I'm in Korea: Learning a language in your target country is REALLY helpful and motivating

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I’m meeting with several friends here on this trip to Korea and it’s so exciting. I can’t understand full conversations, but just picking up bits and pieces of words and phrases I understand is still quite fulfilling… today, somehow, I managed to put together a number of nice long sentences with the grammar that just sort of came out of my head somehow, and it felt great. Being constantly surrounded by the sounds of Korean and 한글 (korean writing system). Constantly puts me in a state of absorbing and trying to understand…

It’s also really, really motivating. Whenever I’m in a country with a language I don’t speak, it sort of feels like a big party that you can’t get into, and you want to learn so you can be part of the party. It also has given me renewed confidence that I will able to learn it, getting a true reflection of how much I’ve actually been able to learn, seeing as less than a year ago I started from absolute scratch.

Have you guys had a similar experience?

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Yeah, there is something about being in a country where a target language is widely spoken that (under the right conditions) can absolutely supercharge language learning.

That being said, there are plenty of folks who live in this or that country for literally decades without learning anything - beyond, perhaps, “hello”, “goodbye” and “thanks”. So I guess there has to be a desire or need plus mental energy and motivation - even under the most favourable conditions.

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