I don't know if it's normal, but introducing myself...

[andy_227977]

Hi all,

My name is Andy and I've tried learning Korean MANY times over the past nearly 30 years. I started doing Taekwondo in 1987 and had a dream of visiting Korea. Well, it took a while but in 2012 I was invited by the World Taekwondo Headquarters (국기원) to visit Korean and attend the 세계 태권도 지도자 포럼. I loved it! I couldn't believe I hadn't been to Korea before.

So in 2013 I went back to Korea and attended the Taekwondo Master Training Course at the Kukkiwon, then the World Leaders Forum again. In 2014, I took my wife and two children (my children both do Taekwondo, my wife doesn't) for a few days to Korea while on holiday in Thailand.

When I've been to Korea in the past, I've known some stock phrases and had the basics of verb conjugation and maybe 50 words of general vocabulary, so most of my interactions with people were in English or sign language or my Taekwondo seniors moving my body physically to make corrections.

So as I have no plans to return to Korea this year (I'm going back twice in 2016, once with some of my students and once with my wife and children again as they both want to go back for longer than a few days) I'm planning on really being able to speak the language much better.

I started Korean lessons via Skype with a tutor I found on another site after returning from last year's holiday, and while I feel I've made real progress - I need more work on being able to hear Korean speech and pick out the words, and speaking back without sounding like I'm going word-by-word in my head.

My goal in Korean (for summer 2016) is to be able to understand the gist of what people are saying to me (even if I don't catch every word) and to be able to make myself understood back. I'm not worried (at this point in time) about sounding fluent or even natural, as long as I have comprehension both ways then that is absolute success for me in my target.

So there we go, that's me...

[team.relationships]

Hi Andy!

Thank you for your self-introduction!

Wow, it's so cool that you do Taekwondo!
I am sure you will achieve your goal about understanding and speaking Korean better! And I hope we at KoreanClass101.com can help you achieve your goal!!

What did you like most about Korea when you visited?

Have a great day!
Engla
Team KoreanClass101.com