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CZ’s TAC 15 CHN/JPN/KOR | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4870 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 649 of 844 26 December 2012 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Those are some great ideas - I'll probably try a few of them. I also find that exposure is the easiest way to learn new vocabulary and my worst area is economic vocabulary, because I'm just not greatly interested in it. It sucks for all those dramas with lots of economic machinations...
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| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 650 of 844 26 December 2012 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, I tend to enjoy the dramas that I understand the least the most. There's much more intrigue to them, which motivates me to learn new words in order to understand them. I can watch a romcom and understand the majority of the dialogue, but I can't say the same for other genres.
I started a new blog called Hallyu Interview that focuses solely on translating interviews. One, I enjoy it, so I made a blog specifically for it. Two, like I said in a previous post, translating really helps me. Three, so many sites report useless news but interviews are rarely translated. It's my way to give back to the Korean drama fan community. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 651 of 844 31 December 2012 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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2012 was honestly the first year where I actually made good progress, found out what works and what doesn't work for me, and a lot more. In 2009, I first started learning Korean and Japanese, but hardly did anything. I treated language learning like a school subject and didn't make much progress. I was stuck going over beginner material over and over, trying to remember it 100%. I did find out about AJATT and tried to implement some of the ideas, but I didn't do much. 2010 saw me toying with Anki and many other methods. I got to the lower intermediate levels in both Korean and Japanese. I finally started watching videos without subtitles in early 2010. In the end, juggling two languages meant I never made much progress. In 2011, realizing that I wasn't making the progress I wanted, I decided to focus on Japanese because I had a renewed interest in Japanese music and anime. I even bought some Japanese games and was able to play them. However, by September or so, I had realized that I enjoyed learning Korean much more than Japanese. I would say I did well in 2012 in Korean.
This year seemed like I didn't make much progress, but that's really the intermediate trap. I have read a lot this year and stopped worrying about how many words I didn't know. I just kept on reading. I recently started re-reading a book that I had read in February or so and the book is much clearer to me. Watching dramas and movies has gotten easier for me, even though I spent most of 2010 and part of 2011 watching dramas without subtitles. Now for 2013 I don't have any specific number goals I want to reach. What I want to do is to continue changing my habits, and to do that I need to change my environment. I also cannot commit too much to 2013 because the future is really cloudy. I still have no idea at this point whether I will be joining the Air Force (medical records and tests are under review) or whether or I'll live an ordinary civilian life. I'm planning everything I do as if I'm going to live a civilian life in 2013. First off, this will be my final year of undergraduate education. Since I'm a finance major, one of my goals is to learn more about finance through Korean. Of course I'll learn everything I need for classes in English, but I would like to learn a lot more about finance through Korean. I'll be killing two birds with one stone. Second, I finally have a plan on what to do in 2013 since I have found out what works and what doesn't work for me this year in 2012. Reading: This is the easiest for me to do. Reading is by far my best skill is Korean, and it's not even close. For example, I could read the lyrics to a song and understand most of it, but I won't understand it as well through listening. What I plan to do is to simply keep what I am doing, but to make it easier to read in Korean. I have 25 Korean novels in my house and have read through most of them once already, and some of them twice. My plan is to keep at least one book in my room, one in my book bag, and one in the living room. I always want a book around, even I have already read it before. I also have some sites that I visit that are in Korean, but they're mainly news sites as of now. If I come across a new site, that'll be good, but I'm not actively searching. I want more of my internet time to be on Korean sites, except for when I'm doing homework or writing for one of my English blogs. Listening: Just keep on watching dramas and movies raw and keep listening to music. If I found a radio show to listen to, I'll probably start listening to it more. I used to listen to Chin Chin Radio when Taeyeon was the host a few years ago. Writing: I have several options, but what I really just plan on doing is to simple visit Lang 8 and Shared Talk more. If I visit more, there's more of a chance that I will write. Warp and I share a blog to write in Korean and I plan on using that more this year. I would also like start writing short stories in Korean. I used to write a lot when I was a teenager on text role playing forums and that helped my writing out immensely. I'm sure it will help my Korean. I already have an idea what I want to write about. Speaking: By far my weakest skill simply because I don't do it. There aren't any Koreans around here and I don't live with my mother. I also do not wish to use Skype to chat with people on webcams. I really only use Skype to chat with my authors from Anti Kpop-Fangirl, but that's all text. What I think I'll end up doing is to simply start self talking more. I'll have to start with just a few simple sentences at a time. I'll just have to do it a lot throughout the day. In order to make it fun and to not bore me, I could envision drama scenarios and say out all of the dialogue to myself. I can get back to doing some rapping, which helped out my pronunciation and talking speed a loooot. I enjoy it to since it's my favorite Korean music genre. My plan with that is to practice rap lyrics from songs and to make my own lines up. Vocab: If there's anything that 2012 taught me is that no matter what "efficient method" I try to use for vocabulary acquisition, it isn't efficient. Just look up the words in the dictionary and move on seeing as there are a shitload more words out there. In the long run, it's an effective method for me. I have detailed how I learned vocabulary quite a lot in the past month, but I have also tried something new that works for me. My main source of vocabulary was coming through novels where I would do half-assed intensive reading (choosing a few words per page to look up.) I will continue to do that through 2013. I'm assuming by the end of 2013, I'll have done that so much that I'll have to transition to intensive reading to pick up the few remaining words I don't know. I also started reading online a lot more. What I simply do is to speed read the article to get a gist of it and choose one paragraph to mine new words from. This helps me because I'll still learn some new words in every article I read, but I won't bog myself down trying to learn every single new word. I'll end up doing a lot of extensive reading through these two methods, so I probably will pick up a lot of new words from context in 2013. Grammar: I think I'll keep what I keep on doing with grammar. I'll keep reading example sentences in order to get used to it, and then with grammar points where I have seen them plenty of times but can't use them yet, I'll try some self talk, making up sentences using those new grammar structures. Kanji/Hanja: I need to review kanji anyway for the Japanese that I do on the side, but I'm reaching the stage where knowing hanja would be really beneficial. There are times when the dictionary just isn't enough help to learn a word, and it will help me learn Sino-Korean words a lot faster. My first goal is to simply learn the meanings of characters, and then learn the hanja that differ from their Japanese counterparts. Naver and Daum have good hanja dictionaries, so when I go to learn the readings, I can simply pick up a lot of vocabulary in order to learn the reading instead of trying to remember the reading for each individual character. I will not learn how to write them. I'll never to need to write hanja in my life, though I have no doubt I will end up learning how to write a lot of them just through exposure and writing practice. I will not SRS the kanji/hanja since that didn't work for me in 2010. If I forget a character, I forget it. I'll just go back and learn it over again, as it will be easier the next time. In essence, I just want to replace what I do in English with stuff to do in Korean when I have the opportunity to do so. I have read a lot of self improvement sites over the past month, and while it's really similar to the input/output debate in language learning, there are common themes, but with a different way to tackle things. I can't schedule and force myself to do things. I've been trying that for years and it hasn't worked. However, changing the environment, thought patterns, habits, etc. is doable. If I keep changing my environment, thought patterns, habits to benefit my Korean, I'll do it. For improvement, I really agree with Khatzumoto's article on comfort zone, growth zone, panic zone since I have tried some of the advice suggested by Cal Newport and Scott Young on concentration, focus, getting stuff done, etc. I ended up giving up after two weeks trying their methods, though I did learn a lot from them and will still use the advice that's useful for me. I can't force myself to do something I don't like in order to get good at it in the way they preach. That's why I agree with Khatz's advice, because it has worked for me in the past. I can think of several examples where that has worked for me. If something interests me, I'll naturally find ways to improve. That's why for speaking and writing, two areas that are my weakest, I have to find fun ways to improve, and the fun things that I want to do will force me to improve because I don't want to suck at them forever. Anyway, good luck to everyone from the Asian Team and everyone from Team Sakura, and to everyone else. Find out what works for you and simply spend more time doing it. 2012 was an experimental year for me, and I think 2013 will be a good year for me. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5537 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 652 of 844 01 January 2013 at 12:49am | IP Logged | ||
It's about time. The last post from you there was in late September. :-P Granted, I haven't posted much there either lately, but at least my last post was a full month later than that. ㅋㅋㅋ FYI: Reading your log here as you felt out new methods for learning (especially with vocabulary) has been very useful when trying to figure out the best methods for myself. Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4870 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 653 of 844 01 January 2013 at 12:58am | IP Logged | ||
Congrats on your progress! Reading your year-end review gave me a couple of good ideas. I generally find your posts about study strategies very useful
I'm listening to several Korean podcasts these days (reviewed them on my log). I find it very useful for getting more used to real conversational Korean as opposed to drama Korean. 장기하의 대단한 라디오 has been the most fun so far. There are lots of radio shows and other podcasts available on itunes and other sites, I'm sure you'll find something you like if you experiment for a while. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 654 of 844 01 January 2013 at 3:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Well Warp, I just made a blog post. I plan on making simple posts while trying to use brand new grammar structures/expressions on Lang 8 so that they can get corrected. I'm not going to guarantee anything, but I'll try making a couple original posts per week about a topic that's going on and the replies should take care of themselves.
Thanks for the recommendations druckfehler. I found them on podbbang.com, which is perfect for me. I don't have an mp3 player since they love to disfunction, so I stopped buying them. I almost gave up on these radio shows when you mentioned iTunes because I find iTunes to be a terrible program. I plan on putting these in the background while I'm on the computer, listening here and there throughout the broadcasts. There's no way I could just sit for two hours and simply listen to these programs with 100% of my focus. I figure 10-20% of attentive listening over a lot of hours per day is better than 100% attentive listening over 0 hours per day. I'm glad that this advice is helpful for you guys, considering that Korean is the first language I have ever seriously attempted at learning. I know my advice comes off as harsh sometimes, but I do believe that some people try to do something that's far too easy for them for far too long. The thing is that I fell into the same trap when I started out. "Oh, watching drama counts." No, reading subtitles while watching a TV doesn't count. You're just reading subtitles in a language you're already fluent in. The main reason I stopped believing in SRS programs is that the actual language is a natural SRS. Important grammar and words show up over and over and over. The SRS lures people into believing that they can contain everything like a computer. Well, we're not androids. It's okay to forget since it's easier to relearn something the next time. There's too many unknown words/phrases/structures out there to be so focused on trying to perfect a small subset of facts. Back in 2010 when I had about 5000 sentences in Anki, I thought I was the shit, thinking I was halfway there. The 10,000 sentences method doesn't mean fluency. It's just 10,000 sentences you would like to try to remember. Going by the sentences method, you would probably need tens of thousands of sentences. I honestly think the SRS should be abandoned once you get to the lower intermediate level. SRS still relies on rote learning, but it just has a scheduling program to try to make it efficient. There are better ways to learn that don't involve rote memorization. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 5132 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 655 of 844 01 January 2013 at 8:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Your observations on language learning are interesting, and some clearly resonate with me. Good luck with TAC
2013! I'm looking forward to following your progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 656 of 844 02 January 2013 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks Bakunin. I look forward to seeing your progress too!
As I had promised to Warp, I had started writing more on our private blog. I honestly think that if we just simple write more, writing will be easier. I want to treat that blog as a place where I have fun. When we created it last year, I had treated it as a place to learn...which is why I had abandoned it. I tried to be perfect with everything I wrote and that destroyed my motivation to write. For now my sentences seem basic, but as I work on that through special focus elsewhere, I won't worry about mistakes or anything on our blog. My focus is just to write. I visit the blog everyday now to increase the chances that I write something, even if it's only a couple of sentences. Yesterday was the start of the new year and well, I was busy. If you guys didn't know, I run Anti Kpop-Fangirl and SNSD made their comeback yesterday. It was such a bad song and MV that I spent quite a bit of time taking a dump on SNSD. Plenty of other people hated the song and MV too. My SNSD review is already one of the most popular posts on the blog. That meant that I spent a good part of the day having my ears raped by that song. However, I did end up writing an article on Lang 8 yesterday. My article about IRIS 2 is here. I honestly thought it was written well and I was trying out some grammar structures that I'm weak with, but almost every sentence was corrected. However, I didn't get down about it. Reading the improved sentences, I can infer that what I write does make sense, but it could be worded better. Only a few sentences were actually changed because of incorrect grammar, and those sentences might not have been incorrect, just oddly worded. I'm actually thankful for making that post now. I know what I have to focus on in the beginning of the year, and I had already made plans to spend more time on output. the biggest thing holding me back is grammar. I could make a case in saying that vocab is what is holding me back the most, but vocab is easily acquired and I probably passively know 10,000 or more words. Grammar is essential at my stage where I need to refine how I write/talk. In order to say/write things more naturally, I need to be able to learn more grammar. Thus I'll be spending more time doing the scriptorium method as described by Professor Arguelles. I had used this method back in early 2010 in order to learn beginner's grammar. I find it enjoyable and a great way of learning and refining grammar. It really does force you to focus. I had to stopped using it because I had tried forcing and scheduling myself to do the exercise. I have learned from that mistake of forcing myself to do something causes me to not do it. Probably within a few months my grammar knowledge should be much better. Now simply copying and writing won't solve all of my problems and I have already layed out on how I want to incorporate more speaking and writing into my daily habits. I learn the structures through scriptorium, use the structures in self talk throughout the day, and try to incorporate these structures into my writing. And lastly, more reading and listening will help with grammar, and I'm good on those ends, so I'll just keep doing the same ol' same ol' with those two areas. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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