Amanda Takes Off...

This weekend I met the Elusive Pia, who was a total blast to hang out with. We had a great time and I wish she weren't leaving! Finally...a normal foreigner here. You know, other than me... She understands the frustration with Korean men here, being "painfully beautiful" and yet unattainable. Indeed. Sigh.

I was in a bad mood tonight and couldn't figure out why. With one simple question, Master figured out why. When I started ticking off days and stumbling around, half the time recalling correct grammar and half the time just spitting out words, he listened. When I said in Korean "오늘 피곤해서 착안요," he didn't laugh or correct me. (Hey, I couldn't figure out how to say "crabby;" "I am tired and I'm not nice today" seemed like it would work.) He offered some advice, and offered to help shake some things up for me if need be. In a matter of five minutes, I felt justified (by a Korean) in my frustration (with a Korean) and I was able to focus on class again.

Sometimes he's my mentor—mostly with taekwondo. Sometimes he's like an older brother (despite the fact that he's less than two months older than me)—taking me under his wing, teaching me about Korea. Sometimes he feels like my best friend.

In other news, my last Korean lesson with Michael really frustrated me. It wasn't anything related to Michael, I just didn't find the telephone lesson all that useful. We were supposed to meet last night but I was exhausted from being out with Pia and I canceled, so now we're supposed to meet tomorrow. I've looked at the next lesson and started studying the vocabulary. I still haven't memorized the vocab from the last lesson...over a month ago. This lesson looking more like it will be immediately useful to me, so I'm excited again.

I realized a few days ago that I wasn't speaking as much Korean as I had been in the studio. Since taekwondo is my motivation for learning Korean here, it made me feel disappointed in myself.

In language learning, there are generally seen to be two main types of motivation. KidSource has a good definition of each type of motivation (emphasis mine).

Gardner and Lambert (1972) introduced the notions of instrumental and integrative motivation. In the context of language learning, instrumental motivation refers to the learner's desire to learn a language for utilitarian purposes (such as employment or travel), whereas integrative motivation refers to the desire to learn a language to integrate successfully into the target language community.

Despite what you might expect, living in Korea in general tends to be my instrumental motivation. Taekwondo is my integrative motivation. I don't care if I can talk with the people on the subway. I want to be able to talk to my classmates.

I have been having a hard time with all of the terminology in taekwondo. My books all have the Korean terms—Romanized. I hate Romanization. After getting the Kukkiwon Texts with Hangul and English in them, I had no excuse. On the way to the studio tonight, I made more than 100 flashcards of terms (and I'm still not done yet) to study. After class, Master helped me sort them into "Learn ASAP" and "Learn Later" piles.

Would it be "better" better to learn 100 general vocab words rather than words like "inner wrist face outer block?" Probably. Would I study some random 100 words as much and learn them as quickly? Probably not. Will learning words that I use and hear several times a week make me feel like a more successful student, and thus encourage me to keep studying? I bet!