok (Korean traditional dress)




Well that's about my experience at SNU Korean Language Institute.
I miss all my classmates and teachers that I met in Korea during my studies ^_^

Happy reading!

6 comments:

  1. Love it! Thanks for sharing this experiences with us, it's really interesting to see how you studied there. :)

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  2. This is only the Korean class,I will letter explain how I enrolled and study at university.The Korean Language Center is independent from the university,but most of the staff and teachers graduated from Seoul National University and the center is located on campus.A little complicated to explain

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  3. ohh coreeanul din china este foarte simpatic !!kekek ;0!! imi place cum scrii!tine-o tot asa

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  4. thank you for sharing your experiences from korea. your blog helps me a lot because i want to go and study there too.

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  5. brilliant. Thank you. I have just received an email confirming my admission to the regular Korean Language Class starting in March and I can't wait. :-)

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  6. Wow what a Great Information about World Day its very nice informative post. thanks for the post. korean lesson hong kong

    ReplyDelete