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Advancing Korean, Year 5/6: TAC15 東亞 | ||
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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 153 of 344 02 February 2013 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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2013년 2월 2일. 2013年2月2日. بهمن ۱۴ ۱۳۹۱.
Korean 한국어 I was ill this week, so I used that as an excuse to watch lots of TV. I started 7급 공무원 (Level 7 Civil Servant), which doesn't look like it'll shape up to be a great series, but it's amusing enough. For a series about spies all the segments about the bad guys and the spy training are so laughable... I also wrote some long due reviews on my blog about the comic book about Korean history, the movie 간첩 (The Spy), and 드라마의 제왕 (King of Dramas). I started reading the Korean translation 세계를 재다 of Kehlmann's "Die Vermessung der Welt" (Measuring the World). I've read the first chapter so far and it was easier than I anticipated. I'm starting to enjoy reading in Korean more and more. Persian فارسی Now that I've decided to participate in the 6WC with Persian I started an audio sentence deck on Anki. With Korean I've noticed that repeatedly listening to sentences makes it easy for me to remember and eventually use them. So far I've added 62 sentences from the first 6 lessons of the "Chai and Conversation" podcast. I figured out the Persian spelling through trial and error on google translate. All the typing was good practice. I hope I'll start to find my way around the Persian keyboard faster. If anyone is interested in using this deck let me know. Regarding the podcasts, it's very interesting how much gets shortened in spoken Persian. I'm very glad for this study resource. And thanks to lesson 6 I can now say "Luke, I am your father" in Persian: «لوك ، من پدر تو هستم» (Luke, man pedare-to hastam) :) There was a dialogue where the teacher calls her mother and asks her who she is... Mandarin 中文 I've decided to learn a song by Jay Chou for this months' team challenge, so it's finally time to do something with Chinese apart from occasional listening. Even though I won't commit to regular study just yet, I'm absolutely looking forward to spending some time on the language. I've long been planning to read up on and practice pronunciation. I started with Pinyin - here is my guide of useful websites for that: Sinosplice: Pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese - this is the site Ari recommended for learning pronunciation. It clears up common misconceptions about the consonants <j>, <q>, <x>, <zh>, <ch>, <sh>, <r> with very good phonetic explanations and some graphics. Hacking Chinese: A Guide to Pinyin Traps and Pitfalls - this site also focuses on common mistakes learners of Mandarin make. I found it very helpful for reading about the different vowel sounds. It also mentions that the distinction between <d> and <t>, <b> and <p>, <g> and <k> etc. is different than in English (but the same as in Korean). Mandarin Chinese Phonetics - gives a good and more complete overview of all the consonant and vowel sounds. Quick Mandarin: Pinyin Table - a table of all the possible syllables in Standard Mandarin Chinese. I guess there are more sites like this one out there. I think learning about pronunciation is one of the most important things when beginning a new language (and also later on, to check whether you're pronouncing it correctly). I recommend going through these articles for anyone who still has questions about specific sounds. Taken together they seem fairly comprehensive. Next I'll be looking at tone. I've already collected the articles I want to read on the topic. I also watched the movie 만추 (Late Autumn) this week. It's directed by a Korean, but takes place in the US and is multilingual: English, Chinese, Korean. The only language I was missing to understand everything was Chinese, which made me want to re-watch the movie once I have a chance to understand it in its entirety. Here's a very good review: Late Autumn. I enjoyed the movie a lot and would recommend it to anyone who likes quiet art house cinema. Edited by druckfehler on 03 February 2013 at 2:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| billyshears66 Groupie United States Joined 4506 days ago 69 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 154 of 344 02 February 2013 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the info on pronunciation!
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| Hendrek Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4874 days ago 152 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Persian | Message 155 of 344 06 February 2013 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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druckfehler, if you don't mind sharing that Anki deck, I would love to use it. I
finished listening to the Chai podcasts, and having an audio deck would be a great way to keep using it. Incidentally, I am nearly done with building an Assimil 3-way Anki deck I've been working on and will share it soon on ankiweb if you could use that (3 way to English, even though the book is in French). I have a strange situation with Anki, in that I use only ankiweb or the iPod version. I don't have the desktop version and can't get it because I don't have a device with a supported OS or .exe capability, so I don't even think that I can add audio files. For typing, what I did was order some keyboard sticker overlays and put them on my chromebook's keyboard. This makes it far easier to learn to type, I think, but of course you have to be OK with stickers on your keyboard. I used something from AramediA. If you use it, note that the shift values may not align on your layout, so you may have to cut the stickers in half and put each half where it belongs. EDIT: the link won't work, but here it is in plain text: http://www.amazon.com/Farsi-Keyboard-Stickers-Characters- Polycarbonate/dp/B001R302K2/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=13601796 47&sr=8- 10&keywords=farsi+aramedia Edited by Hendrek on 06 February 2013 at 8:45pm 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 156 of 344 03 April 2013 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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2013년 4월 3일.
I haven't updated for two months, but I'm still around and still making progress - at least with Korean. I hope to get back to writing regular weekly updates now. Korean 한국어 I'm so glad that I'm at a level in Korean where I can enjoy native materials without always needing translation. It makes it so much easier to maintain the language. Even in the month where I hardly got anything done I continued improving my Korean simply by listening to radio shows. Since I started listening to those radio shows and podcasts in December it has gotten easier to keep focused and I understand much more. I've been following a routine of listening to 30 minutes of Korean podcasts before sleeping and I'm surprised how much it relaxes me. I usually doze off after a while :D But I get at least 10 minutes of quality listening time per day and it adds up. Reading-wise I finished the bilingual Tower of Ants (개미의 탑) and only have one story left in my book of scary stories for kids (세상에서 가장 무서운 이야기). The scary stories were extremely difficult when I started on them last summer and now I can almost read them casually and can usually finish a story in one sitting. The next book I'm going to attempt is A World of Artificiality (어떤 작위의 세계) by Jung Young-moon (정영문), which I got as a present. It's a novel with 300 pages, so it will definitely be a challenge. I'm only on page 14, but so far the reading experience is fun and there is quite a bit of repetition of words, which is absolutely perfect. Anki has been languishing to a point where I have around 700 cards due, but it doesn't seem to matter all too much. I've started to prepare for the Intermediate TOPIK (20th April) and it seems like I know most of the important words. My vocabulary has really grown exponentially this past year. I'm now at the beginning of my 4th year of Korean study and very happy with my current level. Persian فارسی To be honest, I just don't see Persian working out at the moment. These days I don't find much time for language study and when I do I like to use all of it to improve my Korean. Maybe it's just not time yet to get started on a new language, Korean gets too jealous if my attention is divided. Mandarin 中文 Same thing applies to Mandarin. It seems like language learning only works well for me with an all-or-nothing approach, so Mandarin will have to wait until I have more time or stop focusing on Korean. Edited by druckfehler on 03 April 2013 at 3:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5122 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 157 of 344 05 April 2013 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Good to see you're back, druckfehler! :)
For me, it's the same: I can't learn new languages going slowly, it's either all or nothing. Once I'm a bit more advanced, I can put them on the back burner, but not in the beginning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4670 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 158 of 344 05 April 2013 at 9:22pm | IP Logged | ||
I swear I didn't write my March report after reading your log, and yet I've said exactly the same phrase! 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 159 of 344 14 April 2013 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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2013년 4월 14일.
Korean 한국어 As I'm going to sit the intermediate TOPIK on Saturday, I decided to practice once more with the last test (제29회). My score: Reading: 94 Writing: 41 (without the essay) Grammar & Expressions: 88 Listening: 94 Average: 79 For passing level 4 no section can be under 50 points and the average score must be over 70. As a point of comparison, this was my score when I last took a practice test in October:
This time taking the test was quite a relaxed experience overall. I only got 2 questions wrong both on Listening and Reading. The very last Reading question had quite a few unknown words and got me a little lost, but apart from that it was easy to understand and I finished the section 5 minutes early. Listening was a far better experience than last time, when I had a hard time following the talks and reading all the answers on time. Today it actually felt like the easiest part. I've read a lot since October and listened to a lot of radio, which seems to have been a good preparation. As I have done little real grammar study, there are still a number of patterns in TOPIK which I don't know at all and some I only kind of know. I had to guess quite a few of the answers in Grammar and Expressions, usually between two possibilities I wasn't sure about. But the only section I'll probably have difficulties with is Writing. The multiple choice questions as easy for the most part, but I found the questions where I had to fill in words and connect parts of a sentence using grammatical patterns rather difficult this time. This type of question is very hit or miss for me. I just hope I'll score fairly well on the essay (at least 10 points), which should make level 4 achievable. I've written two practice essays in the past week and they were okay, but I noticed that my active vocabulary can be unreliable and I find it hard to think of enough (not too complicated) things to write... I'll probably try to practice the free writing questions a little more this week and hope for a good test paper. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Haksaeng Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6190 days ago 166 posts - 250 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 160 of 344 15 April 2013 at 1:05am | IP Logged | ||
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You really brought your scores up! Especially listening. Good luck on the exam, it looks like you'll do well.
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