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Immersion doesn’t seem to work. Why? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| karabatov Diglot Newbie Russian Federation semanticvictory.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5073 days ago 15 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Japanese, French | Message 17 of 36 19 January 2011 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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korman,
I think you have involuntarily become a counter-example to Stephen Krashen's theory of comprehensible input, which states that in order to progress in a language you should listen, read and watch the material, 80% of which you understand. It clearly wasn't the case with Korean music, dramas and books. You must have been exposed to thousands of words, little to none of them stuck in your brain. On the other hand, so much Korean couldn't help imprinting something in your consciousness. I believe when you grab yourself and start on more structured material, all the Korean you've sieved through yourself will pop up, and you'll make tremendous progress, thus reclaiming those six months of “lost” time. I strongly recommend starting from scratch, this time making baby steps. Commence with learning by heart four to five hundred most frequent words. Having them in your mental pocket, you can grasp 60 to 80 per cent of any text you come across. It will make further study that much easier. Google keyword for the list of these words in English is “minilex”. Post those words all over your apartment, the hardest in places you visit most frequently, like beside the TV or a computer: you'll read them over and over, and they'll stick to your memory like glue. After that, go searching for the simplest native Korean texts you can grab. Those most frequent words will stand out in the text immediately, and your task would be to extract the words you don't understand yet and study them as well. This way you'll accumulate a rapidly growing vocabulary, which is the most important in reaching fluency. Don't bother with grammar at the start, it hinders progress. Instead, try to grasp basic patterns from the texts you read and subtitled video you watch. Then, and only then you can return to watching unsubtitled Korean dramas and listening to music, with one minor difference: you'll know what it's all about :) Hope I helped out a bit! Oh, and don't take my words for grammar as granted, I don't know a bit of Korean, it may well be worth studying from the very start. Edited by karabatov on 19 January 2011 at 6:10pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5654 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 18 of 36 20 January 2011 at 1:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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400-500 words and 60-80% comprehension? lol
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| JaKorChi Newbie Australia Joined 5064 days ago 18 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, Afrikaans, Mandarin | Message 19 of 36 20 January 2011 at 4:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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You should aim to have a basic to intermediate comprehension of alphabet/grammar/spelling/vocabulary before you even think about immersion in resources such as books/movies/music/articles. By all means, watch, listen and read them for fun, but don't expect at the end of the day, to be any better at Korean without having knowledge of the language and its structures first.
Korean is supposedly a hard language (I personally don't see it, but it differs according to willpower and ability), and you need to have an understanding before you jump into something, expecting results. Learn the Korean alphabet: http://thinkzone.wlonk.com/Language/Korean.htm Learn some Korean grammar: http://korean.sogang.ac.kr/ Think about getting some lessons, too. Good luck. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| karabatov Diglot Newbie Russian Federation semanticvictory.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5073 days ago 15 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Japanese, French | Message 20 of 36 20 January 2011 at 5:54am | IP Logged | |||||
texts it's quite true, at least for European languages. I said I don't know anything about Korean, so maybe you have to know more, but to say the truth I doubt it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Segata Triglot Groupie Germany Joined 5176 days ago 64 posts - 125 votes Speaks: German*, Japanese, English Studies: Korean, Esperanto | Message 21 of 36 20 January 2011 at 7:17am | IP Logged | |||||
In my experience, Korean (as well as for example Japanese) don't even compare to most European languages when it comes to the amount of vocabulary. If I remember correctly, you need about 9000 to 10000 words for a mere 90% comprehension of Japanese texts. I consider Korean to be in the same ballpark. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 22 of 36 20 January 2011 at 10:53am | IP Logged | |||||
You're contradicting yourself: those patterns are grammar. You cannot learn a language without learning grammar, and it is always beneficial to learn grammar early, as while 20% of the words in the dictionary may account for 80% of the words used in any given film, you will never find a film which you can understand with only 20% of the grammar. At a rough guess, you'll need about 80% of the grammar to understand any given film. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5654 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 23 of 36 20 January 2011 at 11:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, Segata is right. I probably know roughly 4000 words and only have 50% comprehension in books and dramas/variety shows/movies in Korean. If I sounded like a dick with the "lol," that wasn't intended, but if it only took 500 words to get high comprehension, there's no way Korean would be considered a Category IV language for native English speakers.
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| karabatov Diglot Newbie Russian Federation semanticvictory.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5073 days ago 15 posts - 37 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Japanese, French | Message 24 of 36 20 January 2011 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh, okay, I was wrong then. Thanks for enlightening me :)
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