Postby outcast » Thu Feb 02, 2017 2:46 pm
A belated thank you to all of you for the kind replies. Even though I did heart you haha, I still feel I should explicitly thank you.
So, I have been pretty quiet of late. At the time of my last entries, I was a in a bit of an enthusiasm climax: I really was so stoked about having reached a level in Chinese were I could operate in a Chinese society without major hassles (outside very technical matters or heavily accented language, and fast speech), I felt I was starting to make progress in Korean, I was going back to German and was glad the core of the language seemingly had held!
Then I got suddenly hit by the opposite feeling: heavy bout of weariness. Weariness about the fact my Chinese still was ways to go to the real ultimate level I want, and that I probably need two more years to reach it (and I still have the WRITING problem). Korean was advancing but then thought I am a lowly A1, and I know how much effort it will take to reach a B1 level where I start to feel "useful" and "somewhat intelligent" in the target language... so much work ahead. Then my German and the fact I need to get it to C1. Plus all the preparations to return home, then getting home and immediately having to deal with stuff PLUS needing to get to work some serious hours in order to fund my upcoming language plans... So I kind off withdrew both in real life and online, and have been solitary for about 3 weeks or so.
The good news is, it didn't really affect my studying. I have not studied Chinese for 3 weeks, this is the first time I have made such a long pause, and I don't mind (more on this in the Chinese log). I spent a week with German heavily each day and was texting my German friend, so a lot of reactivation did take place.
But my focus has really been Korean. I decided I wanted to make a big push in this language, despite my insistence that it is a "side-project". I just figured that I have NOTHING to do in these last few weeks in China, I may as well try to really get this language to finally implant in my head, and really make a dent in the vocab and practice the most useful patterns. I have to return to Chinese soon to prepare for the HSK 6, and back in the USA I will have some opportunities to use German, so I decided to give a good boost to my Korean while I have the time.
So I have been studying quite a bit and obviously have made progress I can taste and feel, as it usually is the case at a low A1 going towards A2. Texting longer sentences in Korean is definitely a little bit easier now. More importantly, something I really like has happened: I am no longer staring at a totally BLANK mind when I want to write a text in Korean, and I do not know what pattern or structure to use at all. At least "something" usable is coming up. It may be wrong in usage but something usually is coming up. So my focus on really learning patterns is starting to pay off. Vocabulary still of course is insufficient to not be a big strain, but that is totally fine.
A small downside of knowing more patterns while still being such a rookie is that I get very easily confused about what to use or what is being said to me. To sort this out will take time and just plenty of reading practice. I am doing some listening and just repeating the recording noting the words and patterns and doing "mental translation", I hear the Korean and think of the English word, in the order it appears in the Korean. I don't usually recommend this long term, but as a short term beginner-intermediate strategy I have found it useful because it helps my brain imprint the word order of the language, and see patterns, and then I can use this knowledge to make my own spoken sentences. The repetition also doesn't hurt to din the stuff in my head.
I tend to want to finish the material that I start with so I have finished Click Korean, and review it every so often, the entire thing. Korean from Zero I am doing a reading on book 3 which I can see why some of you do not recommend too much. The reason I am still reading it is I feel it is good to read the entire program one uses because you can then see grammar what was omitted earlier, which is usually put at the end. I am close to being done with book 3, which I am not going to really try mastering, like I am doing Book1, and to some extent Book 2. Then I will switch to TTMIK and How to Study Korean, both seem to have quite a bit of material.
Finally, since I am going back to the US in a couple of weeks time, I will get the Tuttle Korean series, Beginner, Continuing, and Advanced. I generally like Tuttle books on Asian languages, and I still feel the need to have a "real textbook" for a language on the shelves. I am sure the Beginner series will be a fairly breezy affair, hopefully as has been the case before it introduces the language in a way that makes me discover things or see things in new ways, deepening my language feeling. Continuing Korean I assume will be much more challenging. Advanced Korean will have to wait probably till the summer I would assume.
In short, I am chipping away at the language.
1 x
"I can speak wonderfully and clearly in zero languages, and can also fluently embarrass myself in half a dozen others."
The End of Language learning: