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Evita’s Mix of Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6340 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 209 of 236 23 March 2015 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I started the second Russian book on Saturday. It has only 9 chapters but each of them contains a text and several dialogues, many grammar points and even more exercises. I think I should aim to work through a chapter in 2-3 weeks. It would allow me to finish the book by September but would leave me enough time to also keep working on KGIU Intermediate.
I also installed some new apps on my phone - TuneIn Radio, Player FM, World Newspapers. I am not ready to read newspapers in Korean but I might have a look at them now and then anyway. A while ago I also got the Naver Webtoon app thinking it might be easier to read than newspapers but I still haven't started reading anything. There are so many webtoons there that I just don't know where to start. Or maybe it just seems too difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6340 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 210 of 236 07 April 2015 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's been a while since my last post. I don't know why, I just didn't feel like posting. I'm doing the same things as always but I also did something else - I tried the new TOPIK I (beginner) test. I didn't have any doubts that I would pass it, I just wanted to see what the test was like. It has two sections - listening (30 questions) and reading (40 questions). I got 2 questions wrong in listening and 1 in reading so pretty much what I expected. I realized one thing though - I really need to improve my reading speed. In the listening section, for example, I mostly had no trouble understanding what they were saying, but then I had to read the four answers and pick the correct one and that was more difficult. I even paused a few times (yeah, I cheated a bit). I didn't time myself for the reading section either. If I had done that, I probably would have missed a few more questions.
Anyway, it's clear I should read more. Not to practice vocabulary and grammar but simply recognizing letters and syllables more quickly. Right now it takes me maybe one second to read and process a Korean word, and that's way too much. I think I will do some more of these tests and I will also read through the SNU textbook 1. It will be easy texts and that's what I want for this purpose. I also managed to get my hands on all 20 scripts for Healer. I'm super happy about that. The script author 송지나 uploaded them herself on her site. Of course, in typical Korean fashion, the files are not available unless you register. And even after I did that, I couldn't access the files. I had to post a self-introduction and then someone approved me manually. Then I got the files but they were all in HWP format. Grr. Luckily I found this site where several options are explained, and I used the MS converter to convert them all to DOCX files. Phew. Now if only I didn't stop here and actually read a couple of those scripts, that would be great. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6340 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 211 of 236 20 April 2015 at 11:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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I haven't been listening to that many podcasts recently, and I've slowed down with the hanja deck. I've spent a lot of my free time at work during the last few months teaching my Italian colleague Latvian instead of studying Korean. I do like teaching more than learning, that's why I put so much effort into creating good Anki decks.
I'm at 4400 words in my Korean vocabulary deck and I learn new words every day so it's all good. This week, though, I will try to make German a priority. I need to finish translating my word list into Latvian and I also want to try reading another book. I never finished Der kleine Prinz but now I started Der Vorleser, the same book that g-bod was reading. I've no idea what it's about so we'll see how it goes. The first few pages didn't seem too difficult. By the way, I recently noticed that a good number of ratings/reviews disappeared from my shared Anki decks so I asked Damian about it. He said that many inactive accounts were deleted and the reviews were deleted with them. It means that if you rate a deck, your rating is visible only while your account is active. Inactive accounts and their reviews are automatically deleted. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6340 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 212 of 236 27 April 2015 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I did some of my German stuff but not as much as I would have liked. I read a few chapters of that book (they're not long) but then I got frustrated because I couldn't read as quickly and effortlessly as I wanted. I'm sure I just need to keep going though and it will get easier.
As for Korean, I got to thinking that if I ever wanted to pass the TOPIK exam I would need to know how to write in Korean on a paper, not on a computer. I never learned how to do that since I haven't attended a Korean class. Well, fortunately I found this post by Korean Vitamin and used the idea to create my own approach. I installed the font on my computer and then copied a few paragraphs of an Iyagi lesson into Word, applied the font to them, made them light grey and then printed the page out. Then I could practice writing this text. I've been doing about one line per day and it's going well. I think I have most of it already figured out - how Koreans connect their letters and what should not be connected. Since I wanted to spend more time on reading, I decided to analyze Iyagi #52 about mountain hiking (등산). I listened to it and I could understand most of what they were saying, it's not a difficult subject. Then I started to read through it. I'm about halfway through now and so far I have seen only two words that were completely new to me - 산꼭대기 (mountaintop) and 전환 (change). Korean seems to have a lot of verbs and nouns for changes. Anyway, I haven't checked the English translation yet, I'll do it when I'm completely done. There were a couple of sentences whose meaning I couldn't quite get even though I knew all the words but that's expected, I suppose. Oh, and here's something funny I heard on Yoo Inna's show. They were talking about small (preschool) children learning English and apparently these children tried to add "yo" (요) to their English sentences because they wanted to be respectful. Haha. I had never thought of that before but it does sound believable. Edited by Evita on 27 April 2015 at 4:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6340 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 213 of 236 05 May 2015 at 11:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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We had a long weekend (May 1st and 4th are holidays here) and I fell behind on my Anki reviews again. I just couldn't motivate myself to do them. I think it's mostly because it requires a lot of effort and thinking. My intervals are larger than they should be because I try to keep the review count lower and the result is that I've forgotten more than half of the words I review. Sometimes I press Again on them, sometimes I don't. I don't know how people can learn 10 or 20 new words a day, I can't learn even 5 a day for any length of time.
I realize that the key to solidifying the words I have sort of learned via Anki is to get exposure to them elsewhere so I will be focusing on that for the next few months. I will not be reading books or articles on the internet because they would give me too many new words, I'll stick to Iyagi's and drama scripts. Reading Warp3's log reminded me that I had also started and abandoned the "Let's Speak Korean" lessons. I decided to come back to them and watched lessons 32-47 last week. It's a great thing to watch when I feel like I should do some Korean but am feeling too lazy to hit a textbook. I like their bits about Korean culture and lifestyle. Another video series I've been watching is Quick Korean. I've mentioned it before. I'm watching the first level so the grammar is very easy but the explanations are all in Korean so it's more like an intensive listening practice. I have the English subtitles on but mostly I don't need them. As for German, I didn't read more of the book but I did work on the translations. I'm up to letter 'O' now. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 5893 days ago 707 posts - 1219 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 214 of 236 05 May 2015 at 11:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Evita,
I agree that adding tons of words to Anki in a short space of time, leads to retention problems later on. I have 5400 words / phrases, but recently I'm getting just 75% correct. Adding new cards, as tempting as it is (I love adding), just makes me forget more. I have stopped adding any new cards until my deck matures; it's currently 82% mature, I'd like to consolidate to 90% maturity. There's too much slack in the system, which can be exhausting and demotivating to put right. I also agree about exposure apart from Anki, I'm reading more. A lot more. Ideally, I'd like to read 4000 pages (1 million words) this year, which isn't that much compared to many people, but it's a start. Thanks for sharing, keep it rolling... Edited by Mooby on 05 May 2015 at 12:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Woodsei Bilingual Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Woodsei Joined 4585 days ago 614 posts - 782 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Egyptian)* Studies: Russian, Japanese, Hungarian | Message 215 of 236 06 May 2015 at 5:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Evita,
For some reason I feel Anki 1 had a better scheduling system than the newer versions. It didn't overwhelm me with reviews as it does now, and somehow the spacing felt right. I know I could tweak the settings, but... Anyway, like Mooby said, even out the reviews first before you go back to adding cards, and just read more to consolidate all those words you're learning in Anki. Keep it up! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6340 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 216 of 236 06 May 2015 at 11:48am | IP Logged | |||||
Adding tons of words in a short space of time is not my problem. I have occasionally done that but even then I always keep the daily new card limit around 6 or so. My deck is almost 3 years old and the number of Young+Learn cards is only 193. My problem is that it's Korean, it's a different alphabet and the words don't want to stick. But I will conquer them anyway. I have already increased the Starting ease from 180% to 250% so I know my brain has somewhat adapted to Korean. It's just a long process.
I started my deck in Anki 1 and then converted to Anki 2. There were some things missing in Anki 2, I remember complaining in my previous log about the handling of sibling cards, but in the end I stopped reviewing in the English - Korean direction so siblings were no longer an issue. What I liked most about Anki 2 was the introduction of learning steps. I have four steps defined for new cards and it's ideal since I usually don't learn a word before putting it into Anki. One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post is that I added a new field for hanja in my vocabulary deck. Since I've already learned 200 Chinese characters and plan to learn more, I thought it would be beneficial to see them while reviewing words as well. It will require a lot of work to update the existing cards but I think it will be worth it. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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