Inspiration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf3Zdqc-ZTs

Watch the video.

1. Are you aware of your Korean Speaking Comfort Zone? This Challenge is going to ask you to step outside that Comfort Zone.
2. Comfort Zone: Your habits, routines, skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors.
3. Learning Zone: Where you observe, experiment, learn, compare, and enjoy.
4. Panic Zone: The “no experience” zone. Have you heard this before? “Do go, it’s dangerous! You don’t know what will happen! What if something goes wrong?”
5. Magic Zone: The “big challenges” zone. Leaving means to broaden your Comfort and Learning Zones. Change = development.
6. Emotional tension pulls you back toward your Comfort Zone via your fears. (Fear of failure, other people’s voices, ridicule and shame.)
7. Creative tension pushes you out of your Comfort Zone with motivation.

Remember:

1. Whatever you don’t decide, others will decide for you.
2. You have resources in your Comfort Zone. Don’t be afraid to return there to gather the resources and put them to use.
3. Be patient in your training, confident in your goal, your strategy well-prepared, and stay persevering and positive.

Challenge

For Day #1 of the 30-Day Challenge, we want to do three things:

1. Set a baseline for everything that is to follow.
2. Cement a decision in your brain about where, when, and how you will intentionally speak Korean (most laziness occurs because people haven’t made a conscious decision to do something).
3. Begin pushing you outside your Comfort Zone.

Therefore, today’s Daily Challenge is as follows:

#1: Record a Self-Introduction video in front of someone else.

Here’s mine:

The content of your Self-Introduction video is up to you and depends on your current Korean level. You are free to look up a few basic Korean phrases if you need to. You are also free to write down some ideas to help guide you, but don’t just read your whole intro. The goal here is to set a visual reminder for yourself of where you began this 30-Day Challenge, so free speaking as much as possible is important.

The reason the Challenge is do record the video in front of someone else is simple. Your Comfort Zone includes your own personal space. Recording a video alone in your room = Comfort Zone. Recording a video in front of someone else = the “dangerous” and “scary” Learning Zone. Push yourself out of your Comfort Zone.

Hashtags for today are:

#k2korean #k2k301

(I discovered yesterday that the dash (-) in the hashtags doesn’t work properly. We’ll remove that from here on out.)

Resources

(aka “The Study Zone”)

If you don’t yet know Hangul, now is the perfect time to learn. Here are some good resources:

1. Learn Hangul: Korean Wiki Project
2. LearnHangul.com: Program for PC and Mac
3. Talk to Me in Korean: Read and write Hangul
4. Learn Hangul Rapidly 1 (YouTube)
5. Learn Korean Rapidly 2 (YouTube)
6. Sweet and Tasty: Learn Korean 1: Pronounce the Alphabet
7. Round-up of the 4 BEST Hangul smartphone apps

Useful Challenge phrases

The following are some phrases that you might find you need to put to use more often during this 30-Day Challenge:

1. (나랑) 한국말 해 주세요. (“Please speak Korean (with me).”)
2. 뭐라고요? (“Pardon?”)
3. 다시 말해 주세요. (“Please repeat that.”)
4. 더 천천히 말해 주세요. (“Please speak more slowly.”)
5. 써 주세요. (“Please write it down.”)
6. 이것은 뭐예요? (“What’s this?”) Substitute 저것은 or 그것은 for “that”.
7. 이건 무슨 뜻이예요? (“What does this mean?”)
8. 한국말로 어떻게 말해요? (“How do you say that in Korean?”)
9. 잠시만요. 사전을 확인 해 볼게요. (“Just a second, let me check the dictionary.”)
10. 지금 나는 한국말 30일 도전을 하고있어요. (“I’m doing the Speaking Korean 30-Day Challenge now.”)

And if you need more basic phrases, here are some more resources:

1. The National Institute for the Korean Language phrasebook
2. WikiTravel phrasebook
3. Smartphone phrasebook app from Cogent (iPhone, iPad (HD), and Android)

Ready to step outside your Comfort Zone? Leave a link to your video below.

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