Yonsei Intensive Korean Course Week 1!

This week I started following Yonsei University's three week intensive winter course in Korean, and all I can say is that I has been really busy! On the first day of school, which I wrote about in my previous blog post, we had a placement test to determine our Korean level, which I felt went quite alright.. But I didn't really have any expectation in terms of what level I would end up in, as I haven't had the chance to practice that much korean before.
I took a beginner course in Korean at Ritsumeikan University my last semester there, but the progress was really slow.. And even though I have been living in Korea for half a year it is quite limited what you can learn when you study at KyungHee's GIP campus; they do not offer any courses in Korean, it takes 1 1/2 hour to get to Seoul, the campus is in the middle of the forest and even though there are many Korean students there too they all speak perfect English so they aren't too eager to speak Korean to you.. So to put it this way: the interview I did for my placement exam is the longest conversation I have ever had in Korean..
There are eight levels of classes you can get into in Yonsei's winter course, starting from level 1 at the bottom going up to 8 at the top. As you can imagine I had though they would put me in level 2, or maybe level 3 because of my lack of experience with the language. So at Tuesday when I arrived in the lobby with one of my friends from the hostel you can probably also understand how surprised I was when I figured out which level I was in.
I was looking through the list trying to find my own name, starting from level 1and working my way down to level 3 but I couldn't see my name anywhere. As I had been so certain that they'd put me into either one of those levels I automatically thought that there had been an error in the process somewhere, and that they had forgotten to assign me a class. I was just about to storm off to the office when my friend called out for me; she had found my name in group number 5...
The thing is, since I'm fluent in Japanese it makes it very easy for me to learn the Korean words that are based on Chinese characters, which are considered very academic in both Japan and Korea. So I guess it might sound like my Korean is a lot more advanced than it actually is..
Since the other students already have learned a variety of other things about Korean that I haven't have the chance to learn yet I'm kind of lagging behind them a little bit. But at the same time I do feel that my Korean is improving, so I'll just have to do my best and continue to spend my afternoons and evenings memorizing all the stuff! 화이팅!!

Other posts:

All posts about Yonsei's Intensive Korean Language Course

Kanji to Hanja: Rules for translating Japanese kanji into Korean

About Anette
Anette came to Japan as an exchange student in 2010, met the love of her life and got stuck. From her base in Tokyo she writes about her experiences as a full-time worker in Tokyo and about her travels in Japan and abroad. She's a free-spirited adventurer who enjoys both the great outdoors and her urban lifestyle.