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CZ’s TAC 15 CHN/JPN/KOR | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 665 of 844 20 February 2013 at 4:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Been really busy. Trying to watch some of the dramas that recently premiered in my spare time. I started intensively reading a new book and now I write for Soompi, so I'll be going through a lot of Korean articles to find stuff to write about and to translate/summarize.
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| mctttt Newbie Canada Joined 4302 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* | Message 666 of 844 23 February 2013 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello,
Reading through your post is inspirational, a great log for us learning languages out there. I was hoping you could give me some guidance on some good beginner Korean resources, I found a few in your log but its too long to read every page :). A quick summary would be extremely helpful and I would appreciate any advice you had for someone looking to learn Korean. Thanks 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 667 of 844 02 March 2013 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||
Oh, sorry for the late reply. Last week was midterm week, so I was swamped with having to use more English than normal. I see that you live in Canada, so the best site for you to use is DramaFever. For a beginner, Talk To Me In Korean is essential. I wish this site existed when I was a beginner, as I floundered around trying to learn the grammar haphazardly. Naver's Dictionary is my preferred dictionary. Plenty of example sentences for the definitions. Daum has a better Eng-Kor dictionary (more definitions in English), but Naver's Kor-Kor dictionary is much better. So I use both, but mainly use Naver. If you want anymore links, just ask, but I see those three links as being essential. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 668 of 844 03 March 2013 at 3:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Time for an update, as it's been a while since I've updated my log aside from a small blurb here and there.
With Korean, I was trying to do some intensive reading again, but I just can't do it for novels. There are just so many words that I need to look up (despite getting the gist of the book when I read it. I can follow along the story 95% of the time.) I'll probably go back to my "half-assed intensive reading" or whatever I called it. I don't know, the less effort I put in, the more I seem to get out of language learning. With Japanese, I'm quickly going through my grammar books to refresh my memory of some of the grammar concepts. My Japanese comprehension isn't terrible, but there are a lot of holes compared to my peak in 2011. I'll also being going through RTK at an accelerated pace, only expecting to really have to learn 200 kanji over again. I'm sure I'll remember the rest of the characters as I see them and learn more vocab again. For now, I'm going to Famitsu and reading a paragraph, hovering over every word that I don't know. I only do a paragraph before I stop. I'll probably do more free reading where I only look up words here and there down the road, but for this week at least, I want to try to remember as many Japanese words as I can. I started learning Mandarin a couple of days ago, using Assimil. I never liked how Assimil said "do one chapter a day over and over again." I'm on chapter 80 or so, going through each chapter once and listening to the dialogues and exercises while comparing the Mandarin and English sentences. My goal is to finish Assmil later today and then go through it again at a slower pace. I have a decent feel for how the grammar works, but I found some sources to reinforce the grammar as I go through Assimil again. I honestly don't find Mandarin too hard, but I have a background in Korean and Japanese. I'm not intimidated by characters and a lot of the vocabulary is easy for me to learn. I'm not tone deaf, so the listening comprehension and speaking will come with a lot of exposure and practice. Mandarin will be the first language I learn under my own "system." Over the past four years learning Korean and Japanese, I have found what works and what doesn't work for me, and I'll be putting those to ideas to work with Mandarin. I'm sure learning Mandarin will be much easier than Korean and Japanese were. If you're wondering why I'm learning Mandarin, it's because a lot of people I talk to online are Chinese. I'm a big Han Ye Seul fan and I visit her Baidu page, where I get along with the members there. It also doesn't hurt that Jolin Tsai is extremely hot. Edited by The Real CZ on 03 March 2013 at 3:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BloodyChinese Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4356 days ago 39 posts - 61 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2 Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 669 of 844 03 March 2013 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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So you like Taiwanese Women. You have good taste:)
The biggest problem I've encountered with Chinese so far is that there's a big leap you have to take if you want to work with native(read: actually interesting) material early on. I imagine this is difficult in any language, but I think what amplifies the shock effect when you jump from materials intended for L2 learners to native material is the initial simplicity of beginner Mandarin. Magic is supposed to happen once you hit the 3000 characters/5000 words mark, but as I am still below that level, I got bored and thought I'd dump my boring textbooks and readers for some real material. So I went looking for Chinese manhua(manga) and TV series. Well,to my surprise, there is a plethora of Chinese manhua around and some TV series that apparently don't make you feel like stabbing your own eyes out. But, to my dismay, the one TV series that is deemed to be perfectly suited for "beginners", containing fantastic examples of everyday language plus a likeable plot, is so far above my level that I would have to look up about every word in the transcript...same goes for some of the manhua I took a look at. The TV series I mentioned is called 奋斗, by the way. It is pretty difficult to find Chinese/Taiwanese Dramas that are not extremely cheesy and those which are not are often historical dramas/kung fu novel adaptions(which use archaic/outdated Chinese) So the best course of action I've chosen for myself as of right now is to go through as many Podcasts(ChinesePod/Popup Chinese/CSLPod/CLO/ChineseClass101) as possible and go back to graded readers for the time being. There are many great things you can do to make Chinese learning natural and fun, but until you get to that level, it's kind of a pain in the ass. What do you plan to do after Assimil? Edited by BloodyChinese on 03 March 2013 at 5:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 670 of 844 03 March 2013 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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My first goal is to finish RTK for Japanese, which will help me tremendously with the characters once I start learning characters that are only used with Mandarin.
After Assimil is done, I'll be going back through it slowly. I'll also use Zhongwen Red and put all of those sentences in Learning With Texts (just started using it for Korean and Japanese.) LWT is not ideal with Asian languages, but there are easy modifications to do. With Korean, you have to keep the word how it is in the text (ex: 펼칠 instead of 펼치다), but I put the dictionary form of the word in the definition. With Mandarin and Japanese, I have to add spaces so that the dictionary will work correctly. It's a pain up front, but the benefits are well worth it. Aside from learning characters, I'll use this grammar reference to help me solidify the grammar I don't know. After that, I'll watch the intermediate and advanced series on CCTV. By this point, I hope to be diving into more native written material. I'm trying to find some Taiwanese and Mainland dramas to watch. I'll probably start out with some dramas that have Korean actors in them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 671 of 844 07 March 2013 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, I have finished my first pass through Assimil Chinese. I did it in a week, but I did it differently than most people probably do. All I did was read along with the recordings while looking comparing the Chinese and English. I only listened to each once. This was to get an overview of the language structure and sound.
Now, my second time through will be different. My plan is to do six lessons a day, skipping the revision chapters. I will go through the lessons and listen to the recording a few times, and then practice reading out loud the sentences several times. Aside from that, I'm going through HSK vocab lists, simply focusing on learning as many words as possible in a short amount of time. I will disregard memorizing hanzi for the first couple of months. I already know a lot of them because of Japanese and Korean, but I found that it is much easier for me to remember the characters if I already know the words instead of going the other way around. I don't know, I may be in the minority when it comes to that. Anyway, like I have written previously, I hate SRS. I'm cramming the vocab like I would while studying for a test, and plan to reinforce those words through input and output instead of just using a SRS software. For media, I have been watching When Love Walked In, a 2012 Taiwanese drama starring Victoria Song from f(x). Yeah, Victoria is the only reason I'm watching this. In music, I've been listening to a lot of Jolin Tsai. I'm starting to look for other singers/groups, but I'm fine with listening to a lot of Jolin for now. She's super hot. For output, it's hard, but I'm not making the same mistake I did with Korean and Japanese. My Korean output skills lag behind my input skills a lot. I would say my understanding of Korean is in the lower to mid B2 range, while my output ability is only at the upper A2/lower B1 level. It's even worse with Japanese. I stopped studying Japanese, as I don't have the drive to learn it now, but will pick it up in a few years. Anyway, in 2011, I would say my understanding in Japanese was mid B1 while my output ability was A1. I am sort of following The Korean's method. Basically, I'm mixing in the best of both worlds, trying to speak a lot more and use the language a lot more. For now, I'm posting on Baidu. I have regularly visited the Han Ye Seul Baidu Bar and get along with the posters there, so I'll use that place to start interacting with people. I will also form my own sentences orally and in written form. One is to practice the tones and pronunciation, but to also get used to thinking in Mandarin. I didn't do this nearly enough for Korean and never did it for Japanese. I will still learn Korean, but it will still mainly be passive, because I still don't have access to Korean speakers. However, there are a lot of Chinese students at my school. I hope to try to talk to some this semester, but after these two months, an intensive three months in the summer, I should be able to talk to some Chinese students in the fall semester. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5641 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 672 of 844 14 March 2013 at 1:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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So far, the pronunciation in Mandarin is giving me some trouble. Some of the concepts are easy since d/t and g/k are exactly like they are in Korean. There are just other sounds that I need more practice on, and of course, the tones. I think I need to spend some time specifically working on tones. I can hear them, it's just harder producing them for the moment.
I'm still going through Assimil, though because of real life stuff (interviews, school, etc.) I haven't progressed as far as I had wanted. However, still doing well with Assimil. I also ordered Teach Yourself Complete Mandarin, as I need a book to help me with active production. I don't think it's too good to be fully passive from the start. I think the passive stuff helps a lot more at the intermediate level for me. I need to actively use Mandarin for the sentence structure and vocab to stick. With Korean, I've continued intensive reading and working on grammar. I'm hoping this weekend I'll have more time to chat with Koreans online. I have continued translating Korean, as that's mainly my biggest time sink after school work. After a week off of Japanese, I feel refreshed and I'm ready to start tackling it again. I'm going through grammar as quickly as I can for a refresh, and then will start learning new grammar. I never finished the intermediate and advanced grammar dictionaries that I have. The main reason I restarted Japanese is because now I'm a translator at Karaholic, and they needed a Japanese translator for news, so I decided to do that since I'm also translating news from Korean anyway. Anyway, for now it seems like my life is a bit chaotic, but it's controllable chaos. Balancing school, the project I have to do in order to get an internship, translating, and language study. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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