2019년 5월 육군 영어어학병 합격수기 - 해외파 유학생 학원수강생2
Background
I was born in Korea, but I spent most of my life (16 yrs) in the US and I went to school starting from 2nd grade of grade school to finishing my bachelors in the US as well. During this time my interaction with the Korean language was limited to the time spent with family (which was seldom after moving out at the age of 18) and a bit over a year of working in a Korean restaurant. I would say that while I can hold a conversation in Korean pretty decently, I had a lot trouble with Korean vocabulary that could be commonly found in newspapers and articles but perhaps not so much in everyday life. If you are somebody that is mainly an English speaker like me and also not a natural public speaker, then I think this may be helpful for you.
Preparations
A week before taking attending class,I took the 방학특강 lecture online. I didn’t get to finish it but for me it was helpful since I was able to know what to expect before getting into the thick of it. For me the hardest part during the first half of the class was memorization, especially memorizing in Korean. In the beginning when we were doing memorization exercises during class,I would try to memorize the literal sounds of the words that I didn’t know the meaning of which was really difficult to handle whilst simultaneously trying to memorize the contents of the passage. This resulted in me missing huge chunks of the passage when I would try to repeat back what I heard. And because during class we mostly did the exercise in Korean, I had a hard time and it was huge hit to my confidence. If I were to go back in time, I would read A LOT more Korean articles and learn more Korean vocabulary before diving into class. You could be an excellent English speaker, but when it comes to translating, if you don’t understand what you have to translate, you’re going to have a tough time. Because of this, I was more confident in translating from ENG->KOR than KOR->ENG even though I was a much stronger English speaker.
Other than listening to and participating in lecture, I would try to stay after class for study groups with classmates after every class. This should be your top priority. Before each study group I would look for articles in both Korean and English (I mostly used articles I found on Naver for Korean articles and the Korean Herald/Joongang Daily for English) to read to my study mates so they can translate back to me, and they would do the same for me. We focused on topics such as North Korea, national security, foreign affairs(mostly US related), economics, and we would sprinkle in societal issues here and there. It was very helpful being criticized by stronger Korean speakers, especially when I was translating ENG->KOR, as I was able to work on my awkward phrasing when trying to form phrases in Korean.
Outside of study group, I would use text-to-speech programs (Papago for Korean articles and Google Translate for English) and record my translations after listening to between 25-50 words. While study groups were more helpful, I would say practicing translation through this method was useful as well.
Personally for me, I didn’t put too much focus on memorizing military vocab outside of lecture. I naturally picked up the most used ones during lectures and study groups. This may not be the best example because during my actual exam, there was little use of military vocabulary, so I may have been able to get away with it.
I would say that the hardest part about preparing for the exam was trying to be consistent and confident. During lecture and study groups, I had a lot of trouble translating consistently. I would have good days and just as much bad days. When having bad days, it would be a huge hit to my confidence which resulted in me being more inconsistent. It was a vicious cycle that threw me into a slump many times during the prep. If you are somebody like me, all I could say is to be mentally strong and persevere.It is inevitable that you are going to have days where you can’t remember phrases to save your life. It’s important to keep on practicing through those days so during the actual exam it doesn’t happen.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I felt that after attending every lecture and having many study groups, the key to performing well during the exam was having confidence. You have to endure through the pain of being publicly shamed during lecture when one of your terribly translated recording is picked and fuel that shame into doing more practice. Even if Korean isn’t your primary language and each and every class during the beginning seems daunting, through practice you will gain confidence. So it is super important to practice and practice more, and just as important to form a solid study group in which you can share constructive criticism amongst each other.
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