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MissKJ’s Dream! TAC 2015 東亜~ | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| misskj Newbie United States Joined 4343 days ago 28 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 17 of 24 12 April 2015 at 10:42pm | IP Logged |
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Alright.. I have been slacking with the language studies these past 2 months.. I've been a bit
overwhelmed with my class work and I recently got a bf and I think my focus has been everywhere but languages. I did continue to Skype in Korean with my partner and in Japanese so I haven't completely avoided using Japanese or Korean so thats good. And on the bright side my Korean speaking is definitely improving! Some things I need to consciously work on for Korean:
My Korean speaking and writing is getting a lot better and I'm learning to express myself easier but my listening is so horrible I usually don't know what my partner is saying when she talks about certain topics. I lack the vocabulary and sometimes even if I know what vocabulary she is using I might have trouble understanding, and then she writes it down and I'm like OHHH I do know what you said. I also think I need to make some more short term goals for myself to stay on track no matter what I have going on with school. This week I'm aiming to: KOREAN -Watch at least 3 episodes of a Korean Drama -Write 2 lang-8 articles -Start reading some kind of Korean material -Start using anki again in some form, either to mine words in the wild or from the most common word decks JAPANESE - Read some kind of material in Japanese - Watch an anime or start a new Japanese drama - Start messaging my Japanese friends on Skype again I also lost my post that had all my reasons for learning Japanese and Korean T-T I'll have to make another list again for motivation. I also got into the Korean study abroad program yay! Gotta get my Korean speaking skills up so I can make some awesome friends and have a good experience so that definitely motivated me again. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 18 of 24 13 April 2015 at 10:33am | IP Logged |
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I've been following your log and am glad to see you sticking around. It's always good to have more people who are studying Korean ;)
Study abroad sounds like an awesome opportunity. I spent 1 1/2 months in Korea last summer and it was absolutely great. Would've been even better if I could have stayed longer. How long will your study abroad be? Half a year? It's a good idea to try to get as much input and grammar study as possible done before your trip, so you have a strong base to build on. I wish I had studied grammar more diligently before I went, but it was still great from my speaking skills - I just still resort to basic grammar far too often when speaking. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| misskj Newbie United States Joined 4343 days ago 28 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 19 of 24 27 April 2015 at 5:17am | IP Logged |
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Hi druckfehler! Thanks for stopping by! I guess I forgot to check the notify me of replies box.
Yup I'll be in Seoul for a semester so about 3,4 months. I'm really excited. I want to be able to make as many Korean friends as possible and really immerse myself in the language and culture and push myself. Which is why I'm really focusing on speaking with my studies because I made the mistake of practicing output later on with Japanese. How was it for you speaking and making friends in Korea? And do you have any overall advice for me while I'm there or what to prepare for ahead of time? ---- Ok... so I've still been slacking with my studies. I think I need to make some small daily goals to push myself to study again. (albeit I'm about to have finals but theres still no excuse for me to use at least an hour to study something in korean or watch a drama on a food break or something). I'll start a little small but still do-able everyday. Goals this week: Add 10 new Korean words to anki deck Watch an episode a day of a Korean drama or reality show Skype on Saturday and Sunday with my Korean language exchange partner Write one lang-8 article this week in Korean These seem do-able. Japanese: Read something everyday in Japanese Watch an anime/Japanese drama every other day Skype for one hour this week in Japanese (I also need to study Kanzen master but thats probably not going to happen this week because of my hw and programs I have to work on so I'll aim for that next week) Also side note I looked at my class schedule/plan for the future and saw I have room for a minor now! I would minor Japanese or Korean if they had it at my school but sadly they don't. My school has French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Italian, and Chinese. I would love to minor in a language and it seems possible with what my classes are looking like in the future. So I'm thinking about minoring in one of these languages soon. I've been thinking about German because I've flirted with it a bit in the past and because of the translation job possibilities if I decide to quit programming in the future. Russian interests me, and I've considered Chinese but I kind of want to study a non Asian language now. I'm also looking at Arabic. Ah so hard to decide. And I also feel like I should only study one language at a time, or focus at one language at a time... So I would wait until after I come back to Korea to start studying my minor language seriously. But it's still good to keep another language in mind. I'll try logging on here more often :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| misskj Newbie United States Joined 4343 days ago 28 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 20 of 24 02 May 2015 at 4:15am | IP Logged |
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Hello Hello~
I'm back on track with my language plans~ Finals start next week but that still hasn't stopped me from getting in a few hours of Korean studying. I started a new Korean deck. It's Korean words I encounter out in the wild. Tested Korean --> English. Idk how beneficial it is to do English --> Korean because I want to be able to read in Korean quickly and when I did Japanese I did it this way so I'll just stick with it. Also got Twilight in Korean so I started reading that. I literally have to look up almost every single word but I'm learning!! I'm just lazy when it comes to adding the vocabulary since I'm so used to the many lovely programs that exist for Japanese like Kanjitomo and yomichan etc. *sigh* Need to go back to making that Korean program I was thinking about programming. If I have time over the summer I bet I can finish it, but in the meantime gotta add those cards. This week I added 108 new korean words from naver news about my celebrities and from kpop lyrics and reading twilight. I've also been adding grammar points from Korean Grammar in Use into anki, cloze form. So that's been good. Woo hoo for grammar~ I also made 1 lang-8 article.. I'll make another tonight. But my Korean writing and speaking is definitely improving, especially my Korean language partner keeps mentioning how much I've improved. That makes me happy to hear :). I just need to keep doing what I'm doing. One problem though... My goal for listening.. not so much. Listening is still horrendous everything goes over my head. I do think listening in Korean is harder than it is in Japanese but it just means I'll have to work harder. One question I do have. Maybe I'll look at some old posts about this topic or maybe make a new one and ask you people but I'll mention it here. I don't know what I should be doing to improve my listening in Korean. Going back to my goal I want to be able to understand most daily life and conversational Korean and be able to watch and understand daily life Korean dramas. I'm not sure how I should go about working on this skill. When I studied Japanese I did the whole Ajatt full immersion thing so from the get go I was listening to japanese every second, BUT I feel like the majority of that listening went over my head, and when I went back to listen to the material I was listening to in the beginning it was impossible for me to have understood that material because I just lacked the vocabulary. And I feel like thats where I'm at with Korean right now as well. There's the problem with pronunciation and Korean being difficult for me to hear but then even if I DID here the word I just haven't learned the vocabulary yet. This week I tried watching the first ep of Kill me heal me with Korean subs only on viki but that was a major fail. I was bored, frustrated and confused and I just felt like a loser. I feel like if I want to be able to watch Korean dramas without subs I should just DO that but I also feel like doing that right now is wasting my time..*sigh* 어떡해.. If anyone has advice and is reading this any help would be appreciated!! --- Japanese.. I read a bit of my Japanese novel so that was fun, started reviewing some vocab from my jap deck everyday. I'm 500 reviews behind though but those are just some rare specialized vocab from my books so it's not a big deal. After finals I'll try to get back to my Japanese skype sessions. I need to start pushing myselfl more with Japanese speaking. Afterall I am going to Japan in January as well, not just Korea!! Oh I watched THIS today. I like seeing these guys, and I liked watching their earlier videos of them speaking korean after 12 weeks I think it was. :) It gives me hope seeing them speak, hope that I can make it by the time I go to Korea. Ideally I want to be like THIS guy~ in due time.. Duces~~ Edited by misskj on 02 May 2015 at 4:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| misskj Newbie United States Joined 4343 days ago 28 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 21 of 24 04 May 2015 at 4:51pm | IP Logged |
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Yo~
KOREAN Was using Anki consistently.. until I started getting lazy and then had to focus on a program due yesterday. But on the brightside I started programming the Korean App I wanted to make to help me add Korean vocab to anki quickly. I should have a working prototype of it by tomorrow! Yay for lazy programmers :D After the app is finished I'll aim to start adding 40 new words a day in Korean. Because of me staying up every night till 5am I haven't been able to skype with my korean partner this week.. and I haven't made a lang-8 post.. man I'm slacking. AFTER finals I'll get back into things. But for now I'll aim to watch some Korean Dramas on my breaks from studying. ALSO I've been thinking more about the problem I'm having with my Korean listening not improving. Or improving too slowly I should say. Thinking back to how my listening improved in Japanese, I only started to be able to understand spoken Japanese once I knew the vocabulary. So for Korean if I break up the listening problem. 1. Understand the majority of the vocabulary and grammar when reading in Korean 2. Be able to read quickly in Korean, (Ex. when watching a Korean drama be able to quickly read the Korean subtitles that flash on the screen) 3. Be able to hear and identity words in Korean when you hear them So the first thing I need to work on is my vocabulary. There's no way I could understand a Korean drama with the level my vocabulary and grammar is in right now. I can't even read the Korean subtitles. Which goes back to me adding a lot of vocabulary for the new few months. I also thought about how quickly I can read in Japanese and understand the sentences. I got to that level after reading a lot everyday in Japanese and being exposed to so many ways the vocabulary was used. I need that for Korean. So I should have a goal of reading A LOT in Korean. I'll admit though lately my motivation for Korean and Japanese has been dwindling. Which is interesting. When my motivation for Korean and Japanese lower my interest in non-asian languages rise. Like I've been reading and watching stuff in German lately. And my best friend speaks Spanish so for the past week I said. We will only speak Spanish for here on out. I took 5 years of Spanish is school but I was so sick of Spanish and didn't really make an effort to ever learn the language. If only I have to same love I have in Korean and Japanese for Spanish. Regardless it's been fun speaking Spanish everyday. I'd like to be able to hold conversations in Spanish and order my food in Spanish at Chipotle :) I wonder if other language learners feel this way about motivation and interests in languages going all over the place haha. I feel guilty when my motivation for Korean starts to fall though because I still have a limited about of time to reach my goal of conversational fluency in Korean so Ain't nobody got time for my motivation to be slippin. -_- Also when I use German and Spanish I think omg it's like I'm skipping hours of work in Korean/Japanese. Not that languages are easy but it's looking like it takes significantly less time to make progress in German or Spanish than Korean or Japanese. So that's exciting :) JAPANESE -- Read a bit of random posts and blogs online. Sometimes I forget how well I can understand Japanese and it makes me happy :D TODO: Make list of reasons for learning Korean. Bye bye** 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| misskj Newbie United States Joined 4343 days ago 28 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 22 of 24 09 June 2015 at 4:02am | IP Logged |
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Ok...
i've been on the struggle bus with my motivation with studying languages since summer started. I've been having some kind of weird stubborn mental block. I just have been completely pushing away anything asian (besides food). I have been oogling German though. But when I was in the car watching the trees go by and looking up at the sky I remembered I'm blessed and lucky enough to actually be going to Japan and Korea next year! My dream is happening. But why is my motivation for studying languages failing me now. It just didn't make any sense to me. I realized I've been putting a lot of pressure on myself, to be "this" or "that" good at Korean before I get there OR ELSE I'm.. idk some kind of failure in my head. I've been focusing too much on getting the end result. and every time I thought about that end result it wouldn't motivate me it would discourage me and show me time and time again how far away I am from my goal. And thinking about how hard I worked in Japanese and how much harder I will have to work for Korean just made me want to give up and not even try. But then I thought about how much I enjoyed studying Japanese and the little milestones. Slowly being able to have meaningful conversations with natives. Understanding my first japanese drama without subtitles. Understanding my favorite Japanese movie Spirited Away. Reading Harry Potter, my first novel in japanese and having the world come to life in a completely new way in my head. Being immersed in Japanese for days, dreaming in Japanese. Playing Final Fantasy XIII one of my favorite video games in Japanese. These were some of the most amazing experiences and feelings I'll always remember. And thinking about those moments reminded me it's not just about that end "goal" but the journey and getting there. Besides where's the fun in not having to work hard for something worth-while. Yes I want to "earn" my trips to Korea and Japan but I want to enjoy the journey as well and those small sweet moments I will have with Korean. Yes I like studying languages to continue improving and getting better at them but I also actually enjoy studying them itself. So~ I want to focus on the little things with Korean. I'm still making progress and I'll get there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 23 of 24 09 June 2015 at 10:57am | IP Logged |
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Maybe you're pressuring yourself too much to reach goals in Korean (and Japanese?). My motivation usually dwindles when I set goals which take a lot of effort - I just see how much work I'll need to do and it quickly starts feeling like a chore. So I'd advise that you don't focus too much on what you can't do yet, but instead just have fun. I think conversational fluency can't be forced. It happens when you're ready and cramming more doesn't necessarily make it happen earlier. Also, it will probably never feel fluent enough or not for a long time anyway.
For listening practice, watching lots of subbed dramas helps ;) As long as you have fun and don't totally disregards the spoken Korean a lot will stick. For me, making audio-sentence-cards in Anki also helped a lot with listening comprehension. Repeatedly hearing the same sentences and focusing on understanding them was very good practice. I took sentences from the TTMIK Iyagis and other intermediate sources. Shouldn't be too challenging, I think it works better when there are only 1 or 2 new words per sentence. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| misskj Newbie United States Joined 4343 days ago 28 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 24 of 24 17 June 2015 at 5:03am | IP Logged |
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Thank you druckfehler! I think you're about the pressure thing and it feeling like a chore at some
point. How do you make the audio cards? how do you extract the audio? I was trying to extract audio from my korean mp3 and it was so tedious. ---- So been doing a lot better! I went to new york to see EPIK HIGH!! YAS!! my first concert ever! and it was a Korean Rap concert how exciting. Before that I dragged my friends to the Kinokuniya Japanese Bookstore. I was in New York I HAD to visit! I was in heaven it was amazing so many books, anime, manga, light novels, magazines EVERYTHING in Japanese *_* Lots of people where walking around saying "Man I wish I spoke Japanese and could understand all of this stuff" I was like hee hee I can :D Nah I didn't say that but I sure was thinking it lol Most of the Employees spoke japanaese as well so I made a bunch of excuses to go up and ask questions about what books they had or if they could have me find XXX and XXX in Japanese. I was so happy. That bookstore re-kindled my love for Japanese. THEN we had yummy ramen, after that when to Korea town. I was looking for a Korean bookstore but appearently it had closed down so instead we ate again and had Korean barbeque. YUM and YUM. Then we rushed to see the concert. SO AMAZING. One member only spoke in Korean the whole time and sometimes they would bicker and mumble to each other in korean and half the audience members who understood would laugh. At that moment I realized how much I love Korean, why I started studying it in the first place and why it is worth it to learn. To be able to understand the music and dramas I love and be connected with Korean people on their level and language. It hit me when I was in the concert and Tablo was trying to translate what the other members were saying, when I'm in Korea there will be no translator, I won't have subtitles. I'll be dumped in Korea and forced into that Korean environment whether I'm ready or not. So that pushed me to get back to studying and study harder! I've been using the Glossika sentences again, repeating listening. Every morning I try to listen to a new TTMIK(Talk to me in Korean) Podcast to learn a new grammar point. And I've been using Anki again. Honestly don't know if this is a good idea or not but I'm trying to add sentences I think I will use or might need for conversation like "Next year I'm going to Korea. I'm so Excited" "More pickled Radish Please" "where's the bathroom" etc. English --> Korean typed. It's honestly taking forever but it is forcing the grammar and vocabulary for me. I'll probably change the cards up later or another deck but for me I think any type of studying for Korean is good. Just can't give up. I also skyped with 2 other new Korean people I met on sharedtalk. They were nice but again my listening sucked so I was a bit embarrassed when I would say something good in Korean then couldn't understand their response lol oh well in do time. :) --- Japanese...tsk tsk... I'm trying to find a way to add Japanese back into my life as a habit. It wouldn't even be studying more just enjoying the damn language!! I wish I could get into Anime and get obsessed that would solve my problem. haha 1 person has voted this message useful |
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