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Tarko’s Log (TAC 2014 Team Gumiho) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 73 of 119 01 April 2014 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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How about just reading lots of books in French? Or do you think it's too early? I find that skills are improved best by using them and pretending you already can.
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| Tarko Senior Member Korea, South Joined 4683 days ago 119 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 74 of 119 01 April 2014 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's a good point.
I'm already reading lots of books in French (I believe I'm in the middle of my 6th French book of the year), but I don't necessarily think my level is high enough yet to read things like Rimbaud or Proust without looking up every word. I'm not sure if I should be doing more active study (textbooks, researching obscure grammatical points, etc) or just reading more. Plus I need to figure out a way to improve my listening skills without it interfering with my Korean study time... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tarko Senior Member Korea, South Joined 4683 days ago 119 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 75 of 119 06 April 2014 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I took the TOPIK 모의 시험 (mock exam) this morning. Here are my thoughts.
It was the worst exam of my life. The end. Okay, let me backtrack a little. It started with 50 multiple choice listening questions which lasted from 9:30am-10:40am. The listening section was MUCH worse than the last exam I took. Much, much worse. I've been working a lot on my listening skills recently and I'm happy to announce that I was able to follow along with some of the questions. An improvement! Unfortunately, the choices given for answers had nothing to do with the dialogues. I remember staring blankly at the booklet before writing, "worst. exam. EVER." in my question booklet. Then we had 40 minutes for the writing section. This was not even remotely enough time. First were the short writing questions - basically, they gave a paragraph with two lines missing and you had to insert a grammatically correct sentence that fit into that section. Then there was a short essay of about 200-300 characters. They gave you two graphs and told you to write about them. Just a lot of comparison words. Not too bad; I wrote about 325 characters. Then came the big essay. My sense of timing was way off and I only had about 15 minutes to write a 600-700 character essay. Seriously. The question was about 생활에서 인간관계 - human interactions in our lives. I'm actually really proud of what I wrote, because my tutor has been prepping me for similar essay topics. Hell, just this week I learned a lot of description words such as 수줍음을 타다, 무뚝뚝하다, 털털하다, and the kicker - on Thursday I studied a passage about 인간관계. That's right: I studied this same topic three days ago. I only managed 350 characters before time was called. However - and here's the kicker - based on what other people in the room said/what I saw, that was MORE than what most people were able to do. Seriously. A lot of people only managed 150-200 characters with the time given. I talked with a guy from France and another guy from Vietnam during the 20 minute break (which was actually 8 minutes, because our proctor was slow) and they didn't even know what 인간관계 meant. After the break we had the reading section. 50 questions in 1시20분. Reading has always been my strong point, but this... this was miserable. I did well for the first 15 questions, then for about 15 questions it came in waves: I understood a few passages well, then I didn't understand anything, then I understood a few more, and then nothing. The last 20 questions or so went over my head. Way over my head. I guessed on a few questions. As in, I had no idea, so I thought, "I haven't answer 4 in a while!" and colored that in on the answer sheet. I will say this: the writing section was good. I just wish they'd given us more time. 40 minutes was NOT enough time for that section. Alternatively, give the option of writing different numbers of characters without being heavily penalized. The rest of the sections were not good. Overall the exam was awful and I feel like I failed. Fortunately, every other person in that room felt the same way. Based on what I've read the test will be graded on a curve. Here's hoping that more people failed than I did! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5524 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 76 of 119 07 April 2014 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
If you've finished Using French, there aren't really many courses out there to help you with your passive skills. You might look into French for Reading, which has an excellent reputation, but I don't know how much that would still have to offer you. The problem is that you know the basics, but now you need to get familiar with all the little details. And there are thousands and thousands of little details, more than any course could ever teach. Fortunately, sheer exposure will help a lot. So I'd recommend that you continue with your reading, and "cheat" a bit when you can. A few possible ideas to consider: 1. Read French translations of your favorite books—anything you re-read semi-regularly is an excellent bet. 2. Look for easy(ish) French books. Since you love Proust's prose, you might like to check out Le Petit Prince, Voltaire's Candide and—if you don't mind learning 20 ways to say Je m'en fiche—perhaps L'Étranger. You should be able to find all of these in ebook format without any trouble, so you can use a pop-up dictionary. (And you can always use the built-in highlighter to mark interesting sentences. I have a tool which turns Kindle highlights into Anki sentence cards. It's in private beta, but I'd be happy to set you up if you PM me your email address.) 3. For more conversational language, you might enjoy some of these classic BDs. 4. If none of that seems appealing, there are more good ideas on the wiki. Once you get through the first 2,000 or 3,000 pages or so, it's likely things will get a lot easier. If you've already read 6 books this year, that won't take long. Edited by emk on 07 April 2014 at 6:03pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tarko Senior Member Korea, South Joined 4683 days ago 119 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 77 of 119 08 April 2014 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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emk, thank you so much for your advice! I guess I'm already on the right track as far as reading is concerned. I will seek out Candide next, I think, and maybe reading L'Étranger in French instead of Korean would be more interesting. I should probably search for a French TV show as well.
4월 2일부터 4월 8일까지 Korean - Ewha 4 (42 vocab words) - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban vol. 2: 201-242 - 3 hour TOPIK mock test from hell - 46/120 TTMIK Iyagis (#36-60) - 45/120 Harry Potter vocab words (#26-45) French - Using French Active: 64-70 (FINISHED!!!!) - Le Ruvage de brunes by Nora Roberts (92-167) I didn't study over the weekend to relax/prepare my brain for the TOPIK exam. The big news first: I finished Assimil Using French!!!! I've been using the Assimil French books since the middle of August 2013 and only took breaks at the beginning of January and the middle of February. By the end I was no longer translating, but intensively reading. I'm going to continue reading French books and maybe pick up a TV show or a podcast to try to maintain/improve my reading and listening skills. As far as Korean is concerned... in tutoring last week we had a listening section that was particularly arduous. As a result I studied a lot for today's class and ended up doing quite well. I really like the Ewha book so far, if only for the fact that I'm hardly 10 pages into it and it's already helped me on the TOPIK exam. I do not like the fact that there are a million words on every page that I don't know and that I need to learn. I suppose this is my future: learning words. All the words. In all the languages. (sigh) I really like the TAC challenge I'm participating in - listen/read to 120 TTMIK Iyagis and look up 120 vocabulary words from Harry Potter. My listening skills are improving a LOT and I'm already understanding more Harry Potter. I'm not even halfway done with the challenge and I'm already seeing results! Awesome. This is one of the reasons I love learning languages - you can see a lot of progress after doing a little work. :) 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 78 of 119 08 April 2014 at 4:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the great exam review! Sounds like a lovely little test... ;( I hope they use the test run to improve the procedure and I hope that improvement goes towards giving more time or expecting less. This was the new combined intermediate/advanced format, right? The huge differences in those levels seem to be accurately reflected in your experiences with the reading section... I'm quite surprised that you got so little time for the writing section and much more for listening and reading than used to be the case with the old format. I guess they mostly incorporated the grammar section into those two. Hmm... do you have any idea on how they mark these exams yet? How many percent do you have to get right to pass intermediate? I hope I can take and pass this exam next spring, but what you describe sounds a little horrifying. Looks like I'd have to be able to write Korean essays in my sleep... Keep us updated on the grading/feedback!
Anyway, sounds like your studies are going extremely well and you're making big strides! Good luck for the next TOPIK! Edited by druckfehler on 08 April 2014 at 4:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tarko Senior Member Korea, South Joined 4683 days ago 119 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 79 of 119 08 April 2014 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks :)
I really hope they do increase the amount of time given for the writing section - 40 minutes for the questions given is not even close to the right amount of time, particularly if they're trying to be "inclusive," as far as 중급/고급 tests are concerned. I didn't really find that there was much more grammar in the listening/reading sections - a large number of the questions in those parts asked "what was the topic of the article?" and "what would be an appropriate title for this article?" grammar was often given as part of the answer - with all four possible answers having the same grammar, but different vocabulary. I found that the test incorporated for more vocabulary than the 중급 exam did - their method of making it advanced, possibly? I think the essay was also 4급+, since I'd just encountered the subject in my level 4 Ewha textbook. As far as marking is concerned... they're going to be grading on a curve, which means every test will have a different cut-off for 6급, 5급, 4급, 3급, and 불합격. The biggest problem I see is: how are they going to judge who gets a 3급 and who fails? I honestly don't think it's possible to answer at least 90% of the questions without having at least a 4급 level. Edited by Tarko on 09 April 2014 at 12:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tarko Senior Member Korea, South Joined 4683 days ago 119 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 80 of 119 15 April 2014 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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4월 9일부터 4월 15일까지
Korean - Ewha 4 (55 vocab words) - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban vol. 2: 243-280 (end) - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire vol. 1: 11-26 - 2 hours of Language Exchange - 7 hours of talking with a Korean friend who knows no English - 1 episode of Secret Investigation Record - 75/120 TTMIK Iyagis (#61-89) - 75/120 Harry Potter vocab words (#46-75) French - Le Rivage de brumes by Nora Roberts (168-252) (end) - Candide by Voltaire (1-10) All of this listening practice has really been paying off - I genuinely believe that by the end of the month I may be able to watch Korean dramas without subtitles and understand at least 50%. I could be overstating matters slightly, but I think it's within the realm of possibilities! Something I've noticed is that even though I learn new grammar I don't necessarily apply it to my active Korean skills right away. I typically have a pretty large lag time between learning a grammatical point and being able to use it. My goal is to get to the point where I can actually use the grammar sooner rather than later. I hung out with a Korean acquaintance over the weekend and I managed to hold my own. I wasn't speaking fluently by any means, but my speaking and listening skills have definitely improved. This weekend is the 34th TOPIK exam. Yes, another one. Ugh. I'm really hoping that I'll be able to score a 3급 and creep into 4급 territory on a few sections. Knock on wood. As for French... I've started Candide and I'm going to be taking it a bit slower than the last few books I've been reading. Maybe 10 pages a day instead of 15 or 20. It's pretty dense and I don't know the content - this being the first time I've read it - so I'm trying to read carefully. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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