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My Korean Journey by BalliBalli | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4541 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes  Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 10 24 January 2012 at 8:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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I started studying Korean properly six months ago. My goals are to be able to read the newspaper without having to look up words in the dictionary, to be able to understand what goes on in Korean dramas without needing subtitles, and to be able to converse with Koreans beyond superficial subjects, and to do things like buy a cell phone on my own, communicate a complex problem to do with the apartment, read notices for apartment residents and read and take part in online chats with Koreans. To be able to do all these things I need a vocabulary of 20,000 words, I need to know 5,000-10,000 expressions and be familiar with all the grammar terms in an advanced grammar text book.
I have set myself 12 months to achieve these goals which isn't much time I know but it makes up for the time I've spent in Korea, seven years, NOT learning Korean. I am mostly motivated by the desire to watch my favorite dramas, mostly sageuks (historical dramas), without having to rely on subtitles. I realized recently I was missing out on a lot of good stuff on TV by not being able to understand it. I can continue living without knowing Korean but I think I will enjoy life more if I could understand Korean. I started off learning OK by studying Korean Grammar in Use for about three weeks then I spent about three months wasting time. My mistake was thinking that the KGU book was enough for grammar when it wasn't. I started reading and found I could not make head or tail of what I read because I didn't understand the grammar. You can't find most of the grammar terms in the dictionary. In addition, I was using Google Translate which is terrible for a new learner. So I floundered a bit. I tried immersion doing language exchange and hiring people to teach me Korean conversation but those things didn't work out. Reading random things was not a systematic way of learning vocabulary. I then decided to study Korean Grammar for International Learners which I got put off from doing earlier because the Workbook had many errors in the first chapter. However, once I started studying it, I realized that this was the book I really needed and I have studied it for the past 2 months. My future study plan: # Group like grammatical terms together. For example, there are about fifteen ways of saying "if" in Korean and a similar number of ways of saying "even though". Categorize all the conjugational endings in this way. # Finish translating the vocabulary in the KGIL (Korean Grammar for International Learners) workbook. Estimated time will be a week or two weeks. There are 250 pages I have to look up words for, about 10 a page, so 2500 words. I am doing some other things so I can only devote three hours a day to this. I have to be VERY strict about limiting my time because I have a tendency to spend too much time studying. # Do the exercises in the book. It will take me about two weeks to do the exercises (a shorter time than it takes to look up all the words I don't know - strangely enough). VOCABULARY AND SHADOWING # Vocabulary. Make a list of all the words I've looked up from the textbook and workbook in a notebook. Learn this list. Make up my own sentences for each word. Hire someone who can speak English well and is knowledgeable about grammar to check my sentences and correct them. Memorize this list. # Get a Korean person to read all the sentences in the textbook and make recordings. # Start working on news articles. Get online news articles and learn the vocabulary in them. Try translating the articles. # Get the Korean Herald insert which has English translations of articles in Korean. These are for Koreans to learn English but I can use them to learn Korean. They are good because they have a definition key so I won't have to look up as many words. And the translations are mostly exact. Study the vocab and understand the construction of these sentences. I might make a scrapbook with clippings of these newspaper articles and my own handwritten notes, translations, vocab lists written beside the clippings. # Record a Korean person reading these articles. Do shadowing. # Translate any online articles that are of interest to me (like interviews of baewoos) even if there are no English translations available. # Every day revise what I've learned the day before. # Listen to all the mp3 files and CDs I've collected (from textbooks or bought online) and do shadowing. I should spend three months doing this: learning new vocabulary, translating, recording and shadowing. Also getting someone to correct my writing. After I complete this phase I will attempt the advanced-level TOPIK test. NEXT PHASE: SPEAKING PRACTICE WITH KOREANS # Join a Korean language hagwon, preferrably join an advanced class that concentrates on speaking and practise speaking with Koreans. Ask people to correct me. Attempt language exchange again and ask for corrections. # Join some groups like mountain biking group, hiking, volunteering group and try and have conversations with Koreans. Also can join online communities for people practising Korean with Koreans. This will go on for about three months. By the end of the twelve-month period (actually more like thirteen or fourteen months) I should have accomplished my goals. It is a rushed program. I wish I could spend fourteen hours a day studying but I can't. I have other responsibilities and can only spend about three to four hours a day, more on the weekends. I might be setting up myself a too difficult goal. This goal is more for someone who spends the whole day studying rather than several hours a day. I wasted a lot of time between finishing the grammar book, Korean Grammar in Use, and starting the KGIL book because I didn't know the best strategy for study. If I hadn't done that, I would be working on vocabulary and shadowing now. If I achieve the level of proficiency that I want to have, I should start reading Korean for fun (I hope I do reach a point when I can read for fun and not because of study). My Korean language skills will grow rusty and I will forget a lot of what I've learned if I don't keep using Korean so I should read as much as I can. I will continue watching my favorite dramas and movies, this time without English subtitles or not depending on them as much. Edited by Balliballi on 24 January 2012 at 8:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4717 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 2 of 10 31 January 2012 at 4:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, those are some lofty goals! Good luck! I'll be following your entries. Can I ask what your current level is?
You're motivated to look up 2500 words from a grammar book? That leaves me (almost) speechless. You might like this Korean Grammar Database. Your study plan is definitely impressive, but it leaves me wondering why you compartmentalise skills this much... Why only start practicing speaking after taking TOPIK advanced? Speaking early on might help with grammar and vocabulary acquisition. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| joyorbison Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4775 days ago 17 posts - 18 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Korean | Message 3 of 10 31 January 2012 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hey, good luck! Your plan is certainly ambitious.
20,000 words in a year? That works out to 54 words a day. You're sure that is possible with reviews and stuff? I'm learning Korean too, it can be so frustrating but I think the way to tackle it isn't by setting targets too high. If you don't keep hitting those very high targets, your morale may drop and cause you stop studying altogether. Anyway, I don't know you so this might be totally possible for you. Hope you succeed! Edit: Also, please continue with the log! Edited by joyorbison on 31 January 2012 at 1:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4541 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes Studies: Korean | Message 4 of 10 05 February 2012 at 6:53am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for your interest in my log, Druckfehler. My speaking level, as you can probably guess, is low. I did some shadowing of the sentences in the CD of the "Korean Grammar in Use" textbook so I have a basic understanding of how words are pronounced but I know that overall, my pronunciation is poor and the intonation is all wrong. Most of the time Koreans cannot understand what I say to them. This is a disadvantage because when I read a Korean sentence while studying grammar, I do subconsciously vocalize the words in my head and if I am vocalizing the words and the sentences incorrectly, over time, I will have developed bad habits in speaking which might be hard to undo later on. My listening is also at the beginner's level. I pick up a word here and there in a spoken sentence when I watch TV but I don't understand the whole sentence. I am starting to improve though. I am starting to pick up the "을/를" "은/는" endings of nouns. I am not really practicing listening at the moment. Grammar knowledge and writing skills are about early intermediate level. Reading is getting much better. It improved a lot after I studied grammar. I would say reading level is early intermediate too. If I knew more vocabulary, it would be middle intermediate level. One of the major things holding me back right now is lack of vocabulary knowledge. I test-read a newspaper article occasionally and each time I have done so, I have found that I do not know 90% of the vocabulary in the article. This tells me that I have to work on vocabulary. I read an article online that says you need to know about 20,000 words of a target language to be able to read a newspaper in the TL comfortably. The link to the article is here: http://www.fltr.ucl.ac.be/fltr/germ/etan/bibs/vocab/cup.html I estimate that I already know about 4000 words, so I have to learn about 16,000 more. Because one of my goals is to be able to read newspapers, I will mine newspapers and online news articles for the vocabulary I will learn. As for grammar, I see it as the foundation and framework on and around which the rest of the language is built. Vocabulary are the bricks that you use to fill in the spaces and finish off the house. Without grammar, words are just a jumble. Without vocabulary, you do not have the material to make a sentence. Learning grammar and vocabulary by listening to people doesn't work for me because of the lack of opportunities to immerse myself in Korean. And even if I could immerse myself right now, using this method might take longer than learning grammar and vocabulary from studying books by myself. With a comprehensive grammar book in front of me - and I believe the "Korean Grammar for International Learners" textbook is very comprehensive - I know exactly how much grammar I have to know to have advanced knowledge of grammar. Of course, knowing grammar and memorizing vocabulary will not take you far on the road to fluency but I will feel more comfortable knowing that I have that knowledge behind me when I embark on more communicative and free-style activities. So studying grammar and memorizing vocabulary are just the preparatory work I am doing for the shadowing and conversation practice I will do later. The shadowing and conversation practice are the things that will (hopefully) make me fluent. If I prepare the groundwork well, I can do the shadowing and conversation practice more efficiently and achieve fluency faster than if I hadn't done the groundwork. That's the theory at least, anyways. The grammar and vocabulary studying may help improve my reading skills too. I have compartmentalized my study a lot especially in the early stages, I agree. Right now I am concentrating on: 1. Grammar study from "Korean Grammar for International Learners" 2. Vocabulary list-making from the same book. And I really have no choice but to look up the estimated 2500 words from the "Korean Grammar for International Learners" workbook because I have to understand the vocabulary in order to do the exercises in the book. The workbook does not provide a vocabulary definition list. Neither does the text book. So I estimate that 50% of the time I spend studying these books will be devoted to looking up words in the dictionary. I have read the "Korean Grammar for International Learners" textbook four times now (a few chapters I have read five times). It is a difficult textbook IMO but I like it because it is very thorough - it covers practically every grammar pattern you are likely to encounter in Korean in the future. One consolation of studying it is that after I have finished studying it, I won't have to study another grammar book again. I have to do the categorization of grammar terms into like terms (because this will help me remember the grammar terms); do the workbook; review the textbook once more cover from cover, spending longer on the difficult parts; test myself on the grammar terms by writing the Korean term on one side of the page and writing the English translation of the grammar term on the other side of the page from memory, and then I will have finished grammar study. (I will have to review the grammar book from time to time in the future, but these will be very quick reviews, just zeroing in on the weak areas.) Once that is out of the way, the next phase of study is tackling vocabulary and shadowing simultaneously. I originally wanted to focus on vocabulary purely but I feel that doing shadowing will make the study more interesting, and also I feel some pressure on me to start speaking. I will see how I go. If I feel that I am taking on too much, I will just stick to vocabulary and then do shadowing afterwards. Even though my main goal is learning new words, because of the way I am learning the vocabulary, I am also continuing my grammar study. I wrote in this post: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=30875&PN=0&TPN=2 how I will learn vocabulary. As you can see, I have to apply the grammar that I know, as well as learn new ways of expressing myself when I study vocabulary in this way. I will be learning new expressions and not just isolated words. I will try and use Luca's (a polyglot whose videos are on Youtube) method of translating backwards and forwards to learn Korean. I will translate these articles into English (and make up Korean sentences for each new Korean word I am trying to learn), and then translate the English translation back into Korean. So it's not only a vocabulary-learning exercise but also a translating exercise. Once again, I know doing these things will not make me fluent in speaking. By then I hope to be closer to my goal of acquiring 20,000 words. I will periodically test myself to see whether my reading comprehension has improved. If I am still unable to read newspaper articles without looking up words, then I will have to keep going. At this stage, I aim to translate about 200 of these articles before I stop. It might have to be more though, a lot more - I don't know. Through this study, I also hope to pick up 1000-5000 commonly used expressions (and collocations). I will also translate and make vocabulary lists of other reading material. I have the whole series of Tintin books in English except for a couple, and I have the Korean versions for a couple of them. (I will get more Korean versions if I find these books useful.) I will use the same method to translate these books as I will for studying news articles. There are also some other books that I might study including "Korea Unmasked". I have the English and Korean versions of this book. There are also some manga that I have the Korean and English versions for, but I will leave them for later. The news articles are a priority because the kind of vocabulary in them is the kind I will need in the future, I think. Back to shadowing. This involves making recordings of Korean people reading everything in Korean that has English translations for them. So the recordings will be from the "Korean Grammar for International Learners" textbook, news articles I have translated myself, the Tintin books, "Korea Unmasked" and dialogs from various manga books. In addition I will shadow mp3s from CDs that come with other Korean language books that I have, and mp3s that I have bought from online stores. I think Pimsleur and Assimil will be too elementary for me by that stage. Pimsleur is also pricey. I will basically be spending all my time shadowing comprehensible (translated) input. After that, I think I will be ready to do speaking practice with Koreans. I hope I will have a better knowledge of vocabulary by then so I will be able to understand a lot more of what Koreans say to me. Also, I think my listening comprehension will be helped by my improved knowledge of grammar. Each session of speaking practice I will build around a topic or theme. I will ask the Korean person to correct me ruthlessly during these sessions. I might join a hagwon as well. And I will try and increase my opportunities to have conversation practice with Koreans in more natural environments. If my Korean speaking level is better than it is now, it will encourage Koreans to speak in Korean with me. Right now, it's easier for them to speak in English with me. (I have found that if your Korean is poor, most Koreans are not interested in speaking Korean with you. I guess I can't blame them.) My methods are loosely based on Kato Lomb's methods of learning a new language. I don't do listening to the radio though as she does. (I watch Korean dramas though, some of them without subtitles, but I do that mostly for enjoyment.) I learn best when I do it alone. I don't do well in classroom environments, I've found. Also, I need a lot of structure in my study plan or else I feel lost and tend to go off on unproductive tangents. I am not good at multi-tasking so I like to do one activity and complete that before I do another. Also, I don't like ambiguity so studying grammar and looking up words in a dictionary are activities that make me feel comfortable when learning a new language.
Thank you, joyorbison, your words of encouragement are very helpful. My targets are very high and I really think that it will take much longer to accomplish my goals because the time-frame for the study plan is based on studying for 14 hours a day - basically studying all day except for a couple of hours spent eating and doing similar things. I will just have to do my best. If I do half the things I have listed, I will be much better off than I am now so I will just have to try and see how far I can go. I found that my study goes in leaps and bounds. If I find the right method of study, it can advance me a lot. For example, finding the grammar textbook that I am using right now was a boon for me. Before that, I was wasting a lot of my time. So I hope the method of study I've outlined will be productive for me. Edited by Balliballi on 05 February 2012 at 7:56am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 arashikat Diglot Pro Member United States Joined 4526 days ago 53 posts - 80 votes Speaks: Tagalog*, English Studies: Korean Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 10 05 February 2012 at 7:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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This is very ambitious, and inspiring! I'll be following your journey~~
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| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4541 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes Studies: Korean | Message 6 of 10 29 February 2012 at 9:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've started shadowing intensively, and it's great! I am learning many phrases every day. I'm using a phrase book to do the shadowing from. It's got a lot of useful everyday phrases. I'm repeating whole sentences without worrying about the grammar too much. I'm also picking up a few new words this way. The only thing is I will probably forget many of the phrases. I don't really have a chance to speak much Korean right now so I'm worried that it will all go rusty. But in a few days I've made a lot of progress. I can finish shadowing this book in about three more days. I've spent four days on it and am halfway through the book. I would like to revise this book later on to refresh my memory of the many useful phrases.
I think I will spend the next few months shadowing. I have to find good material to shadow though. Things I am likely to say in the future. Phrase books are the most helpful I've found. Shadowing is such a useful tool. I will shadow a couple more phrase books after this one. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4541 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes Studies: Korean | Message 7 of 10 01 March 2012 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've started shadowing "Korean Grammar for International Learners". I thought of shadowing "Using Korean" instead but I think I am more familiar with the first book as I've studied it. I have done six pages of shadowing. I am picking up a lot of new expressions. Shadowing this book gives me a different perspective of the grammar. I am actually using the grammar which is great. I will keep this up, as well as continue shadowing the Essential Korean (for everyday use) which I am close to finishing.
The "Korean Grammar for International Learners" book is about 400 pages long so if I do about six pages a day, it will take me 2 months approximately to do all the shadowing. For the next week, I will be shadowing Essential Korean and the grammar book simultaneously. Shadowing is quite relaxing. I just read the sentences over and over again until I can say them without looking at the book. My pronunciation was improved greatly by doing the shadowing of the Essential Korean book which has audios. The other book doesn't have audio, but because I have practiced speaking with the Essential Korean book, my pronunciation of words is a lot better than it was before. So the audios really help a lot. After the Essential Korean book, I will shadow the Korean Grammar in Use book which has audio. I've got to keep listening to audio while I shadow the grammar book otherwise I will start slipping into bad pronunciation habits. So for the next three months I will do shadowing. Even though I started shadowing ten days ago, I find my confidence in speaking already increasing. I started shadowing the grammar book because I got sick of shadowing phrase-book type sentences. I will shadow a couple more phrase books but I won't spend as long on them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Balliballi Groupie Korea, SouthRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4541 days ago 70 posts - 115 votes Studies: Korean | Message 8 of 10 05 March 2012 at 4:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've stopped shadowing Korean Grammar for International Learners as it's too difficult and many of the sentences are not useful to me. How many chances will I use the sentence "The elephant eats as soon as you give it food."?
I am back to shadowing just the Essential Korean book and am doing that thoroughly. I am doing revision shadowing of material studied the previous day. I don't look at the Hangeul when I first listen to the audio. I only look at the Hangeul after I've listened to the audio a few times and been able to shadow it. I find shadowing very useful but I have to stick to easy stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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