Snow's Korean and Spanish log

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Snow
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Re: Snow's Korean log

Postby Snow » Sat Apr 15, 2017 10:11 am

AndyMeg wrote:Maybe you could try what I'm doing: [...]


Thanks, AndyMeg! I'm not sure I could do what you're doing, though, as I am a bit lazy lol and I dislike rewatching stuff. But I might have to use an adapted version if I want to improve my listening comprehension.

This week, I have tested out different programs that often get mentioned in the language learning world:

1. Learning With Texts
After a long battle with EasyPHP (I downloaded the wrong version :lol: ), I finally got LWT to work. I can see that this will be useful for reading and analyzing long texts. I'm also going to use this for lyrics! Still need to get used to tagging vocab, though. I also don't like how it can't separate particles from words. So if you have 사람이 in the text and also 사람한테 and 사람을, you will have to add 3 entries. Meh.

2. Anki
I finally understood how to set-up Anki, like how to make cloze delete cards, how to format cards, etc. But I don't know if I want to read the same things over and over again. I might use it for internalizing vocabulary with cloze delete cards.

3. Subs2srs
Omg, I can't believe I finally figured out how to set-up and use subs2srs. I've seen it in numerous logs before but I couldn't understand how to make it work. I'm quite a 바보 when it comes to technical computer stuff but thanks to my hyperfocus (it's quite handy sometimes!), I didn't stop until I had a nice Anki deck. You won't believe how many times I failed and how many test decks that got discarded during my set-up phase. :D Thankfully, after some hours of tinkering, my shiny subs2srs deck was finally made!

However, I'm not quite sure if I'm gonna end up using it. Lol. You see, I'm sure Anki is an effective tool for learning, especially language learning. But I'm not really into using it. Or maybe I haven't found a good use for it yet. Just like before when I couldn't figure out how to install LWT and subs2srs.

Verdict: Out of the 3 programs, I see myself using LWT more in the future. The other two, not right now.

Listening Comprehension
AndyMeg has suggested a good routine but I think at this moment, a whole drama episode might be too much for me. Maybe I'll start with videos from Vlive, short clips from Youtube, etc. then eventually get into watching variety shows and dramas (without subs). There are so many good things to watch and listen to, I can't choose where to start!

Textbook Study
I didn't just squander all my time into installing the three programs above, I still do my textbook studying! I divided the book into manageable parts that I have to do daily or else my sched will get messed up! I get excited and happy when I encounter a grammar point or vocab that I learned previously in the shows that I watch. Some like to pick up grammar and vocab from dramas, I prefer to learn them before so that when I consume native media, I can recognize them easily.

Slow progress
My progress is really slow and it's making me crazy and a bit disheartened. But I guess I'm still doing fine despite the slowness, because about a year ago, I couldn't read 노래방 lyrics at all, and now I can follow as long as the song's a ballad. :lol: Now, if only my comprehension is as fast as how I can read the lyrics, then I'd be very happy. I guess it's time to do some repetitive listening to train my ears and brain. Wish me luck!!!
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Oscard587
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Re: Snow's Korean log

Postby Oscard587 » Sat Apr 15, 2017 12:21 pm

I'm a Korean but sometimes I found Korean is difficult to use correctly for all situation, even for me. Good luck!
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Evita
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Re: Snow's Korean log

Postby Evita » Sat Apr 15, 2017 12:54 pm

Snow wrote:I'm also torn about using Anki for vocabulary. Evita has a very nice premade deck for vocab (and sentences) which I already tried but I found that I learn best when I encounter vocab on my own. Of course, premade decks have their advantages. Check out Japanese learning forums and they're all about core decks. I guess it works, but not for me?

I agree that words that you encounter while consuming Korean media are much easier to remember than words from a list or from a premade deck. However, if you want to use Anki for the words that you encounter, you can still use premade vocabulary decks. Just suspend all the cards and un-suspend those that you want to learn. If the word is not in the deck then you can add it.

Good luck regarding your TOPIK plans! Despite having studied Korean for such a long time, I'm not confident I would pass level 4 - mostly because I practically never practice output.
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Snow
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Re: Snow's Korean log

Postby Snow » Sat Apr 15, 2017 4:42 pm

Evita wrote: ... Just suspend all the cards and un-suspend those that you want to learn. If the word is not in the deck then you can add it.

Hmm I might try this, thanks!

Evita wrote:Good luck regarding your TOPIK plans! Despite having studied Korean for such a long time, I'm not confident I would pass level 4 - mostly because I practically never practice output.

Thank you! Hehe, level 4 is just wishful thinking for me. Obtaining level 3 is more likely.

Oscard587 wrote:I'm a Korean but sometimes I found Korean is difficult to use correctly for all situation, even for me. Good luck!

If a native like you finds it difficult, what does that mean for us learners? :lol: But, thank you! I hope to learn even just a fraction of what natives know. ^^
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Snow
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Re: Snow's Korean log

Postby Snow » Fri Apr 28, 2017 2:02 pm

After much internal debate, I have decided to give Spanish another chance. Yes, it might be the sunk-cost fallacy at work but I owe Spanish a lot, I feel like it would be traitorous :?: of me to just let it die a painful death. So I brought out my Spanish resources from the storage and I hope to review those one by one.

My goals for Spanish are:
1. Grammar review
Resources: Barron's Mastering Spanish Grammar, Gramática de uso del español C, Practice Makes Perfect Advanced Spanish Grammar
English resources for when my brain can't Spanish. I won't use them according to the books' order, but rather by the topics that I want to review. For example, last night I reviewed reported speech using the PMP book. I have forgotten the tense concordance when turning direct speech into indirect. I also plan to refer to the two other books about the same topic. Then I will move on to the next topic, which would probably be pronouns.
I'm not sure if this is an efficient way to review as opposed to going through the books from page 1. But it keeps me studying, I will not be choosy!

2. Improve listening comprehension
My weakest skill ever.
A - L/R some easy audio like news. I know that it's better to use stuff that I'm interested in but sadly for Spanish, I can't find anything interesting yet, so I will start with listening to the news. 1 L/R + 1 transcription per day?
B - Watching drama/movie. I watched Gran Hotel last year, it was fine at the beginning but I got tired of the story and just Googled the ending. Need to work on my patience lol. I'll browse some Spanish logs here for drama recs. I won't do anything special (no fancy subs2srs etc), just plain dive into unsubtitled episodes. 1 episode per day.

So far, those are the only activities that I'm willing to do for Spanish. I'd like to introduce some reading and vocabulary acquisition in the future but for now, I won't overwhelm myself. I'm also thinking of taking the C1 exam next year. I don't know how I'll make it with my laziness, though. :lol: The IC here offers C1 exam in May and November. Hmm if I decide to do it, I might register for the November exam. One disadvantage of passing the B2 exam is that the next exam will be harder!

Okay, enough about Spanish. Let's move on to Korean.
I'm currently on break with Korean. I'm just answering the workbook exercises of book 3a, which I finished this week, btw. After I'm done with the workbook, I will start 3b, which will be my last textbook ever!!! (except for grammar books) I'm watching Tunnel and Mystery Queen this season, and also 3 meals a day Gochang Village. With subs, though, so only 25% counts as learning.

Korean, done! Next, wishlist languages. :lol:
My wishlist varies from time to time. Sometimes I will swear off other languages "forever", sometimes I want to learn this and that. Right now, my wishlist is FULL. In no particular order, the languages that I want to learn: Japanese, Mandarin, French, Italian. Hmm, maybe they are listed in order of preference, after all. The first two, Japanese and Mandarin, there are some stuff that interest me like mangas, light novels, etc. The last two, French and Italian, no hooks to keep me motivated but I've had contact with both languages before and I found them pretty interesting. Kinda like learning for the sake of learning. I think one major factor of choosing my target language(s) (aside from personal hooks like books, music, movies, etc) is my ability to visit the countries where my TL is spoken. Being in Asia, I can easily travel to nearby Asian countries, with or without visa. But I can't visit European countries because getting a Schengen visa is hard. Why study a European language if I can't even use or experience it in person? Spanish is an exception, though.

Anyway, out of the four choices, only Japanese would be somehow useful to me. I'm trying to hold off starting it until 2019. But who knows? With my fickleness, I'll probably start sooner than planned. But I will definitely not start it this year because I'm still trying to get some footing with Spanish, and I'm also taking the TOPIK in October.
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Snow
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Re: Snow's Korean log

Postby Snow » Tue May 02, 2017 6:17 am

Over the weekend, I tried very hard to restart my Mandarin studies, so I researched a lot and also pulled out my learning materials out of storage. But then I got overwhelmed by Chinese characters, which led to the quick death of the Mandarin revival. I also promised myself that I will focus on Korean and Spanish for the time being.

Last night, I was reading old threads at HTLAL and I came across Prof. Arguelles' post about the languages a well-educated individual "should" know. Anyway, from there, I noticed Russian. I've been following blaurebell's log recently so I've been reading a lot about her amazing progress with Russian. I started to entertain the thought of learning Russian, as well. But it's not only through Prof. Arguelles and blaurebell that rekindled my interest in Russia and its language.

When I was young, my parents bought me an atlas so I was able to read about different countries. I liked reading about Russia because it was listed as the largest country in the world. To young me, biggest country=best :lol: so I dreamt of living in Russia when I grew up. What a naive kid I was. In my teens, I watched Anastasia (Disney version) and loved it! Another reason to like Russia more. Then, I learned from my mother that she got my name from a novel which earlier plot was set in Russia! Ding ding ding, reason #3! The fourth reason is the Trans-Siberian/Mongolian Railway. I once chanced upon a blog of someone who rode the train from Beijing to Moscow. All about the country, but not the language. When I started to look into Russian, I was discouraged by the Cyrillic script. Why is it so weird?! And just like that, my affair with Russia(n) ended.

This morning, I went on Youtube to search some Russian series and I came across the channel StarMediaEN. They have historical dramas! Kinda like Gran Hotel. I quite like historical series so now I want to learn Russian so I can watch these pretty-looking series!!! :lol:

So I went from killing Mandarin to obsessing over Russian in a span of 5 days. Great. Korean and Spanish both say hello. Anyway, I have resolved to stick with Korean and Spanish until the end of 2018. So I will not introduce a new language to my routine until January 2019. But I shall keep Russian in my wishlist, and watch those historical series (they have English subs, btw) for now. Also, live through others' logs vicariously.

My current wishlist:
Japanese - High chance, high affinity
Russian - High chance, medium affinity
French - Medium chance, low affinity
Italian - Medium chance, low affinity
Mandarin - Low chance, medium affinity
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blaurebell
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Re: Snow's Korean log

Postby blaurebell » Tue May 02, 2017 12:55 pm

Oh oh, I gave you Russian wanderlust, sorry! :oops: Russian is a beautiful language with lots of great content that hasn't been translated at all. It seems that there are still too few people in the West who know Russian and it's also a very difficult language to translate because it's so different. Most translations from Russian I have read were just atrociously bad, especially those into English. So Russian is definitely worthwhile if you find the culture interesting! By the way, I totally know that game with the Atlas - I was immensely fascinated by Iceland because it had its own little square on the Europe map of my Atlas :D Icelandic has been one of my wanderlust languages for more than 15 years, but well, it's not very useful since they speak excellent English there! Maybe one day! By the way Russians usually don't speak English. I haven't communicated with my extended family for more than 25 years because we simply can't communicate at all! And since you can visit the Asian part of Russia easily, that's a pretty good incentive too!

As for your other wanderlust choices: I personally learned Italian as my second L2 and regretted it. If you're not planning on visiting the country it's a pretty useless language. There is some good literature, but personally I never got that interested. The TV shows are generally bad and the only thing remotely watchable are crime shows which get monotonous fast. Basically I have abandoned Italian because I simply couldn't find enough fun activities for it outside the country. I might reactivate it one day when I have a concrete trip in mind, but it was basically my silliest language choice so far.

French on the other hand was a fantastic language to learn even though visiting France was never a priority for me - I always lived in countries that share a border with France and never visited! I have been living 20min from the French border for the last 3 years and still haven't visited! The reason for this is that the French are very hostile towards people who speak French badly. They almost take it as a personal insult. So, until I hit C1 active skills visiting France would probably be a very unpleasant experience - it certainly was for friends and relatives who didn't speak well and they usually returned with a certain hatred towards the French. This doesn't diminish my enjoyment of French though because there is so much great content - great literature and philosophy, high quality series and movies, superb documentaries both on TV (Arte) and radio (France culture), a huge market for comics, lots of video games are dubbed in French and generally French dubs of American series are of much higher quality than Spanish dubs. And that's just content from France, there is also Canadian, Swiss and Belgian content! Since I've learned French I've been like a kid in a candy store! So much stuff to explore! And the best thing: I got French basically for free. Between English and Spanish 70% of the vocabulary are cognates and the grammar isn't very different from Spanish grammar at all! That's the reason why I accidentally learned French in 3 months although I wasn't even planning to make such fast progress.

If you really can't resist the wanderlust, then French is definitely the way to go, since it's really low effort from the languages you know already. Russian grammar is much harder, it has hardly any cognates and the double amount of verbs due to verb aspect, so in general it's a lot harder to learn and a big project. And Japanese has the downside of the complicated writing system which turns it into quite a mountain to climb. Cyrillic is a joke in comparison! I will tackle Japanese only after I have Russian at a good level. Basically, I'm going from the easier languages to the harder languages in the hope to pick up good methods to make success in those huge projects more likely! So far it's working well!

By the way, I think you could take wanderlust as an incentive for your Korean studies. Once you hit B2 reading and listening comprehension it's generally a good time to start a new language. Maybe the thought of getting to play with one of your wanderlust languages is a good motivator to try and progress faster with your receptive skills?
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Snow
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Re: Snow's Korean log

Postby Snow » Wed May 03, 2017 3:20 am

blaurebell wrote:If you really can't resist the wanderlust, then French is definitely the way to go, since it's really low effort from the languages you know already. Russian grammar is much harder, it has hardly any cognates and the double amount of verbs due to verb aspect, so in general it's a lot harder to learn and a big project. And Japanese has the downside of the complicated writing system which turns it into quite a mountain to climb. Cyrillic is a joke in comparison! I will tackle Japanese only after I have Russian at a good level. Basically, I'm going from the easier languages to the harder languages in the hope to pick up good methods to make success in those huge projects more likely! So far it's working well!

Thank you for sharing some perspective. I think it would be a toss-up between Japanese and French in the future, since supposedly Japanese is similar to Korean, and I studied French before (unfortunately, I didn't maintain it so almost everything is lost now). For now, I will survey native content in both languages to see if something will catch my interest.



Anyway, the wanderlust has kept me from focusing on my main languages, so today I'm going to double everything. I started reading El príncipe de la niebla on my Kindle. I haven't read in Spanish for a long time so I've been abusing the dictionary lookup function. I might be better off doing extensive reading, though. We'll see. Maybe when I get into the story more, I will be turning page after page in anticipation of what's going to happen next. :D

I wish I could do the same with Korean but I'm somehow limited to reading passages from my textbooks. Anything longer than that, I get dizzy and all I see are random squares and circles. ㅁㅇㅂㅎㅍㅁㅇㅂㅎㅍㅁㅇㅂㅎㅍ But reading isn't my focus in Korean, anyway. I'd rather build up my listening comprehension and speaking skills. So today, I'll be binge watching 3MAD!
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Snow
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Re: Snow's Korean and Spanish log

Postby Snow » Thu May 04, 2017 12:10 pm

Guys, it finally happened! I fell in love with Spanish again. Hahaha. I know it's a bit fast, just a few days ago I was declaring my love for another language and now I'm saying I love Spanish again. :lol:

Things to improve in Spanish
1. Listening comprehension - I'm still undecided on which materials to use but I'd like to be able to easily comprehend both peninsular and Latin American Spanish. I started El Ministerio del Tiempo last night. I kinda like it so I will keep on watching it for the Spain Spanish. For Latin American Spanish, I'm looking at Radio Ambulante and Democracy Now since the audio is shorter and I can do L-R thanks to the transcript. I also signed up for Lyrics Training. What a funny site. It fires up my competitive side.

2. Latin American grammar - I've always studied peninsular Spanish so I only know vosotros. I need to familiarize myself with how they do it in Latin America. If anyone has good resources on this, please recommend!

3. Reading - I'd love to do intensive reading but my attention span is so short and I easily get tired when I try doing it, so it's mostly extensive reading on my Kindle.

4. Vocabulary - I still haven't sorted this one out even in Korean. I've tried so many times to get into Anki, especially after reading this account of someone who passed Italian C2 exam.

I think it's too early to start even thinking about the C1 exam. I have to get all my skills back up to B2 first. There's no rush and I have the rest of the year to work on Spanish. Overall, I'm pleased that my interest in Spanish is back. However, I'm a bit worried about Korean. I am yet to break into the intermediate level, especially in listening, my top priority. Working on listening in two languages is difficult, at least to me. I tend to mix up some words, sometimes I can only remember the Korean word or vice versa. I think my brain needs an upgrade.

My wishlist has been wiped out lol. I think I need a lifetime to work on Spanish and Korean.
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