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Advancing Korean, Year 5/6: TAC15 東亞 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 41 of 344 31 March 2012 at 8:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Completely agree. Of course, you cannot really invent the series of 는/은/을 + X + Y that makes for so many structures, but overall it's more "structure" learning than grammar, indeed. I still call them grammar point as they occur in my grammar book! Then, as pointed, they often seem quite transparent but have a twist to it. Personally, I prefer to see them as idioms than to think "it doesn't actually mean X but rather Y". In the case of 라면 mentioned above, I guess it's only a matter of time before one figures it out himself, and that's part of understanding the culture of that language.
Indeed, thanks for the reminder. I see now that I happen to know most of them (quite a lot are in the Routledge "Intermediate Korean", which really shows that what books call intermediate is usually just "you've sat in a class for more than two weeks!" level), and those that I don't master completely, I at least understand them quite well. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 42 of 344 03 April 2012 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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once again a late Sunday, 1st of April - 10th week
song: 달빛요정역전만루홈런 - 고기반찬 (meat side-dish) :D hanja studied: 心 (심, 12 words) lessons studied: half of lesson 2 of Korean Language Adventure writing: 1 exercise, 1 e-mail reading: --- listening: 2 episodes of The King 2 Hearts , 1 episode of Rooftop Prince speaking: I talk to myself more... This week hasn't been too productive on the learning side. I spent most of my Korean study time on making Anki cards and the good old paper vocab cards. Lately I've always been reading children's books on the bus, but I plan to use that time to study words again. I now have 105 cards with written+audio sentences in Anki and around half of them contain 2 new words. At the moment the input comes from the TTMIK Iyagi and Korean Language Adventure lessons (the audio of the latter is rather horrible, though). I'm planning to also include important set expressions from the KLEAR textbooks I'm going through and maybe some sentences from dramas. I'm not yet sure about the usefulness of listening to whole sentences again and again, but I hope it'll eventually help to improve my intonation and maybe even help with spoken grammar. I've been subbing some of Rooftop Prince and The King 2 Hearts on Viki. Rooftop Prince is comparably easy - I can translate up to 60%. The King 2 Hearts is extremely difficult, both vocabulary and accent-wise, and my estimate is that I can only understand around 30% without a dictionary. But I noticed that my listening comprehension has improved a bit - I get the spelling of unknown words right more frequently, but often it's still impossible to figure out. Edited by druckfehler on 03 April 2012 at 3:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 43 of 344 09 April 2012 at 11:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sunday, 8th of April - 11th week
song: 장기하와 얼굴들 - 싸구려 커피 (Cheap Coffee) hanja studied: --- lessons studied: half of lesson 2 of Korean Language Adventure, lesson 11 of KLEAR Beginning 2 writing: --- reading: --- listening: 2 episodes of The King 2 Hearts , 1 episode of Rooftop Prince, 3 Children's Book Videos speaking: around 45 minutes I quite like my new Anki cards. It's easier for me to remember words when I study them with sound. I study 7 new cards per day; that's approximately 10 words, sometimes more, sometimes less. Studying whole sentences worries me a bit that I might not recognise the words in different context. We'll see about that. I study the same words with paper cards, so maybe that can prevent recognition problems. I've started my grammar revision project. KLEAR's Beginning 2 book is really easy for me to understand passively and I also don't find it very challenging actively, although there are still some set phrases I should learn. Regarding speaking, I think most of my sentences are awkward at best, but sometimes I surprise myself by saying something that sounds quite native-like (at least to me :D). Often I still need far too much time to think out the sentence I want to say and then it comes out awkward anyway. Somehow I don't think this is going to be fixed easily. I can only expose myself to so much native material while I'm in Germany. If I really want to speak fluently I'll probably have to find a way to spend a few months in Korea after I pass TOPIK 4 and do complete immersion. Edited by druckfehler on 09 April 2012 at 11:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 44 of 344 16 April 2012 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sunday, 15th of April - 12th week
song: 이적 - 하늘을 달리다 (Run Across the Sky) hanja studied: --- lessons studied: lesson 3 of Korean Language Adventure, lesson 12 of KLEAR Beginning 2 writing: --- reading: 2 blog entries listening: 2 episodes of The King 2 Hearts , 1 episode of Coffee Prince, 5 Children's Book Videos, 1 Iyagi Podcast, 2 Mandarin lesson videos speaking: around 45 minutes I did quite a lot of listening this week... Through listening I continually notice how much my passive skills in Korean are improving. Understanding new words is a fairly frequent occurrence. My active skills are as bad as always. Right now the most important thing is to increase my vocabulary. I've decided to give myself a new vocab-related challenge. I often find it difficult to study verbs, so I think it would be a good idea to focus on them for about a month. To make studying verbs as fun and memorable as possible I'll look at the lyrics of songs I like and study all the verbs that also appear in the Intermediate TOPIK list. I'll continue studying with audio flashcards, so I want to study at least 100 additional verbs throughout the next month. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 45 of 344 19 April 2012 at 4:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wanderlust musings
Right now I'm slightly upset with myself for deciding that I should exclusively focus on Korean. I'm not going to succumb to wanderlust to any substantial degree, but I've been searching for study material for Persian, Hebrew and Chinese. It would be such a great idea to study Persian (Dari) while I have the opportunity to interact with lots of native speakers. There are even some people I would love to be able to talk to but can't (except for a couple of words), because we just don't share a language. Where would I find a better reason to study a language? I've forgotten a lot of what I crammed during the 6WC in November, but I haven't yet lost all of it. Also, the DLI Dari course just looks so inviting. With Hebrew I have to admit that I have no use for it whatsoever. I haven't talked to any Israelis for a long time. I don't have any plans to travel in Israel again (yet?). But whenever I listen to music or watch a movie in Hebrew I just wish I knew more of the language, because it sounds fabulous. I'm also still intrigued by the Semitic verbal system. I did take a course before that I hardly studied for, but it still bored me to tears (although it was a joy to talk about linguistics with the teacher). In any case, I hate to see the progress I made in Hebrew go to waste. To me there is no question that I will eventually learn Chinese. I've been thinking about it again and again and I'm determined now. Beside Korean this is the Asian language with the most magnetic pull for me. The only question is when. As soon as I'm at basic fluency in Korean? A little earlier? A little later, after some Persian study? I wonder how long it'll take to learn Chinese. Being a level V language it should take as much work as learning Korean, so I should start as soon as possible. I'd like to be able to speak this language by the time I'm 30 (and by speak I mean speak it well). Conclusion: If I want to study Chinese, Hebrew, Persian or whatever else I first need to improve my Korean. Thinking about studying them instead of studying Korean will only push them back further. Back to the task at hand. Edited by druckfehler on 19 April 2012 at 11:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4676 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 46 of 344 19 April 2012 at 10:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I admire that. Feeling quite burnt out after my 3 intensive months, I haven't done anything substantial in April (but I speak Mandarin many hours a week now, so time for Korean is naturally reduced). I'd like to continue improving in Korean, but I feel I've climbed a big step already and I want to rest.
Also, other language sirens are calling me: German, which I'm going to take for the 6WC (and consider registering for a Geothe-Institut certificate to motivate me), Polish which smiles to me (here there are even Polish newspapers for free on the street, isn't that a sign?) and perhaps something else... I'm going to reduce the rhythm of Korean for now, and prepare for a second boost a bit later this year, I believe... Congrats on your focus! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 47 of 344 20 April 2012 at 12:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was amazed at your focus during the past months! I thought going through the TOPIK list was tedious and you managed it so quickly. I think it's natural that you want to rest and just let it all sink in for a while (otherwise I would've begun to doubt that you're human :D). I also periodically feel like resting, especially when I made a lot of progress in little time.
If I was really that focused right now, I wouldn't have written the post ;) I found that sometimes it helps to just change my study routine, instead of changing the language. I was burned out after writing 20 texts on lang-8, so I stopped before it got too bad and started to do more reading instead. Now I replaced reading by Anki audio cards, but they're becoming tedious, too, so maybe I'll reduce those a bit and go back to reading, focus on a different Anki deck or do something else entirely. Nice to see you're doing German for the 6WC! If you need any native speaker help, feel free to ask. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4866 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 48 of 344 23 April 2012 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Tuesday, 23rd of April - 13th week
song: 이문세 - 소녀 (Girl) lessons studied: lesson 4 of Korean Language Adventure, 2 G.L.O.S.S. lessons TOPIK verbs through lyrics: 11 hanja studied: 心 (심, 12 words) writing: --- reading: --- listening: 2 episodes of The King 2 Hearts, 2 episodes of 1N2D, 1 movie, a couple of videos from North Korea speaking: around an hour At the moment I have the most knowledge in the following two areas: conversational/colloquial language and children's books. Neither of these will be of very much use when it comes to TOPIK. So far I'm still very unfamiliar with the language of articles and news broadcasts. The Korean Language Adventure lessons I'm working through provide some general knowledge tourist brochure type texts, which I am convinced are very good TOPIK practice. In addition I decided to use the G.L.O.S.S. exercises by the Defense Language Institute to familiarise myself with the language used in articles and news reports. I tried a level 1+ (A2 CEFR) and a level 2 (B1 CEFR) exercise and level 2 proved to be quite a stretch, while some explanations in level 1+ were superfluous. Level 1+ feels more or less appropriate as a starting point and will hopefully familiarise me with the format before I proceed to level 2. I tried G.L.O.S.S. once when I was still a beginner and felt overwhelmed, but now that I'm intermediate it's a great way to study native material. It's astonishing how much language material the DLI makes available to the public. While some of it is of course tailored to the needs of military personnel, there's still a huge amount of highly useful and interesting material. The G.L.O.S.S. lessons for Korean are about pretty much anything in Korean media with topics like "High Kick! 3: The Short Legs Counterattack", "Japanese Homemakers Fall for Online Supermarkets", "North Koreans and Life in North Korea", "Worst Rain in 15 Years in Peru... 25 Koreans Stranded". /end of commercial I've recently become interested in the North Korean dialect and think that sometime in the future I'll devote some time to understanding it better, even if that means watching some strange stuff. Edited by druckfehler on 27 April 2012 at 5:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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