Slow-cooked Korean

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AndyMeg
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby AndyMeg » Wed Mar 22, 2017 11:24 am

leosmith wrote:
AndyMeg wrote:in this global age I think the ceiling is a lot higher that one may think

If you're saying that people learn languages better, more effectively or to a higher level on the average today than in the past, I'd be curious to know what your source is.


I'm saying than even if you are not in the country, now it is easier to find the right materials to learn languages to a good level (or even a very good level, but of course, not perfect) than it was in the past.

For example, before the internet came, for improving listening and speaking you had less options:

- If you were lucky enough, you may have found a native in your city. If not, you may had have to actually travel to the country. But now, even if there's not native in your city, you may find natives in sites like Italki and practice with them via Skype. I know time difference may be a big factor, but I also know it is possible: I've talked over skype with people who are in countries with more that 10-hours of difference. Also, not all natives are in their home country: maybe there are none in your city, but you can find one in another city or even in a country with the same time-zone that yours.

- In the past it may have been more difficult to get native material (TV-shows, movies, novels, etc.). But know it is easier: There are sites like Dramafever, Viki, there are free webtoons, you can listen to songs on youtube, etc.

I'm not saying that language learning became intrisecally easier, but that now there are more possibilities to find the resources we need, even if we don't move to the TL's country.
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AndyMeg
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby AndyMeg » Wed Mar 22, 2017 11:57 am

qeadz, I'm sorry if I don't express myself right. Sometimes I just become too wordy and don't make my point, or I bury it with lots of unnecesary words.

My point from my prevoius post was this:

Changing you mindset is not easy, but it is doable, even if you are not living in Korea.

I know it may be frustrating at times (it continously happens to me with english: at first I studied it because my mom made me take classes outside school, but the language I really wanted to learn was portuguese. At that time I wasn't really interested in the culture or history of english speaking countries, so I never really put any effort to change my mindset and start thinking like a native of english. Because of that, I still make some stupid mistakes today and have some difficulties expressing myself and really communicating what I want to say. Now than I'm older and have more experience I'm trying to fix that, but it is a long and difficult journey because I feel more attraction towards asian languages and cultures). What I want to say here is that I've noticed a huge difference between the naturality when I speak english and when I speak japanese. Even if I have a much higher level of english, my japanese comes more naturally and with less effort, and I think one of the main reasons for that is that I've not only been learning japanese, I've also been really interested in the cultural and historical aspects and that has helped me a lot and it has made it easier to change my usual spanish-speaking mindset. That's why I insist on getting to know more about the culture and history of Korea even if you don't live there. Because it has made a huge difference for me, and I feel it may make a huge difference for you too. Also, that's why I insist so much about interacting with native material and ejoying it, rather than thinking about it just as another study tool.

I may be wrong, but I think that maybe you need a lot more decipherable input and variety in your native resources before you can feel more confortable with the way koreans think and view the world. The journey may be long (I admit that), but it may be more enjoyable if you change your focus from learning the language to truly immersing in the language and culture (for example, finding things that you enjoy so much doing in korean that you don't see it as study time). Also, I think that you may be forcing to output a lot more than what you are actually prepared for right now, that's why I mentioned I just let output to happen naturally without forcing or delaying it. Say, for example, that you follow a korean youtuber, then it would be natural if, for example, you also read the comments about the video and wanted to write your own comment (that's one example of input happening naturally, without being forced). Then you could put that comment on Lang-8 to receive feedback. What I'm saying comes from this thought: language has to be meaningful to you in order for you to change your mindset more easily and with less pain.

I say all of this with the best of intentions. I'm sorry if sometimes I come off as trying to impose my point of view or as not understanding you difficulties.
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qeadz
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Wed Mar 22, 2017 5:42 pm

AndyMeg wrote: *** lots of stuff about availability of resources, interest, and understanding culture ***


When I first read this reply, I thought "oh I think AndyMeg confused me with Leosmith given the discussion that has just occurred here". But now it does seem you were wanting to better phrase your position that was spread out across a couple of posts earlier.

I entirely agree that with the internet we have a tonne of material to help us look into another culture - to read, listen and interact with people whose cultural backgrounds are very different to our own. So in comparison to days of old, we're in a better place now for this kind of thing. However I still feel that reading and limited interaction is a poor substitute for experience.

Since I am not working from any fixed course-work, my input material includes a lot of podcasts, blogs, news, articles and all manner of sources. So I do believe that with sufficient input, I'll fix up a lot of the basic phrasings and begin to construct sentences and thoughts more in line with how a native Korean might - it makes some kind of sense that this will happen eventually.

But I think even if I were advanced in my Korean studies, if I wrote a post like this one in Korean then a native speaker would probably read it and realize that I am probably foreign.

So the 'ceiling' I was talking about - I'm not actually too concerned about where it is. You argue its higher than I might realize, and I'm arguing I think its a fairly low ceiling. Regardless of where it sits, it actually doesn't bother me much. I would like to get all the phrasings correct for the sentences I am writing at the moment - they are all fairly basic sentences (IMHO).

If I can reach a point where I can speak easily and use phrasings that make it easy for a native speaker to listen to me, then I'll be happy with that. I don't care for whether I sound foreign or not - just that communication can happen with ease. We'd both agree, I think, that this is very doable! It's just a question of "when".

I agree partially with most of what you say, but you're a lot more optimistic about the outcomes than I am!

EDIT: Also I have not replied yet about your mentions of reading about Korean culture. I entirely agree that learning about it is a significant step in understanding what people are saying. Their words convey a literal meaning, but there is often the hidden meaning. @Sayonaroo mentions this kind of thing in the blog post he/she wrote.
Last edited by qeadz on Wed Mar 22, 2017 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby leosmith » Wed Mar 22, 2017 5:48 pm

AndyMeg wrote:I'm not saying that language learning became intrisecally easier, but that now there are more possibilities to find the resources we need, even if we don't move to the TL's country.

But this doesn't yield better results, or "set the bar higher", as far as I know. I'd be interested in reading studies that show otherwise though.
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AndyMeg
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby AndyMeg » Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:05 pm

leosmith wrote:
AndyMeg wrote:I'm not saying that language learning became intrisecally easier, but that now there are more possibilities to find the resources we need, even if we don't move to the TL's country.

But this doesn't yield better results, or "set the bar higher", as far as I know. I'd be interested in reading studies that show otherwise though.


I think that the main problem with learning (in general) is that many people don't know how to use the material they have at hand or don't optimize their use. Because of this we see people that live in a foreign country for decades and can't go beyond a basic level of communication in that country's language (because they have built a language bubble and don't go beyond their comfort zone). I've also seen a bad review on a grammar dictionary because the person in question wanted to use it as a textbook and learn everything in it, and he felt angry that it covered so many grammar points that are not very frequent. If, for example, I use a dictionary and it has the most frequent terms, but also many infrequent ones, I wouldn't think the dictionary is bad, I would think the dictionary is really good because I don't try to learn each and every word from a dictionary (that's not its purpose), I use it to look for words when I need to clarify the meaning of something (that's its purpose). The point is that I don't think that having the best materials/resources is a guarantee of success, but I do think it enhances one's opportunities for a better and more complete learning. If people use those opportunities the right way or not, is a completely different thing.
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby leosmith » Thu Mar 23, 2017 1:27 am

AndyMeg wrote:I think that the main problem with learning (in general) is that many people don't know how to use the material they have at hand or don't optimize their use.

I agree it's a problem, although I wouldn't call it the main problem. I would also say it's not qeadz's problem. He's a very sharp guy with very limited time. At least that's my take on it; no offense meant to either one of you.
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby AndyMeg » Thu Mar 23, 2017 1:38 am

leosmith wrote:
AndyMeg wrote:I think that the main problem with learning (in general) is that many people don't know how to use the material they have at hand or don't optimize their use.

I agree it's a problem, although I wouldn't call it the main problem. I would also say it's not qeadz's problem. He's a very sharp guy with very limited time. At least that's my take on it; no offense meant to either one of you.


I never said it was qeadz's problem. I was talking in general.

Experimentation is vital in order to learn how to use the resources you have at hand and optimize them. qeadz is experimenting and looking for his own path, so I think he is on the right track.
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Thu Mar 23, 2017 6:52 pm

AndyMeg is right in that I do need a lot of input - and preferably varied input.

I mentioned before in my log that I feel there is a breadth of material suitable for beginners, but then perhaps a shortage of appropriate material for that 'upper beginner' stage. The way I dealt with that deficiency was to work through TTMIK Iyagi series, even though it was at the time a bit too advanced for me, and now I feel I am crossing that area.

In terms of my reading ability I think I'm breaking into an intermediate stage and now the selection of material I can work through is starting to open up again. I'm reading articles I had tackled last year which now, while still not easy, are at least intelligible. I can follow whats being said even if there are still a fair number of unknown words.

So now I am mostly restricted by the time I spend on reading, not really feeling there is any shortage of material I can tackle.

Of 6 - 7 hours per week, 3 hours-ish is spent listening, an hour or more on writing which leaves usually about 2 - 3 hours of reading. During my reading time I spend a portion of it re-reading older texts. It means I don't cover new material at the same rate as I did last year. Last year I might have spent twice as much time each week reading new material as I do now.

While I could allocate more time to input related activities (especially reading), I don't think it would be beneficial if it means the other activities decrease. I do believe input to be extremely important, but not as much as I did last year.

Some observations which have lead me to this:

* My own self-review at end of last year indicated I was still making very elementary mistakes despite the volume of input (suggesting input was either not correcting this or at least indicating it would take an unreasonable amount of input to do so)
* I observe my wife and her friends as people who live immersed in an English speaking country, are married or dating English speaking people, consume their news in English and have done so for many years (in my wifes case over a decade of full immersion). They still make some very elementary grammatical mistakes which native speakers do not make.

So I draw the conclusion that vocabulary can be learnt by massive input, and clearly it must aid grammar. However pronunciation, accent, prosody of speech, and grammar are only *aided* by massive input. It would seem to me, by the examples I have around me, that correcting the latter must be a conscious effort.

The conscious effort must include practice (output) in which the learner identifies the mistakes either by their own volition or having the mistake identified by someone else. The learner then needs to try again, looking to intentionally correct the mistake - over time making it more and more natural. Of course substantial amounts of input help an attentive learner self-correct if they are looking to do so.

This is my conclusion at this juncture :)

In addition it has become similarly apparent to me that the brain seems capable of having two tracks: one for understanding input and one that is slightly disjoint from that for generating output.

So while substantial listening will help my speaking, I no longer believe the point of view that with sufficient input one can simply be immersed for 2 weeks and 'unlock' the passive vocabulary resulting in free or fluent speech.

I think that I need to 'train' the aforementioned 'output track' of my brain by practiced output.

My current conjecture is that the path to proficiency is paved with: 2/3rds input and 1/3rd output to ensure the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar while also building the ability to use that vocabulary and grammar correctly.
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AndyMeg
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby AndyMeg » Fri Mar 24, 2017 9:06 pm

qeadz wrote:AndyMeg is right in that I do need a lot of input - and preferably varied input.

I mentioned before in my log that I feel there is a breadth of material suitable for beginners, but then perhaps a shortage of appropriate material for that 'upper beginner' stage. The way I dealt with that deficiency was to work through TTMIK Iyagi series, even though it was at the time a bit too advanced for me, and now I feel I am crossing that area.

In terms of my reading ability I think I'm breaking into an intermediate stage and now the selection of material I can work through is starting to open up again. I'm reading articles I had tackled last year which now, while still not easy, are at least intelligible. I can follow whats being said even if there are still a fair number of unknown words.

So now I am mostly restricted by the time I spend on reading, not really feeling there is any shortage of material I can tackle.

Of 6 - 7 hours per week, 3 hours-ish is spent listening, an hour or more on writing which leaves usually about 2 - 3 hours of reading. During my reading time I spend a portion of it re-reading older texts. It means I don't cover new material at the same rate as I did last year. Last year I might have spent twice as much time each week reading new material as I do now.

While I could allocate more time to input related activities (especially reading), I don't think it would be beneficial if it means the other activities decrease. I do believe input to be extremely important, but not as much as I did last year.

Some observations which have lead me to this:

* My own self-review at end of last year indicated I was still making very elementary mistakes despite the volume of input (suggesting input was either not correcting this or at least indicating it would take an unreasonable amount of input to do so)
* I observe my wife and her friends as people who live immersed in an English speaking country, are married or dating English speaking people, consume their news in English and have done so for many years (in my wifes case over a decade of full immersion). They still make some very elementary grammatical mistakes which native speakers do not make.

So I draw the conclusion that vocabulary can be learnt by massive input, and clearly it must aid grammar. However pronunciation, accent, prosody of speech, and grammar are only *aided* by massive input. It would seem to me, by the examples I have around me, that correcting the latter must be a conscious effort.

The conscious effort must include practice (output) in which the learner identifies the mistakes either by their own volition or having the mistake identified by someone else. The learner then needs to try again, looking to intentionally correct the mistake - over time making it more and more natural. Of course substantial amounts of input help an attentive learner self-correct if they are looking to do so.

This is my conclusion at this juncture :)

In addition it has become similarly apparent to me that the brain seems capable of having two tracks: one for understanding input and one that is slightly disjoint from that for generating output.

So while substantial listening will help my speaking, I no longer believe the point of view that with sufficient input one can simply be immersed for 2 weeks and 'unlock' the passive vocabulary resulting in free or fluent speech.

I think that I need to 'train' the aforementioned 'output track' of my brain by practiced output.

My current conjecture is that the path to proficiency is paved with: 2/3rds input and 1/3rd output to ensure the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar while also building the ability to use that vocabulary and grammar correctly.


I mostly agree with you, but I think there's a missing piece: a bridge between input and output. For me that bridge is "imitation practice".

If a person tries to output too early, then he/she may make some mistakes, and with continous output that person will engrave those mistakes on his/her brain. I think that's what may had happened with your wife and her friends. Of course, if those mistakes weren't important enough, and they were being understood, then they may not have felt the need or urge to correct them. In order to correct those mistakes I agree with you that they should make a conscious and active effort.

But if you don't have those mistakes engraved on your mind yet, then I think it would be more useful to first spend lots of time doing "imitation practice".

Say, for example, you want to become fluent in daily talk. One resource you could use in order to achieve that is k-dramas:

1) You select scenes related to what you are interested in.
2) You try to understand as much as possible (you can use dictionaries, google for answers, etc.).
3) Compare what you understood with the official translation or english subs.
4) Now focus on imitation practice. Try to pronounce at the same speed and with the same intonation than the characters in that scene (trying to act it out is even better).
5) Repeat this with lots and lots of scenes.

When you are in a situation similar to what you practiced, the language will come to you more spontaneously and feel more native-like.

The benefits of "imitation practice" is that it engraves on your brain the right patterns and vocabulary for that specific context.

If you try to output before doing enough "imitation practice", you'll probably end up trying to fill the holes with what you already know (your english-thinking mind) and that may result in constructions that sound weird (or not quite right) to a native speaker.

You can do "imitation practice" with anything. For example, say you want to speak fluently about a specific topic. Then, you can look for podcasts, news, videos, etc. in which that topic is discussed extensively. Then you can follow the same steps from the drama example and, with enough "imitation practice" using different sources (not just one video or podcast), you'll find yourself spontaniously talking about that topic.

Well, at least that's how I see things. ;)
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qeadz
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Mon Mar 27, 2017 10:54 pm

You know I agree very much that imitation practice is a great tool. I don't do it. I think it is something that would be advantageous for me to add to my approach to learning Korean.

In your reply you do touch on fossilization. I first heard of it from one of the internet polyglots - one of the ones who runs a Youtube channel to market themselves and/or their language learning technique. At the time fossilization worried me because the argument presented was one of "its an ever-present danger".

However its something which volumes have been written on and there is no clear consensus on why it occurs. One thing is for sure: there are plenty of language learners who have reached high profiency in their target languages with seemingly little fossizilation. These same people may have had full immersion in the language (meaning: using it from day one to live life) or have done a typically balanced course eliciting output in the form of mock conversations with other language learners.

I guess if one believed that early output is detrimental and causes fossilization, then the only conclusion available is that these successful learners achieved success *despite* their early output. However I feel that this is not the case. I think we're able to repair mistakes and we're going to make them regardless of how much care we take to try elimintate them.

So the question is then: what of my wife and the other foreigners I know? While I have spoken with my wife about her experiences learning English, she really doesn't remember all the way back since it began at school when she was young. At any rate the other Korean women I know would have gone through a similar cirriculum at school and the levels at which their spoken English have settled, differ greatly.

Someone said elsewhere on this forum not too long ago that perhaps sage advice with regard to language learning is find another person who has learnt a foreign language to proficiency as an adult and do what they did. Its actually harder done than said because many such people don't often speak about what they *did* but rather what advice they would give. The two often overlap, but not always.

Some things are often encountered though: Lots of reading, lots of listening, lots of use of the language (especially via interaction with natives) and drills - vocab, grammar, etc.

Incidentally, over the weekend a link to this was posted to the Korean Language Reddit page: http://settlersofseoul.com/2017/03/26/e ... ng-korean/

It's an interesting listen to someone else's story.
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