Progress!

So my language exchange partner, Brian, told me about an opportunity to take Korean class this summer with the Sejong Language Institute in Korea Town over Zoom (for free!). I wasn't sure which level to take, and I remembered that I had taken a self-placement test with them before online in March, so I figured I would take it again to figure out my current level after having intensively studied for about 3 months.... and, wow! What a difference!

This test consisted of two parts: listening and reading. The questions start easy and move up to more of an intermediate, pre-advanced level. Here are the results.

This one below is one I took on 3/22/20.

It shows that my vocabulary is about 73% correct, grammar is 64%, and understanding is 90%. It also says my listening is 90%, while my reading is 68%. It says my current level is 4A (out of 6?). I remember commenting to a friend that I feel like an illiterate idiot. I can understand what people are saying, but I cannot read and I don't understand the grammar structure.

Now looking at the test score on 7/3/20 (I know it says 7/4, but I think it's Korea time). All parts of my understanding have improved! Listening went from 90% to 95%, reading went from 68% to 92%, understanding went from 73% to 91%, grammar went from 68% to 93%, and understanding went from 90% to 95%!

I don't think the questions were exactly the same... and if they were, I would totally say that I didn't remember any of the questions! 

It says my current level is 4B, but my suspicion is that the test only tests up to level 4... since I'm almost at 100%, I don't know what other levels they could actually detect. Maybe I should ask my language partner to do it just to check. Haha. 

But I can feel the difference between studying and no studying! I remember when I took the test the first time, I was definitely guessing a lot towards the end... maybe not so much for listening (because for some reason, I could understand what they're saying), but for reading, it was hard for me to figure out which sentence is grammatically correct. After a lot of pain of studying these 3 months, with language partners correcting my writings like crazy and I feeling down a lot for continuing to make mistakes, but not giving up on trying to learn them, I have finally reached another level! Another milestone!

Of course, there is still a LONG WAY before fluency, or even close to fluency. I would say that I can speak now, but with a lot of grammatical errors. And even when I don't speak with grammatical errors, the sentences are not too natural... I guess that will be a constant struggle. 

Anyways, I am very proud of my accomplishment. Now back to more studying.