So here in the middle of summer, winter is far away and I shouldn’t really be longing for frost and snow, and significantly fewer hours of daylight. Nonetheless, this is EXACTLY what I am doing at the moment. Because when winter comes, I’m going back to Seoul!!! My husband and I are going to spend two weeks over the holidays in Korea exploring Seoul and its beautiful surroundings, eating delicious Korean food, going to noraebangs (yes, I sing when I’m in Korea), meeting with new and old friends, and just generally living life Korean-style for a little while. It has been our plan all along but now that we’ve bought the flight tickets and booked a gorgeous Gangnam apartment through AirBnB, it just seems so real! I’ve already started compiling a shopping list of items to get while I’m there ^_^ It should also be fun to see how much easier it will be to communicate this time compared to last year where I had only been studying Korean for 5 months before going.

So back to the books!  The past few days I’ve been working with my awesome TOPIK 쓰기book. It is a highly recommended resource for those wanting to improve their Korean writing skills. There are tons of exercises inspired by previous TOPIK papers and great tips on how to make your writing more natural and clear. (Here’s a link to the book from TwoChois ^_^) After having been doing a lot of writing, today’s focus has been on increasing my reading speed. I’m training to become better at superficially skimming a text in Korean while still grasping its content. It’s a lot harder than it sounds as I am still lacking familiarity with a lot of words. Well, Übung macht den Meister as the German saying goes. I wanted to include this saying, as I just heard Kwon Sang Woo say these exact words (in German) to Choi Ji Woo in the drama I just finished watching. I don’t know if it is just me, but for some weird reason I often see references to Germany in Korean dramas.  너무 이상하다… I should probably ask my language partner about this.

Posted on 9 By 소희 Books Posted in Books, Korea, Study methods

소희

I'm a Danish girl living in Korea teaching economics at Sogang economics. When I'm not working I love to learn Korean, discover this beautiful country, read and blog about my experiences and thoughts. Follow me at www.sofietokorea.com :)

9 Comments »

  1. I bought that book a long time ago from TwoChois but never read it. TOPIK writing section has changed before I even started using the book. But I can see there are many sample sentences that could be useful to write diary in Korean. 서울에 잘 다녀 오세요~

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  2. Argh, don’t jinx our summer!!! it’s cold enough as it is 😉

    Hvor fedt, at I skal afsted igen! Jeg fortsætter ufortrødent med min opsparing så jeg også kan komme afsted på et tidspunkt 🙂

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    • Haha, what summer? 😉 In Aarhus we have 17 degrees with strong wind. Not much use having an otherwise lovely balcony.
      Glæder mig allerede vanvittigt meget til at komme derover igen. Glæder mig især til at prøve at bo i en lejlighed i stedet for på et hotel! 🙂

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      • Her er det i det mindste 22 grader lige nu, men der er også sol direkte på termometeret, så jeg tror man skal tage det med et gran salt 😉 For en halvanden uges tid siden var det 14 grader i vores – ellers dejlige – have. Det er lidt som en mild februar…

        Det lyder SÅ fedt! 🙂 Jeg vil meeeeeed! haha

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      • Haha, hørte engang en af mine udenlandske kolleger sige at Danmark kun har to årstider. En grå vinter og en grøn vinter 🙂 Er tilbøjelig til at give hende ret! Hvis mine planer om et forskningsophold i Seoul fra efteråret 2016 falder i hak, må du endelig komme på besøg!

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      • HAHAHAHA!!!
        Mine svenske kolleger siger, at Danmark er det eneste land, hvor man har modvind uanset hvilken retning man cykler 😀

        Wooow, det bliver rimelig stort, hvis du kan få et forskningsophold. Hvor lange er sådanne ophold normalt?

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      • Det har de da fuldstændig ret i! 😀
        Normalt er det 6-12 måneder. Jeg håber bestemt på et år, selvom det kan betyde, at jeg så bliver nødt til at tage midlertidig orlov fra AU.

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