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Advancing Korean, Year 5/6: TAC15 東亞

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Warp3
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 Message 49 of 344
23 April 2012 at 6:28pm | IP Logged 
I've got the GLOSS site bookmarked but haven't really tried it out. Based on your description I may have to give it a try as it sounds very useful.
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druckfehler
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 Message 50 of 344
23 April 2012 at 7:49pm | IP Logged 
Warp3 wrote:
I've got the GLOSS site bookmarked but haven't really tried it out. Based on your description I may have to give it a try as it sounds very useful.

I recommend trying a couple of different formats. They're divided into types of media (listening, reading) and types of exercise (lexical, structural, discourse). You might dislike one type and find another really useful.
Also be aware that they really like to throw you in at the deep end. According to wikipedia 1+ should be an A2 level in CEFR (DLI uses the ILR framework), but I think the 1+ exercises would've been too challenging for me at A2. Maybe I'm estimating my level of proficiency incorrectly, but I looked at the ILR level descriptions and 2 sounds right for where I'm at. I guess it's natural that the texts are quite difficult, because they are all native materials. They probably don't expect you to understand everything as long as you can complete the exercises.
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druckfehler
Triglot
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 Message 51 of 344
01 May 2012 at 2:01pm | IP Logged 
Tuesday, 1st of May - 14th week

song: 옥상달빛 - 25 perfect song for my 25th birthday

lessons studied: lesson 5 of Korean Language Adventure, 2 G.L.O.S.S. lessons, half of lesson 13 of Integrated Korean
TOPIK verbs through lyrics: 3
hanja studied: ---
writing: 1 text
reading: 1 article
listening: 2 episodes of The King 2 Hearts, 2 Mandarin lesson videos
speaking: recorded a short text


I'm amazed that only a month ago I found the Korean Language Adventure lessons challenging. Now that I know the vocabulary they frequently use and no longer find the sentence type difficult the only thing that limits comprehension are some unfamiliar words. Real articles and blog posts are the next hurdle and I think that G.L.O.S.S. is helping with that. The problem with native material is the varied vocabulary. The authors' choices are not about comprehensibility but about style, so I'm seeing many unfamiliar words with familiar meaning.

I watched a couple of videos on youtube of non-natives speaking perfect Korean. I think it's very motivating, so I'll share one here: talk show with foreigners Watching this made me curious about how I sound when speaking Korean, so I did a recording. I used to think my pronunciation was okay, but in reality it's difficult to reproduce Korean prosody and it sounds pretty ridiculous when I try. After 15 minutes or so, when I focused really hard on speech melody, it got a little better. Maybe I should write down some sentences I need often - a short self-introduction - get a Korean to record it and then practice until I sound like the recording.

I'm also doing a bit of Mandarin on the side. I wouldn't quite call it studying, it's more like I'm preparing for studying it. I've been reading a couple of articles about how to study writing and pronunciation effectively, practiced tone and tone sandhi and watched a couple of videos.

Having written all that, it's likely that I won't have as much time for language study for the next 3 months. I'm determined to continue my Anki work, continue watching The King 2 Hearts and do some reading if I can, but I expect to slow down a bit and hopefully resume studying with full force in August.

new grammar:

-으로서 As a...

-고 말다 Finally end up doing

Edited by druckfehler on 01 May 2012 at 2:22pm

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druckfehler
Triglot
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 Message 52 of 344
13 May 2012 at 5:48pm | IP Logged 
Sunday, 13th of May - 16th week

song: 시나위 - 내버려둬 (Leave it Be)

lessons studied: lesson 6 and 7 KLA, 1 G.L.O.S.S.
TOPIK verbs through lyrics: 3
hanja studied: ---
writing: chatting on shared talk
reading: 2 articles, 39 pages 명절 이야기, 1 blog post
listening: 4 episodes of K2H
speaking: ---


May marks the start of the Super Duper Challenge: 100 movies, 100 books, 100 conversations. I'm off to a slow start and it'll probably stay this way for most of this year. But I'm strangely confident (/delusional?) that I can catch up on the required reading for the challenge by doing several marathons. My verbs through lyrics challenge didn't go so well. I'd rather just learn the whole lyrics of songs I like a lot, instead of searching them for verbs. At the moment I'm also a bit behind on my Anki reps for the first time this year (I only missed a day here and there before).

I've promised myself not to count anything I watch with subtitles for the Super Duper Challenge, so I turned them off for this week's King 2 Hearts episodes. Watching after reading a recap improves my comprehension a lot. I manage to pick up on a lot more sentences when I have a vague understanding of the context.

After always reading about Shared Talk I tried it out this week. Text chatting in Korean was an interesting experience, but probably not something I'll try again soon. It's good for practicing introductions, frequently used grammar patterns and colloquial speech/writing, though.

Reading newspaper articles is still very tiring and feels like I'm studying Chinese (so many new Sino-Korean words!), but I know that it'll gradually become easier and finally comfortable. I still think extensive reading is the best shortcut for learning vocabulary and making it stick, but using many methods at once is maybe even better. I now have 4 different Anki decks for Korean (TOPIK beginner list, audio sentences, G.L.O.S.S. vocabulary with Hanja, verbs) and I've been reading children's books, magazine/blog type articles and newspaper articles. I notice that as soon as one activity gets a little easier, I should challenge myself to take on a more difficult one. That's how I make the most progress.

Edited by druckfehler on 19 May 2012 at 7:01pm

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druckfehler
Triglot
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 Message 53 of 344
20 May 2012 at 1:56am | IP Logged 
Sunday, 20th of May - 17th week

song: 윈터가든 - 영원의 이별 (eternal farewell)

lessons studied: 1 G.L.O.S.S. lesson
hanja studied: ---
writing: 1 text, see below
reading: 3 blog posts, 26 pages of 명절 이야기: 신나는 열두달
listening: 2 episodes of The King 2 Hearts, 8 episodes of Queen In Hyun's Man
speaking: ---


It's probably not quite true, but I feel like my reading has improved by leaps and bounds. I've learned quite a few words and constructions through my current children's book. It's about Korean holidays and food, so the high frequency vocabulary includes words like "ancestors", "saying", "custom", "lunar calendar", "to steam", "to boil"... I think the book may be boring for children, but it's great for an adult language learner. Reading about traditional Korean culture is much more useful than reading random fictional stories.

I'm also becoming more familiar with the format of newspaper articles. I've decided to go through the G.L.O.S.S. lessons systematically, so the last two lessons I did were about education. Next I'll probably look at family and marriage, after that maybe holidays and food. These are the topics I'm most familiar with in Korean. Later I'll have to tackle weather, economy, politics, infrastructure and geography. I'm looking forward to the North Korean topics.

What I like about reading native materials is that my brain absorbs words naturally in the order of their frequency and importance. Once I know a cluster of words, I automatically start to notice and process a new cluster.

I've been ill this week, so I gave myself permission to marathon another drama. Royals again - what's up with that, Korea? Here's my first real entry for this log in Korean. Of course I used naver.dict and I got some minor corrections on lang-8 (I didn't do any stylistic corrections).

지난 주말에 병에 걸려서 며칠간 누워 있으면서 더킹 투하츠의 몇 가지 에피소드를 보았다. 더킹투하츠는 손에 땀을 쥐게 할 만큼 긴장감 넘치고 눈물이 날 정도로 감동적인 드라마이다. 이 드라마 속에서는 이승기가 현재 대한민국의 허구적 국왕 이재하의 역할을 한다. 또한 하지원은 이재하의 약혼녀가 된 북한 특전사 장교 역으로 나온다. 그들이 둘 다 자기의 나라와 왕족을 지키기 위해서 존마이어라는 악당과 싸워야 한다. 그런데 가장 인상 깊은 인물은 바로 이윤지가 연기하는 이재신 공주님이다. 이재신의 운명은 아무리 슬퍼도 의지가 여전히 강하다. 다음 주 수,목요일에는 마지막 회가 방송될 것이다. 잔뜩 기대하고 있습니다.여러분께서도 더킹 투하츠를 재미있게 보고 계신가요?

new grammar:

-ㄹ 수록 The more... the more...

Edited by druckfehler on 20 May 2012 at 5:52am

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druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4866 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
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 Message 54 of 344
22 May 2012 at 1:45pm | IP Logged 
Yesterday I did another TOPIK practice test exactly 3 months after my last try. Generally, I had less luck with guessing answers than last time, but this time I felt like I knew what I was doing for about 70% of the test (in February it was only 20%). This is what my new result looks like:

Reading: 57
Writing: 31
Listening: 71
Grammar & Expressions: 62

It's strange to see that my scores for Listening and Grammar & Expressions have stayed exactly the same. I guess it reflects that I haven't done any structured study of grammar. My biggest problem with listening is reading and understanding the possible answers fast enough.
Surprisingly, Writing came out worse this time. I often wavered between two answers and always ended up choosing the wrong one. I think I overestimated my score on the free writing questions last time. This time I only gave myself 5 (of 30) points for the essay, because it wasn't long enough and because my writing is lacking stylistically. A score of 31 would mean a failing grade, so I definitely have to work on writing.
I'm very pleased to see the improvement in Reading. 3 months ago I only got 42 points and half of them probably by chance. This time I earned all my 57 points. I understood a lot more this time, but it often took me a little too long to figure it out. In the end I didn't have time for the last two texts (4 questions).

Although I have made improvements in these areas, my problems are still reading speed, vocabulary and grammar.
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vermillon
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 Message 55 of 344
22 May 2012 at 2:28pm | IP Logged 
Perhaps you should do another test next week with a different paper. From my experience, if you're going back in time when doing them, your score should go lower... so stagnating may actually mean that you're improving but confronting yourself with more difficult (or possibly less well conceived...) tests. Anyway, there are still five months before October, so you'll surely manage all that.
As for writing, I simply consider my score on 70 and don't bother trying to guess what mark I would have gotten for the little essay.

By the way, I've found your previous post very interesting, notably the comment about children books being very good to learn about the culture of the country. I've never been really interested in reading material made for kids, but I think that last comment made a lot of sense, and indeed I may pursue that track when I go back to Korean later.

Haven't read your Korean post yet, but I think that's a habit I might want to pick up too... :)
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Warp3
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Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 56 of 344
22 May 2012 at 3:12pm | IP Logged 
TOPIK practice tests? Where do you find those and how exactly do they work (especially for active functions such as writing)?


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