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Evita’s Mix of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6542 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 105 of 236 15 April 2014 at 5:14pm | IP Logged |
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I got my phone back (again) and looks like it is really fixed this time. At least I hope so. I let my Anki reviews slide last week but now I have no excuse anymore, I have to get back on track.
I'm starting to wonder whether studying both the vocabulary deck and the hanja deck at the same time won't require more time and effort than I had anticipated. But it's pretty useless to wonder about that. When it gets too much I will simply reduce the number of new cards like I always do. As for last week, I found it pretty difficult to change my mindset to "not study" but in the end I managed to do it. On the weekend, though, I spent a lot of time entering new hanja characters into my Anki. It takes me about 10-15 minutes for one character, and most of that time goes into selecting the example words. I've decided that 6 words is the limit so I must choose those 6 words carefully. I've also decided to avoid word repetition as much as possible, and that means looking up the other Chinese character in every word and deciding under which character the word would fit better. It does take time but I'm also getting exposed to a lot of vocabulary so I like this approach. I was reading Iyagi 43 today and saw "경쟁을 하듯이". I didn't know the 듯이 grammar construction so I looked it up. I found it here. That site has good and pretty complete grammar explanations. I keep meaning to go through everything there but I haven't done it yet. Maybe someday. So that's how it goes... I read something, look something up, listen to podcasts, watch some dramas, review my Anki decks, add new cards... I do a lot but none of that is structured studying. I don't know why I don't want to learn from textbooks, maybe it's because I only have them electronically. But that won't do. I have big goals regarding textbooks for this year, I need to start working towards that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6542 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 106 of 236 22 April 2014 at 9:06pm | IP Logged |
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I've been doing more or less the same things. Also resumed working on my Anki sentence deck.
The hanja characters are getting harder to remember. I just checked that I've studied already 56 characters but it doesn't feel like that many. I'm starting to relax my requirement to memorize the Korean meaning of the characters because sometimes the meaning is a word I don't know. In these cases I just add the word to my vocabulary deck. Tomorrow I'm finally going to the Korean class. I hope it works out and I don't feel like an intruder. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6542 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 107 of 236 23 April 2014 at 1:25pm | IP Logged |
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I'm back from the Korean class. It was all in Korean! I had read a description that it would be in English but apparently not. Well. The teacher was very nice and included me in the class as if I was just another student. There were maybe 10 people in total. The teacher asked me to introduce myself but I couldn't tell much on my own so he just asked me various questions and I tried to answer in Korean. It was good practice, quite difficult for me; I'm just not used to speaking in Korean. One of the questions he asked was why I wanted to study Korean and I said "그냥 좋아요". That's how all of my answers were, very short.
We also spoke about what everyone did during the Easter holidays and then practiced the -는/은/을 verb constructions. It's so different to study in a class, I had forgotten what it's like. I definitely want to go back but it's difficult because of work. Still, my speaking would benefit a lot from these classes so I'll try to attend a couple more before the summer break. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6542 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 108 of 236 27 April 2014 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
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So I have these two languages I'm trying to study - German and Korean. German is suffering because my heart wants to study Korean more and I thought my German could wait some months since I can do my required tasks at work anyway. Now things at work have changed and I'll have different tasks that will probably require that I speak German, not just write it. So I have decided that I absolutely need to make German my priority number one until I finish DW and my textbook.
I have also signed up for German classes at work. The company they chose to conduct these classes offers two levels - beginner and advanced (B1+). A lady called me on the phone one day and tested me to see in which group they should put me. The result was the more advanced group, of course. And of course she asked me about my hobbies when she tested me (because that's a standard question) and of course I told her about Korean and of course she was very surprised. I think I'm going to enjoy talking about Korean in German. My enthusiasm for learning hanja has diminished a little. Not exactly for learning but for entering notes into Anki. If I want to learn 3 new characters a day, that's more than half an hour every day just on creating the cards. I can't find that kind of time every day so on some days I will be learning fewer characters. But that's okay. I finished chapter 19 of my Korean textbook so I have only one chapter left. I'll do it when I need a break from German and not sooner. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6542 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 109 of 236 29 April 2014 at 9:57am | IP Logged |
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I studied 4 Warum Nicht lessons yesterday so that's good. I read the PDF's as well, not just listen to the audios. I do find the audios a bit slow and boring since I usually understand everything on the first listen but I need the grammar review.
It's been a while since I've talked about Korean dramas. I've watched some of the current ones - Bride of the Century, Three Days, but they didn't really suck me in. Wonderful Season does suck me in but still I can only watch 2 episodes a week as they come out. I've been wanting to find something to marathon and I finally found it - Beyond the Clouds (Full Sun). It had very low ratings but it recently finished and I kept hearing good things about it so I gave it a chance. It's the good old revenge plot where the good guy spends years in jail for a crime he didn't commit and then he comes out and wants to get his revenge. It's delicious when done right. It will be my reward for studying German every day. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6542 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 110 of 236 02 May 2014 at 12:23pm | IP Logged |
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Yesterday was a bank holiday so I finished watching Beyond the Clouds. The advantage of watching a drama quickly is that you don't have time to think about it and find plot holes. The only thing I thought was really stupid was the USB drive which contained an important video and everyone wanted to get a hold of it and it never occurred to those who had it to make a couple more copies on a couple more devices and hide them in different places. But emotionally it was quite satisfying. One of the things I liked best was how the heroine didn't get angry with the hero after she discovered that he had lied to her about his identity and many other things; she completely understood his motivation (her family had framed him for murder) and I found it realistic. Too many other dramas would have made this another source of conflict.
I've decided that I will watch Single Sly Female next, but this time it will be mostly to improve my Korean. I will watch it without subtitles, only reading the recaps on Dramabeans. The recaps will be necessary for me to understand what's going on but I hope my listening comprehension will improve a bit. This will be different than listening to podcasts. Despite writing so much about Korean dramas, I've kept up with my German as well. I finished lesson 5 of my textbook and 5 or 6 Warum Nicht lessons. I've been slowly working on my German for several months now and I can feel it's starting to come back, it's getting easier to form sentences in my head. But I still have a long road ahead of me if I want to get fluent and not make a ton of mistakes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6542 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 111 of 236 07 May 2014 at 5:06pm | IP Logged |
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Apparently the German lessons at work might be in the mornings. [insert a swear word here] I rarely go to bed before midnight so I don't want to get up at half past 6 in order to make the lesson at 8. It will only make my day miserable and unproductive. If they don't change the time then I'll probably not be attending them after all. It's a shame but sleep is more important to me, plus I know I can study German in different ways as well.
I still listen to Yoo Inna's podcasts almost every day and I understand them more and more. Now it's gotten to the point where I can't use them as background noise at work anymore because my brain registers some words even when I'm not listening actively and it distracts me from the work. I think the podcasts are a more effective way to improve my listening comprehension than watching dramas without subtitles. By the way, I lasted only 6 episodes with Single Cunning Female without subtitles. I was getting frustrated at spending a lot of time reading the recaps and at the recaps not being detailed enough so I switched the subs back on. It was a nice drama with a nice happy ending. One reason I like Coffee Prince and Secret Garden so much is that they showed the main characters happy together more than just for 5 minutes at the very end. This drama was like that as well so I enjoyed it. Back to the podcast though, I had a very motivating AHA! moment when I figured out she was saying 첫곡으로 and 끝곡으로 all by myself. I had spent days and weeks wondering what those sounds meant. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5525 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 112 of 236 08 May 2014 at 3:29am | IP Logged |
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That reminds me, I need to get back to watching Coffee Prince. I watched the first 4
episodes then sort of stalled. Of course even thinking of Yoon Eunhye in that series after watching her so much in X맨 (where she was a regular for most of the show) just feels so weird now. (Then again they kidded her constantly in X맨 about how strong she is so that role wasn't exactly a stretch for her image.) Edited by Warp3 on 08 May 2014 at 3:30am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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