So I'm feeling a bit stuck. Or rather, no motivation to study. I feel like I'm at another fork in the road. Or... I actually don't know how I feel about it. I know I have sufficient Korean to express myself, but at the same time, I know it's not perfect and not like how native Koreans would say it. And because of that, I'm starting to want to withdraw from trying harder. Whenever I say something or write something, I just keep thinking, "this is probably not how the natives would say it", and that lack of confidence starts to set in, making me not want to try harder to overcome the obstacle. Because to overcome this, A LOT more effort has to be put in... like, really really intentionally changing the way I talk, and paying super close attention to HOW natives say things and asking for corrections all the time. Weighing the efforts and reward, I just don't know if it's worth it. I keep thinking.... I'm never going to speak like a native anyways, and besides, there is no one I really need to speak Korean to anyways. 90% of the Koreans I know are probably my language partners anyways... so there is no one who is actually my friend who I need to talk to. And so, why should I put in so much effort into something that doesn't really have a real purpose? And so my drive to correct my pronunciation, or correct my sentences, to understand Korean... all that passion has died down.
Also, I've started to take a hard look at my actual Korean ability. I think I'm good at understanding both in listening and reading mostly because I guess really well by context and by facial expression, tone, etc. Because if you were to ask me to repeat what they said verbatim, I wouldn't be able to. Same thing with reading, I wouldn't be able to tell you why they had to write it that way. And that's because I don't fully understand every part of the sentence they say. Rather, I look for key words.... like the verbs and noun, rather than the grammar that connects these things together. And the tone of the voice and context... and a lot of times, knowing Chinese helps guess the context better since (I heard) 70% of Korean is from Chinese. So rather than saying that I actually had a solid understanding and had a good foundation in actually having learned the stuff, I would say that I feel quite iffy... because I just "know it" because it feels right. And then because I guessed correctly, I wouldn't feel the need to learn the words or the grammar or the sentence structure.
So yeah, I'm weighing the cost to improve.... and I'm not certain if I really wanna go down that road.
