Since I came back to Korea in the beginning of February I have been taking daily Korean classes at Yonsei University in Seoul through their 3-week intensive Korean course. Their levels range from one, which is the lowest, to eight. As I mentioned previously I had expected to get into level 3 or something since I only had studies one semester of Korean previously, but ended up in level 5 instead. The other students in my class all seemed to have a lot more experience with Korean than I did, and one of the guys had even lived in Korea for five years. So I did kinda worry that it would be very hard. Which it also was of course, but all in all I think it went pretty well too thanks to a lot of studying in the afternoons. We went through a new chapter every day, which also included two new grammar to memorize, so the progress was fairly rapid.
I have made many new friends both throughout the program at school, and also through the hostel I stayed at in Hongdae, Pencil Guesthouse. I really enjoyed my stay in Seoul, much because of the proximity to everything that Korea has to offer. Last semester I was stuck at school most of the time since my Kyunghee campus is situated far from Seoul, so I even feel that I have experienced more Korean culture during these three weeks than I did during my whole first semester here. During the three-week Korean course we also got to participate in a couple of cultural activities: the first week we learned to play the traditional Korean drum in a Samulnori-course, and the second week we learned how to prepare Korean Bulgogi. Last week all of the students went together to see a non-verbal cooking show called Nanta, which is supposed to be quite famous too. All in all I can definitely recommend taking a language course at Yonsei University. I think it is really nice to have the chance to utilize the winter holiday to learn new or improve old skills!





South Korea
Seoul
                                 
Hotels in South Korea

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!!

I'm back in Korea ready for a three-week intensive course in Korean at Yonsei University!
Although I have been living in Korea for half a year already I haven't really had the chance to study a lot of Korean as Kyunghee University don't offer any Korean classes at the GIP campus.. So I figured out that this holiday was my best chance to really improve, and decided to spend the last part of my holiday concentrating on the language (although I still have a lot to write for my thesis, which needs to be finished my next semester!..)

Anyway, today our Korean course at Yonsei started with a short orientation and a language test! The first part was a written test; a booklet of 15 pages. We were told to do as far as we were able to do, and that we could just leave as soon as we had finished our interviews.
Although we are supposed to get the test result tomorrow, one of my new friends from the course already got her results on Yonsei's webpage today. I checked mine to, but it didn't say anything yet so I suppose I just have to wait.

Apparently they have 8 levels depending on how much Korean you know! Although I don't know that much of the sino-Korean words yet it is really helpful being fluent in Japanese.
I'm so ready for some intensive language learning!

I'll be back later with a list of between 50-100 (depending on how much time I have) Korean words you can learn in minutes if you already know Japanese (and vice versa)!