Progress!

 So we've had quite a few new Korean students entering our school this year... and the former students introduce me to them as "the teacher who can speak Korean". I wasn't that sure about my ability, although my language partner (Brian) kept telling me that my current ability is definitely enough to speak to my students.

Well, I guess some of them wanted to test my abilities and we started speaking in Korean and they're amazed that I can understand them well and respond well! I've never thought of myself as one who can speak fluently, but to them, I'm actually pretty good!

Thinking back around 4-5 years ago when I started learning Korean, I've never thought I'd get to a point where I can converse with a native speaker. I just didn't think it was an achievable goal of language learning. Yeah, of course, the purpose of learning a language is to communicate, right? But in learning Spanish, I quickly found out that it was such a textbook exercise of language learning that I didn't think any real communication, meaning, spontaneous communication, outside of pre-established context, is possible! (You know what I mean. When we practice within a classroom, it's always with that SET vocab and SET situation... when someone uses a phrase outside of the pre-studied vocab or situation, you all of a sudden cannot use the structure anymore. 就是學習可是不能活用). So yeah, I've never had doubt that I can LEARN it, but I highly doubted that I can actually have a spontaneous conversation with another person... especially to have them understand me perfectly well.

And here we are! I can speak fine, I can understand fine, and they can understand me as well! It's such a feat that makes me feel that I can actually tell people "I can speak 3 languages!" Amazing huh? What's more amazing is that I feel that I speak better than some Koreans born here! I think I always had this expectation that all Koreans should be able to speak their own language, regardless of where they were born. I figured that their parents would have forced them to learn the language regardless of fluency. Well... it's true. They can definitely speak Korean well enough to get around (probably better than my vocab in terms of daily conversations!)... but in terms of understanding their own language in all domains, a Korean learner is definitely gonna be better!

After asking Brian about this phenomenon, he said usually Koreans born here will be able to speak and understand fine, but they cannot write or read well. And they usually only use banmal (the most informal way of speaking) and really hate using jondetmal (the normal politeness language). I think it's because they speak to their family only in banmal so they've only had to practice that.... although if you speak to anyone outside your family, you should use a more polite version, they cannot. So it's really weird whenever I talk to a Korean born here and they immediately speak to me in banmal... when we just met! You only do that if you've known each other enough that they're close to each other... but I digress.

I don't know why I find it so strange for this to happen... maybe because I always lack confidence in speaking in Korean. Even though I objectively know that I have attained a certain fluency, the times that I have faced conversations where I didn't understand a thing still traumatizes me so that whenever I'm dealt with a foreign situation, I panic. Like... I have no problem speaking Korean to the people I know well enough, like my language partners, friends, students... but to strangers, like supermarket ajumma, restaurant workers, etc... where I feel that I have to respond quickly and accurately, I blank out and cannot process (either in understand or speaking). Hopefully I increase my confidence through successful spontaneous interactions over time!