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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 17 of 344 20 February 2012 at 1:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sunday, 20th of February - 4th week
song: 짙은 - 곁에 (By My Side) Korean Coldplay :) new vocabulary studied: 70 writing: 1 vocabulary story reading: 38 pages of 김치를 좋아하는 마녀, 2 pages of 한국대표동시 100편 listening: 4 Mandarin lesson videos, 2 episodes of Coffee Prince speaking: a few measly sentences University got a bit stressful last week, so I didn't get as much done as I would've liked. I've skipped a whole week of vocabulary and only wrote one text (when I could've/should've written one per day). But I did quite a bit of reading and think I should generally adjust my study plan to include more reading. I've discovered some exciting videos that teach Mandarin in Korean. I've been wanting to start studying Mandarin for some time now. I've amassed quite a bit of time (I'd guess around 100 hours) listening to the language over the last 3 years by watching subtitled Chinese movies and TV. And I've read quite a bit about the language, it's about time for formal study. However, the one thing I don't want is to spend less time on Korean. So getting Mandarin lessons in Korean is the perfect solution to satisfy my Chinese cravings while studying Korean at the same time. It's actually one of the best listening exercises I've come across lately. I'm already used to language instruction in Korean from my 3 week language course in Korea, it's easy to pick up all the important information from the videos and basic language instruction means communication about a lot of simple subjects. Things to take away from these two weeks: Use different methods to memorize different word classes! I'm convinced that it's a lot better to study verbs in context, but for nouns it's not that important. I'm still experimenting with study methods, though. Once I'm done with the Beginner vocab list, I think I'll focus on the intermediate noun list first and concentrate on studying verbs in context in my reading. new grammar: -자(마자) As soon as, when, no sooner than Edited by druckfehler on 20 February 2012 at 7:36pm 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 18 of 344 27 February 2012 at 12:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sunday, 26th of February - 5th week
song: 언니네이발관 - 바람이 부는대로 (The Way The Wind Blows) new vocabulary studied: 60 writing: 1 mini essay, 1 e-mail reading: 5 pages of 김치를 좋아하는 마녀, 2 blog entries listening: 1 Mandarin lesson videos, 3 episodes of Coffee Prince, 1 Iyagi Podcast, 4 Children's Book Videos speaking: a 20 minute conversation! Yes! February actually marks 2 years of Korean study for me. Although I didn't always study with total devotion, I think I've already come a long way. I plan to study more consistently in my 3rd year (going well so far, thanks to TAC). At the beginning of this week I practiced taking the TOPIK Intermediate test to gauge my current level, see how much work I have to do until October and get a score I can measure my progress against, that is: Reading: 42 Writing: 40 Listening: 71 Grammar and Expressions: 62 Bad news first: I only really knew what I was doing for about 20% of the test. To pass level 4 I would need at least 50 points in each section and an average of 70 points. I have big problems with reading speed, vocabulary and grammar. Good news: I knew what I was doing for about 20% of the test! I actually managed to pass level 3 by a narrow margin (no section lower than 40, average over 50). I was quite surprised at my progress from the past half year. I think I've improved even while I felt I was stagnating. Other stuff from this week: My Korean tandem went surprisingly well. There was some code-switching into German when I didn't know how to express what I wanted to say, but overall I felt like I could still actually have a conversation in Korean, something I had come to doubt over the past months. Reading is also going well. I'm pleased whenever I notice that I understood a word that I only picked up or studied recently and it happens quite frequently. I love the children's book I'm studying with. It uses very repetitive language and is amusing. new grammar: -도록 So that, in order to, to the point; until (formal version of -게) -도록 하다 Make it so that, get so. to do sth. Edited by druckfehler on 27 February 2012 at 2:37am 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 19 of 344 04 March 2012 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sunday, 4th of March - 6th week
song: 스탠딩에그 - I'm not yours new vocabulary studied: 60 writing: 3 vocab stories reading: 4 pages of 김치를 좋아하는 마녀, 4 pages of 한국대표동시 100편, 1 blog post listening: 1 Mandarin lesson videos, 2 movies 3 episodes of Coffee Prince, 1 Iyagi Podcast speaking: kind of 30 minutes Back to speaking problems. I've figured out that it depends partly on the topic of conversation and partly on whether my brain is tuned into Korean. Learning to speak Korean is really an uphill battle, especially without language immersion. I'm trying to get back to writing vocabulary stories. I know it was very helpful to do this daily, I've just grown lazy. My stories are usually around 200-300 characters and it can take a long time depending on the words I have to use. The goal for TOPIK is to write 400-600 characters in around 20 minutes... new grammar: -을 생각할 때마다 Whenever I think of... -이/가 생각날 때마다 Whenever I think of, Whenever I'm reminded of... -아/어야겠다 I guess (I) should, I had better... -답니다 I/They say, it really is/does, you see (abbreviation of -다고 합니다) Edited by druckfehler on 21 April 2012 at 4:38pm 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 20 of 344 12 March 2012 at 4:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sunday, 11th of March - 7th week
song: 아키버드 - 쓸쓸하고 씁쓸하고 (Melancholy and Bitter) actually sounds very sweet :) new vocabulary from wordlist: 80 hanja studied: 心 (심, 12 words) writing: 4 vocab stories reading: 22 pages of 김치를 좋아하는 마녀, 2 pages of 한국대표동시 100편 listening: 1 children's book video, 2 episodes of Coffee Prince, 6 Iyagi Podcast Sentences speaking: none. Lots to report today! Hanja I've finally started Hanja study! And I absolutely get it now that it's more helpful than intimidating. Who knew Sino-Korean vocabulary could be so much fun? So far arbitrary memorisation was often outright painful and inefficient. Granted, I chose a really nice Hanja (心 - 심, heart; mind) and others may be more boring and complicated. But for now I'm in love. My plan is to very slowly learn Hanja that strike me as interesting or useful, by mining the Hanja dictionary for words. This week I collected a lot of useful words containing -심 (心). It was enlightening. I love how all these definitions of things are hidden in the Hanja combinations. A lustful mind is greed (욕심), a hot/feverish mind is enthusiasm (열심), a mind thinking of the field is ambition (야심),a person with two minds/hearts is fickle or duplicit (이심)... A lack of mind/heart can mean innocence, absentmindedness, detachment, being inconsiderate or even hard-hearted (무심). The different meanings only really make sense if I know that 심 can mean both heart and mind. I'm speaking and writing Korean already, but I think I can only really understand Korean when I know the origins of words. Reading Thanks to being drafted as a helper for the mayoral election today I've finished reading my first book in Korean! (Giving people their ballot paper was one boring job, but I got a lot of study done in between.) The book had 76 pages of text and I noticed that reading became a bit easier towards the end. I didn't understand everything, but always got the gist of the story. I plan to go through the book again and look up the most frequent/important words this time. Vocabulary I only have 100 words left from the beginner list now. The SRS is a bit hit or miss for me - for some words it works well, for others not at all. I'll probably end up with around 30-50 leeches and no idea how to study them :D I went through the first 40 pages of the TOPIK Intermediate wordlist (thanks again, Mr. mayor-to-be!) and marked all words I know very well and those I have some familiarity with. I know only about 10%... And many of those are English loans. There's still a lot of work to be done until October... new grammar: -듯하다 It seems that, it looks like... (similar to 것 같다, used more in writing) 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 21 of 344 12 March 2012 at 11:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, I'm really impressed. What book did you read? I'm very surprised to hear that it's possible to read a book while at the same time you say you haven't finished the TOPIK's beginner list!
And congrats for the hanja study, you surely won't regret it once you realise how suddenly 60% of the vocabulary (they say..) becomes so easy to learn... then you'll be left with the native Korean vocabulary to tackle, and that's already much less of a burden. On Warp3's log I've mentioned a nice book I've found to study characters in a more explicit way, you may want to have a look. :) Ah, and good job for writing stories. I try to quickly perfect (hmm...) my reading and vocabulary skills for the TOPIK, but I should have some time left so I'll try to work on writing and listening as well. Usually I can't understand what they say in the stories, and they're so long! I remember having the same problem in Mandarin: I could understand everything, but the story was so long and complex that were it French I couldn't answer (stuff like mentioning a day of the month, then saying "and the week before that... and the next day... " and the question is to figure out when some thing occurred). Anyway, congrats again. 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 22 of 344 12 March 2012 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I'm not sure it counts as a real book. :) By the end of the year I'd like to tackle a novel (maybe young adult fiction). I'm not up to that level by far. I read a children's book called 김치를 좋아하는 마녀 (leave it to Koreans to invents witches that like Kimchi :D). If you click the link you can see a preview of the first 10 pages or so. It contains a number of words that I'd never seen before (some of them aren't very useful either, like 싱글벙글, a description of how people laugh/smile), but it doesn't contain many of the words from the TOPIK list I struggle with (like "document", "trade" or "report"). I'm estimating my passive vocabulary to be around 2000-2500 words, it just doesn't completely overlap with either of the TOPIK lists.
Maybe it also has to do with the type of reading. I couldn't care less if I don't know 10 words per page - I just skip them and see what I can make of the rest. Some words will become clear form context and some descriptive words are pretty irrelevant anyway. The book I read was nice in that respect because there was a lot of repetition and many sentences with basic vocabulary. I really like using extensive reading (and listening) for language study and think it's one of the most effective methods (if only because I don't get bored by it). I got to English B2 mostly by reading a lot of books I didn't quite understand. I'd rather learn things in context than from SRS (although I obviously need that, too, to fill in the gaps). I also found TOPIK listening pretty annoying. They ask the most irrelevant stuff and the slowed-down speech is ridiculous... What helped was reading the answers beforehand. I tried to answer them while listening and in the pause between texts read the next answer section - that worked quite well, because I knew what I had to listen out for. I recommend to start writing as soon as possible, as it'll probably take a while until you get comfortable with it. But TOPIK beginner writing isn't that challenging, I'm sure you'll do fine whether you practice it or not. 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 23 of 344 12 March 2012 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thanks for the link. Not sure if I'm ready to read that kind of book though, probably I can try to read some manhwa, that gives the impression to read a lot (of pages) while reading little (text). Anyway, we'll see how it goes.
Indeed, it's probably mostly a matter of enjoying what you do! I'm happy that I'm not too bored learning raw vocabulary out of context. It's a bit dry, but when I turn to real texts I'm so hapy to see the progress, and I learn it faster this way, too. Of course, it's not valid of every kind of vocabulary, but for now it's acceptable.
From the past exam papers I've done, passing the level 2 (or 1? I forgot which is highest) was not dependent on the writing, so I'm not too concerned about it, though obviously I'd love to have a nice high score. I'll definitely practice from next week on, as I'll have finished the vocabulary list and will be able to learn vocabulary at a slower pace until the exam. 자신감을 가지자! (自信感을 가지자!) Edited by vermillon on 12 March 2012 at 7:54pm 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 24 of 344 18 March 2012 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sunday, 18th of March - 8th week
song: 자우림 - 카니발 아무르 (Carnival Amour) probably the most musically skilled and diverse Korean band I know new vocabulary from wordlist: 40 hanja studied: 心 (심, ? words) writing: --- reading: 9 pages of 명절 이야기: 신나는 열두달, Kimchi Museum lesson from Korean Language Adventure listening: 2 children's book video, 2 episodes of Coffee Prince, 1 Iyagi Podcast speaking: about 1 hour I've been a bit lazy about studying vocabulary this week, but am otherwise nicely chugging along. I've started reading my second children's book about special days in Korea like 추석 and corresponding stories, myths and food. I like the cultural component of this book a lot. This week I spoke a lot of Korean with my Korean friends while making 김치전 (yummy!). It was quite good that I had read two texts about Kimchi in the days before. I also asked them to clarify the maaaaaany ways of addressing people and I got some good pointers. Most explanations I've read so far were only scratching the surface. The list below is not necessarily comprehensive and it may be only partly correct. If you know more ways to address people in Korean, please let me know. Here's an insightful article by The Korea Times about the problems of addressing people in Korean. This stuff gives me a headache for a reason, it seems Koreans themselves don't always navigate the system successfully. In 반말 (informal/intimate speech) there are: - 너 and 네 (informally written 니), which are very intimate and best used only for friends (which is used depends on the ending) - 자네, which is a more polite way of saying "you" in 반말, used by someone of higher age/status; for example it could be used by a chef when addressing an employee - name + 아/야, which is used for friends of the same age or younger than oneself In 존댓말 (polite and formal speech) there are: - 당신, which can be used between spouses, but might be offensive in most other cases; in writing also used for people you don't know well - 그쪽, which is also formal and distant, but slightly less offensive/more respectful - employment title + 님, which is used to respectfully address someone older/of higher status (also for customer = 고객님; 선생님 can be used as a general term, not only for teachers) - last name + employment title, which is used by people of about equal status - family term + 님, which can be highly respectful (more so than just the family term, but does not work in all situations: say 형님 and you might sound like the mafia) - (name +) 선배 (+님) for school/university/group seniors - name + 씨 polite way of addressing a younger person, someone of similar age or someone for whom no title fits (generally titles are preferred) - name + 양/군 used moderately on very formal occasions such as weddings Can be used in both registers: - (name +) family term, which is used for people older than oneself only, also for not related ones - 저기(요), which is used to call unknown people, to eschew the issue of titles and names Only used in writing: - 그대, which is a poetic expression for "you", often found in songs, letters, poems Edited by druckfehler on 30 March 2012 at 2:17pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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