Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Yesterday, I started my first day of formalized and structured learning of the Korean language. Yes, I have been in Korea for some time and have managed to pick up reading Hangul (한글), but not at the pace or in a way that really means something to me. So I did what I always do… turn to my friends at Rosetta Stone and purchased the learning software.

Over the years, I’ve used Version 1 and Version 2 software packages, but this is my first time with the new and improved system. I can honestly say that it is amazing to see how far they have come in the past few years.

What makes this system so much more impressive than the past two, is how the lessons are built. Previously, I found them quite boring (although they were effective). This time, all the elements are present and it makes for quite a challenging hour of instruction. However, I did run into one problem.

During the pronunciation phase of the lesson, I was to replicate the syllable 수, which sounds like “soo” or “su”. No matter what I did, the computer wouldn’t recognize my speech and I was left staring at the computer, jaw agape. I’m hoping that today’s efforts will be greatly improved and that over the course of this week, I’ll be able to master Lesson 1.

The course is somewhat different than those in the past, in that each Level is broken down into four units, with four lessons each. My current plan is to spend a week on each lesson and compete one Unit a month. This should see me competing Level 1 in January with a mastery proficiency.