Yesterday I met with my awesome language partner for two hours. I had told her that I still considered my speaking skills my biggest weakness (well, essay writing too but we have to start somewhere), and she suggested that we warmed up my Korean vocal chords by reading an Iyagi lesson out loud. The lesson was about movies (http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/shows/iyagi-42-movies/) and we actually had many good laughs as the TTMIK hosts recording this episode were bickering quite a lot. Anyhow, while my reading and pronunciation in general was solid, she often corrected my intonation. I’m still having difficulties finding the “natural pauses” in a long Korean sentence. I know that it makes sense to break after e.g. …-면, -에, or -는 but I’m still far from confident. She told me that while my pronunciation is fine, the wrong intonation makes my spoken language sound much less natural. Now I know where to put my focus for the next few days. Back to shadowing Iyagi and newscasts in Korean!
My language partner also suggested that I write a few essays before we meet next time so that she could look over them and give me feedback on grammar and sentence structure. I’m so lucky I found her!
Happy weekend everyone!
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