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Tarko’s Log (TAC 2014 Team Gumiho) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Tarko Senior Member Korea, South Joined 4683 days ago 119 posts - 148 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 49 of 119 23 December 2013 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks so much for the advice druckfehler! I am going to pop over and check out your log ASAP. I'm quite concerned about the fill-in-missing-words exercises. If I manage to find the time before the TOPIK I'll give the practice exams a good look-through to check for common themes.
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| Tarko Senior Member Korea, South Joined 4683 days ago 119 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 50 of 119 23 December 2013 at 1:00pm | IP Logged |
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Korean
What I Did - Seogang 4A - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone vol.2: 153-209 (finished!) - Iyagi #11 - Yonsei Reading 3: 보는 그림, 읽는 그림 86-93 - reviewed 서강 한국어 2B, 3A Vocabulary - Sogang 4A: 19 - Iyagi #11: 15 Yonsei Reading 3: 8 Grammar (이)라도 - when something is suggested but it's not the best out of all possible choices 콘서트가 취소해서 호프에 가는 것이라도 어때요? The concert was canceled, so how about going to a hof? French New French With Ease Active: 82-89 Using French Passive: 10-17 Hunger Games: 183-301 It's been a bad, bad, week. You know how sometimes you study, and you study some more, and you study a little more after that, and you think you're a total badass? Well, there's always the step beyond that: falling flat on your face. It's interesting, because – for me, at any rate – I make a ton of progress, I have days of what feel like perfection, and then I wake up one morning and I can hardly piece together a sentence in Korean. This week involved a lot of blank gazing at my textbooks – and my tutor – and wondering where my Korean went. I've been so consistent! I've been doing so well! And yet, the words aren't coming to mind, my comprehension has vanished, and it's been an all around nightmare. I know very well that I'll be able to get past this phase sooner or later, but for the time being it's just depressing and frustrating. Honestly, half the reason I picked up French again was to feel like I was actually succeeding at something. The high points in Korean are very, very, high, and they feel unbelievably good, but they're few and far between. I thought that learning French would give me that rush of adrenaline a little more often. It does, but the low points in Korean are so low that the high points in French hardly make up for them. It's interesting to compare Korean and French. I spend hours upon hours studying Korean and half the time it feels like my wheels are just spinning in sand. I spend a half hour a day studying French and I can read a book at a high level of comprehension in just a few months. Yeah, I had some experience with French in the past, but it's not the same. I guess I should put it like this: Korean's a hard language and I have invested a lot in it. French is significantly easier and, yeah, I've put in a lot of time learning it over the years, but honestly? I could take it or leave it. I've half-assed my language studies for years, and now that I'm trying my hardest it really, really doesn't feel like it's enough. It feels like I will never speak Korean comfortably, or read 양귀자의 “원미동의 시인”이라는 책 in the original Korean, or watch TV with reasonable comprehension. I know I will be able to achieve this one day – probably sooner than I think – but it sure doesn't feel like it now. Welcome to learning a foreign language, self. Unfortunately I will be busy this week (Christmas, work, trip preparation) and the next two weeks I won't be able to study much at all (traveling). I am going to try to keep doing one French translation a day over vacation, since it takes about 10-15 minutes per lesson, and maybe I'll do one new iyagi a week. But I'm basically done studying for the year. I'll post a list of accomplishments for 2013 and a list of goals for 2014 later this week. In the mean time I'm going to go to sleep. Happy Holidays, all! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4860 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 51 of 119 23 December 2013 at 7:21pm | IP Logged |
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I remember these feelings very well. I'm lucky not to have had them in a while - maybe because the worst is over and at the end of the day I can happily listen to a radio show with imperfect understanding, but at least understanding. Then again, I'm not through through the treacherous intermediate stage by far and who knows when and how it'll next hit me. I think it's a phase that repeats, but is probably worst at some point during the intermediate stage, when you become painfully aware of fluctuations because now you can actually do things with Korean on a good day, opposed to the usual beginner who really can't do all that much on any given day ;) Hope you're over the phase soon!
Interesting, I feel similarly about Portuguese, which I tried to study before Korean. It should have been (and was) much easier, but I only gave it a half-assed attempt (or even less) and had no clue how to study effectively. And yet, for a very long time I understood so much more Portuguese than Korean. But I never cared half as much about Portuguese as I do about Korean and I think it has to do partly with the huge time investment I made into Korean. 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 52 of 119 14 January 2014 at 1:04pm | IP Logged |
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(TAC 2014 starts here) Korean - read 25 books - keep doing Sogang/meeting with my tutor until August - keep doing the Iyagis and using the Yonsei Reading book until August - improve listening skills; watch more TV - improve speaking skills; talk more - get a 3 (...4?) on the TOPIK before the end of the year French - read 25 books - finish Assimil New French With Ease – Active Phase - finish Using French – Passive and Active Phases - improve listening skills; find good music and watch TV Russian - finish Assimil Russian before August - read at least one book by the end of the year Portuguese - go through the entire Memrise course before August - do Assimil Portuguese before the end of the year - if I finish Assimil early enough, read at least one book by the end of the year Japanese - learn hiragana and katakana before the end of the year NOTE: I'll be going through some big life changes as of August. Korean is my #1 focus, French is secondary. In other words, if I have to pull a Sophie's choice, I'll drop Russian, Portuguese, and Japanese. I will not be dropping Korean or French. 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 53 of 119 14 January 2014 at 1:25pm | IP Logged |
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Korean
- Sogang 4A (Vocab: 27) - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets vol. 1: 11-46 French - New French With Ease Active: 90-98 - Using French Passive: 18-23 - Hunger Games: 302-326 (finished) - The Princess Diaries #1: 1-30 Portuguese - started the Memrise course for Brazilian Portuguese I'm alive! I had a pretty terrific vacation. Paris was everything I'd hoped it to be, although I now understand why it's called the city of love; you really have to love the person with whom you're going to be standing for hours at a time in lines. I also managed to practice my spoken French a bit. My first real-life French sentence: “Pourrais-je acheter une carte de Paris visite ici?” Yes, I really wrote that down. My listening skills were pretty good, thanks to Assimil (… and 8 years of high school/uni French). I was not a fan of Morocco, although I have to admit that Arabic sounds very nice. I ended up leaving the country early and did a spur of the moment trip to Lisbon, Portugal, which was fantastic. Portuguese instantly jumped to the top of my list. In my jet-lagged moments since I got back to Korea, I've started to do the Brazilian Portuguese Memrise course. I'd prefer to focus on European Portuguese but I'll take what I can get. I really, really love the sound of the language – it sounds kind of like slurred Russian. It's been a long time since I've fallen so in love with a language. I see myself becoming passionate, you guys. It's going to be hard to put off studying it more intensively until later this year, but other languages take priority, I'm afraid. Sunday is the TOPIK exam. I'm going to look over the format of the exam once before I go in, but besides that, I'm not going to bother studying for it. I will just review what I've learned over the last few years and see how it goes. Edited by Tarko on 14 January 2014 at 2:30pm 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 54 of 119 14 January 2014 at 1:27pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, suddenly all these new languages are popping up... You have very ambitious plans! Good luck! Btw, I'm fairly sure that you can pass TOPIK 4 if you can manage reading 25 Korean books ;)
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| Tarko Senior Member Korea, South Joined 4683 days ago 119 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, French | Message 55 of 119 14 January 2014 at 2:28pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you kindly! I sure hope you're right re: TOPIK 4... :/
Technically Russian isn't new. I majored in it in university and I actually teach it a few times a month, but I've lost a lot of comprehension skills over the last few years. (I understand everything in the Assimil textbook, but I'd like to review a bit before I dive into literature again.) Edited by Tarko on 14 January 2014 at 2:31pm 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 56 of 119 19 January 2014 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
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I just took the 33rd TOPIK exam and I thought I'd write about it while it's still fresh in my mind.
I signed up for the 중급 (intermediate) level. One of my co-workers - a Brit who is married to a Korean woman - took it as well. It was the first time taking the exam for both of us; we were both treating it like a practice exam. I didn't do any special studying for the exam. Last night I looked at about 3 or 4 questions from each section on the 32nd exam, read over these exam tips, and... that's it. With the exception of about 10 pages of Harry Potter yesterday morning, I took the weekend off from studying. My co-worker has been studying from a TOPIK practice book for a few months and has taken a few Beginner level practice exams (scoring 70-80% on each section; hence his decision to try out the Intermediate level). We arrived at the testing site quite early and had some time to joke around/try not to think about the exam, which was a good decision, I think. I was feeling really hyped up - not so much nervous as I was concerned. The last exam I took was almost 5 years ago, when I graduated from university. There were a LOT of people taking the intermediate TOPIK exam. A lot. But here's the thing: simply scanning over the name lists there was a grand total of 5 people with "western" names. Considering the number of English teachers in Korea, it's downright disgraceful, really. Actually I was kind of shocked by how many Chinese students were there. Exam time! The proctors gave us a "computer sign pen" to fill out our scantron forms. The first part was grammar and writing. When the bell rang, I immediately turned to the writing section, breathed a sigh of relief at the topic, and made an outline. I then did the "make this a proper, grammatically correct sentence" questions at the back. Then I turned to the front. The grammar section - and pretty much every other section, actually - went in waves. Some questions I nailed, some questions I felt confident about, some I was concerned over, and some I had no clue about. I went through the grammar section one time, skipping questions I didn't have an answer to, and went back for a second go. The second time didn't really help me out at all; I basically just chose whichever question seemed kind of accurate. And then... the writing section. I left myself about 25 minutes for the writing section. "I wrote an outline already," I said. "I write essays several times a week," I said. DUMB. I wasn't used to writing in the block format, changed my outline at the last second... I wrote my 400th line right when the bell rang. I am really kicking myself because I should have dominated that essay, but instead I was too self-confident. Stupid. We had a 30 minute break, 15 minutes of which we were allowed to roam the building, wait in line at the men's room, or smoke in the aforementioned men's room. Okay, that wasn't allowed, but people did it anyways. The second section was listening and reading. Both sections were just as I described earlier: like a wave. Easy, doable, and seemingly impossible. I found myself a little confused during the listening section when it came to texts that covered two questions. My brain basically shut down when I reached the last text in the reading section. I still don't know what that last text was about. I ended up with about a minute remaining at the end. I feel... okay about the exam. I don't think I did well, but I don't think I bombed horribly, either (with the exception of the writing section). Every section seemed to be of equal difficulty, which says something about my abilities, I suppose. My friend, on the other hand, said that he'd spent the entire exam staring blankly at his paper, wondering when someone was going to come and tell him to stop pretending he was at the right level for the exam. I believe I find out my score in about 3 weeks, so for now I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and make decisions about future exams (TOPIK 34 in April?) when the time comes. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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