Saturday, November 11, 2006

YBM Level 5

I started my YBM Korean level 5 class on Friday. The class is largely made up of people from my Level 4 class - mostly Japanese.

We have a different teacher and she makes it a point to talk QUICKLY. Which isn't a bad thing. I'm being challenged. The book is Yonsei University's level 5 book. Each chapter starts out with short dialogues and readings, then explanations of vocabulary words, expressions and grammatical structures, then a bunch of example sentences showcasing various structures, then a final reading.

Only thing is, the first chapter is devoted to Korean special ceremonies and customs, and so much of the vocabulary is somewhat difficult and esoteric. There's a whole bunch of difficult words about Korean funeral customs, for instance. The good news is that the teacher assures us things will get slightly easier in chapters to come. And most of the difficult vocabulary comes from Chinese, so I can easily recognize the Chinese-derived entymological roots than I know based on other words I've learned that Korean got from Chinese, which is sort of fun.

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