돌아올 거야, 돌아올 거야*

* = I will return, I will return (do-ra-ohl-geo-yah, do-ra-ohl-geo-yah)

I woke up this morning at 6:20AM with a pressing matter on my mind.

Does the grammar pattern -다면서요 (translated to mean "I heard that you...") follow the same rules as reported speech? Does that mean that I need to put a 은/는? Well, which one? Does that only apply to verbs...?

Being jetlagged and unable to sleep, I did the only thing which felt logical at the moment, which was pulling out all of the Sogang books I had in my room and poring over them until I had an answer (indeed, it does follow the same rules as reported speech, which means that you add an 은 if the verb stem ends in a vowel and a 는 if it ends in a consonant). Success. I then proceeded to drag my ass out of my room and log onto the family computer in the basement. My dad woke up within 15 minutes and was surprised to see me out of bed already; generally, when I'm at home, I don't bother waking up until at least 1 in the afternoon. He inquired, and I responded that I was jetlagged and had to get up to study some Korean. He shook his head at me and said, "Are you losing your mind?"

On the contrary, I don't know that I've ever felt this sane.

I've been home for about 2.5 days now, and in that span of time, I've consulted my Korean language books no less than 8 times to check up on a vocab word or grammar pattern that I worry I'll forget in the coming year (which is kind of not a legit fear, seeing as when I get to Yale, I'll be starting another Korean language class). I also had a dream about ddeokbokki and a phone conversation half in Korean with my aforementioned tutor, the very lovely Jaehee Unni (who very kindly insisted over and over that I've improved so much and she can't believe it and is so very proud of me - I love you, Jaehee Unni). I can't shake myself out of Seoul; I wake up missing the sights of Sinchon, the faces of my teachers and classmates, the smells of steaming dumplings outside of the Rotary restaurant. I hate driving everywhere. I miss the subway. I want my chopsticks back. What the hell, America? You suck (kidding. Sort of).

Anyway. I promised an update with some sort of evaluation of Sogang, and I intend to deliver that. So if you think this will be boring, feel free to skip; if you're a prospective or future Light Fellow, you might want to take a cursory glance or at least skim it. Or just find me and ask me in person. Seriously, I'm so prepared to spazz about how much I love Sogang and Korea that I will gladly squeal in your ear and spare you the trouble.

So you want to study at Sogang, do you? Well, here are some things you ought to know.

Sogang is a relatively small university tucked into some hills (like basically everything else in Korea) off of exit 6 of the Sinchon Rotary. This means that it isn't as close to the vibrant neighborhoods that surround Ewha Woman's University, Yonsei University, or Honggik University; suck it up, though, because I really believe that Sogang has the best language program in the country, and you can walk an extra 10 minutes for that.

Sogang's style of teaching basically mirrors the style of Korean taught at Yale by Angela Lee-Smith; actually, it would probably be more correct to say that Yale mirrors Sogang, since Lee Sunsaengnim is a former Sogang teacher employing Sogang methods. I outlined my schedule in one of my earlier posts, but a quick rehashing:
9:00 - 10:00 --> writing
10:00 - 12:00 --> speaking
12:00 - 1:00 --> reading/listening (they alternate, one day reading, the other listening)
So every chapter has a set list of vocabulary and 2-3 new grammar patterns. You learn them pretty much the way you do at Yale; the teacher explains them, you do sentence practice (building your own sentences), and then you learn dialogues in which the grammar patterns are applied. The vocabulary comes along with the sentence practice and dialogues, and a lot of it is taught to you by your reading/listening teacher. Sogang moves at an extraordinarily fast pace - 1 lesson is alloted only 2 days of class. 5 days are broken down into 2 lessons (2 days per lesson), then you have one day of review, then it's on to the next lessons. Makes for a busy and full courseload. Oh, and an obvious difference - all of it is 100% in Korean. All of it. This includes the explanations for all the grammar and vocab. It really can't be any other way, because not everyone in class speaks fluent English. Your teachers may or may not speak English; even if they do, they're unlikely to use it unless they really, really can't seem to get a meaning through to you. My writing teacher used to translate some things for me, but her accent was so thick that I sometimes couldn't understand her unless she wrote the word down in English (in many cases, Koreans read and write English much, much better than they speak it, or at least that is my experience). Fortunately, Sogang provides all students with a grammar/vocab book that outlines the meanings of the new patterns and words in English, so if you're really stuck in class, you can always consult that (and indeed, you really should study it beforehand; it became my Bible).

A word on your classmates: I mentioned that not all of them will speak English, and it is also worth mentioning that it's highly probable that none or very few of them will be students around your age. In my class, Becky and I were the two maknaes, or youngest, at 20 years old; the next youngest was about 24/25, and the average age of the rest is probably about 30 or a few years over that. Bob mentioned it in his blog, but most of the students at Sogang are adults who are learning Korean for business purposes or because they're in a relationship with a Korean person. Sure, there are SOME students (Princeton had a sizeable number at Sogang this summer as well), but the grand majority are adults. Oh, and most are from Japan. I picked up 1 Japanese phrase in the course of the entire summer; I can now say, "I don't speak Japanese." How fitting. But don't worry that you won't enjoy yourself or make friends simply because the demographic isn't what you're used to; I had so, so much fun with my class, both inside the KLEC building and out. We even went out together a couple of times for meals. You really do get close to them, to the point where leaving becomes terribly sad.

A word on your teachers: if you've had Angela Lee-Smith, you might think that your Korean teacher wants to know everything about you or be super-involved in your personal life. Actually, your Sogang teachers really don't care. And that's kind of expected; since a year at Sogang is broken down into 4 semesters, these teachers see kids come and go every 2 months, and so they're not all that invested in you personally. This is not to say, however, that they are not invested in making sure that you learn as much Korean as possible while you are under their tutelage, because my teachers were amazing. Of course, because it's a fairly sizeable program with a lot of teachers, there are obvious differences in the classroom manner and style of each sunsaengnim, and not everyone will like every teacher. My speaking teacher, Lee HyeJun, is actually really unpopular with a lot of students for being a hardass and kind of a bitch (sorry, but it's true); but if you pay attention to her, you'll learn a LOT, and at the end of the day, that is more important. Plus, I never found her class to be unenjoyable; not in the least. In fact, I kind of miss her.

As for my other 2 sunsaengnims, you kind of have opposite ends of the spectrum - my writing teacher, Choi Sunsaengnim, was barely older than me (she graduated college in 2007, meaning we would have shared a year at university - I have FRIENDS older than her), and quite gentle and soft-spoken; she spoke Korean at a relatively leisurely pace and used a lot of gestures to get meanings across (I think that even in the last week of classes, she was still making writing motions in the air whenever she was telling us to write something - kind of adorable, I miss her). Yang Sunsaengnim, on the other hand, was in her mid-30s (I think? I'm abysmal at telling the ages of people, especially Koreans) and was extremely exuberant, always speaking extremely rapidly and punctuating each sentence with a big smile or loud laugh. I would like to repeat that she spoke REALLY, REALLY QUICKLY. It terrified me in the beginning to the point of appearing like a deaf-mute in that class, but in the end, I think it educated me the most. After all, that's how real Koreans speak, and you want to learn how to speak Korean, right? Right? Right. But I'll be the first to admit that Choi Sunsaengnim's quiet and cheerful explanations, full of gesticulation and sometimes sprinkled with English, were nice as well (especially at 9 in the morning).

Grading at Sogang is heavily dependent upon the midterm and final exams. I think the official breakdown was 40% midterms, 50% finals, 10% participation and homework. Which is to say, there is not a lot of incentive to DO the homework, since it actually counts for almost nothing, but if you don't do it, you're going to screw yourself in the end. Do. The. Homework. If you've taken Korean at Yale, it's nothing you're not used to; the workbook follows the same format, as do the questions at the end of each listening/reading lesson. Yeah, it can be a pain and somewhat tedious, but do it. And if you really want to improve, it's a good idea to study, study, study that vocab and grammar. All the time. I'm serious. After midterms, I holed up in a cafe almost every night for a few hours to do my work and study the lesson's material (if you live in a goshitel, you might find that studying in your extremely cramped and tiny room is difficult, so try a cafe - I recommend Angel-in-Us, where the yogurt smoothies are AMAZING, and Cafe Pascucci - decent vanilla macchiatos). Once I started employing this routine, class was amazingly easier to follow and much less stressful.

The exams - well, they're hard. And a lot is riding on them. Passing is a 70% at Sogang, and you have to pass everything in order to graduate to the next level. And if you fail your speaking final, you're done for totally. It's a lot of pressure, but people have survived much worse. Study, pay attention to your sunsaengnims and the amazing things they have to offer you, and there's no reason why you shouldn't pass, and indeed, no reason why you shouldn't do very well. I probably had the roughest time of it, being that I took level 3 after not finishing level 2 at Yale (see the beginning posts for that whole epic saga, as I refuse to repeat it here); but in the end, I worked really hard and made use of my teachers, who are excellent resources, and pulled it together to finish with a solid B. I was amazed and quite proud, considering that I was barely passing at the midterm mark :) When I look back at the general progression of the summer, I am genuinely and truly thankful for the the challenge, and especially grateful that my sunsaengnims didn't let me drown in my own doubts or misgivings. I have to single out Choi Sunsaengnim and thank her for all of her help - she'll probably never read this blog, but if she ever does, thank you a thousand times over. I began to believe in my own ability to get better at this language because you believed in me first.

Hmm, I really wanted this evaluation to be organized and informative, but it appears to have degenerated into a sloppy and anecdotal mess, much like all the rest of my posts. Sorry?

Criticisms? A few; some people in the past have lamented Sogang's slow-ass administration; I never had much experience with them, but there does appear to be like, only one dude in the 7th floor office who deals with the entirety of the Korean language education program, and so getting things done can take a little while. The 7th floor office was always jam-packed after classes, so I imagine it must be frustrating. I had difficulties submitting my own application via the internet, but the nice thing about Sogang is that it's not as competitive as other programs, so applying is basically the same thing as enrolling, and they're more than willing to help you out with that. Another issue was with my placement interview test; they wound up calling me around 11:00PM on a date that was entirely different than the one I had originally asked for. Needless to say, I was really caught off guard and stumbled quite a bit. Organizational issues, then. Perhaps Sogang can work on that.

I really don't have complaints about the actual language instruction at Sogang. Some people in my class were really ready to bitch about Lee HyeJun Sunsaengnim (the aforementioned speaking teacher), but I had no problems with her, really, and besides, you're not going to like everyone and everyone is not going to like you, so you can chalk that up to luck of the draw. You might get a sunsaengnim you don't love, and that happens. Luckily, you have 3; even if you don't love one, you'll probably love the others, which is more or less how I felt (although I did like Lee HyeJun; don't get the wrong idea!). Anyway, teachers aside, the method if instruction is, in my opinion, quite effective, so no complaints there. I learned a lot of Korean = win.

I don't know if this is really a complaint, but I know that lot of other language programs have language pledges that stipulate that you are not to use English at all - not even outside of class (unless you're speaking to parents or non-target language speaking friends). The summer after my freshman year, I did a language program in Spain that had me sign a language pledge AND live in a Spanish homestay - perhaps not the most comfortable I've ever been, but astoundingly helpful for my linguistic abilities. Sogang, however, does not have a language pledge OR a homestay option - of course, you must speak only in Korean during class, but that basically means that outside of your class, how much Korean you use is entirely up to you. I won't lie - I used English basically all the time, even when speaking to other Fellows. As a beginner language student, it would have been really, really hard to use Korean all the time, but had we used Korean more, we might have gotten a bit more practice; then again, because we were beginners, whether or not practice among ourselves would have helped is debatable, seeing as we wouldn't really be able to correct each other. Practically speaking, Sogang simply can't really enforce a language pledge - because the student demographic is largely adults with lives and jobs that don't revolve around the 4 hours they spend at Sogang every morning, it's unrealistic to ask them to speak Korean all the time. That being said, in light of the lack of language pledge or homestay option, you can substitute by getting language partners, which I highly, highly recommend. You can practice for hours with these people, and because they are native Korean speakers, they really help you a lot. Finding a language partner isn't even all that difficult; Sogang has a language exchange message board website where people post ads that you can respond to. Also, any Korean friends you meet can become language partners. 2 of my partners, Hyemi and Yeorin, were friends first and language partners second, which is probably the best way to do it. The fact that these people become friends also encourages you to keep in touch beyond your stay in Korea - I've already sent off a bunch of emails in Korean, and I expect to send more. Many more. Actually, I just finished one like, 10 minutes ago. It's awesome.

I suppose, then, that that's it for my spiel on Sogang - there are probably 1000 things I'm forgetting, but whatever - just read the blog archives for more information/psuedo-useful commentary/Korean pop songs (whether or not those are helpul is debatable, but you already know my opinions on that). And if you're reading this and you've got questions about the Light Fellowship/Sogang/living in Seoul, feel free to contact me - it should be easy enough to get my personal information without me posting it on this public forum, so just check Yale Facebook for an email address!

In conclusion...oh, you know what? I'll just post another conclusion, to hell with it. I'm too attached to this blog and Korea to let it go just yet.

Love,
Jangmi