Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

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Will he make it?

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leosmith
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Mon May 22, 2017 6:52 pm

Xenops wrote:Congrats on getting that B2 in Korean. :) Did you ever happen to make a log recording your Japanese learning? I'm not finding it here nor on the HTLAL site.

If you're talking to me, I haven't reached B2 in Korean yet, but I still have 4 months to go. I don't have a Japanese log.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby Xenops » Tue May 23, 2017 2:35 am

leosmith wrote:
Xenops wrote:Congrats on getting that B2 in Korean. :) Did you ever happen to make a log recording your Japanese learning? I'm not finding it here nor on the HTLAL site.

If you're talking to me, I haven't reached B2 in Korean yet, but I still have 4 months to go. I don't have a Japanese log.


My apologies, I thought you already got there. :) Did your approach to Japanese pretty much mirror your Korean one?
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Tue May 23, 2017 8:10 pm

Xenops wrote:Did your approach to Japanese pretty much mirror your Korean one?

Not really, I was far less experienced then. Started in 2005.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Thu May 25, 2017 12:37 am

One of the things I'm doing now almost every day is targeted grammar study. For this I use the nicely organized TTMIK grammar lessons. I like them for this particular task because they are free, conveniently online and for the most part you can choose to study/focus on a single grammar point, which makes it more like a grammar and less like a text book imo. Although there is a high quality audio recording with each lesson, I normally go straight to the PDFs, quickly read them and and reverse translate the sample sentences (English to Korean).

I've done over 100 hours of conversation lessons now, and I'm deeply aware of certain grammar points that come to haunt me again and again. I used to just go through 5 of the TTMIK lessons (there are about 270 of them) per day, but I have made a short list of the specific points that give me trouble, and I've decided to take a few weeks to keep repeating them until I feel more comfortable with them. There are 20 problematic lessons, and I group the related ones, so I have 10 small groups.

Here's an example. Making sentences longer and more native like by using 고, 서, 는데 & 니까 instead of using 2 sentences with 그리고, 그래서, 그런데 & 그러니까. (TTMIK 3.2 , 3.7, 3.21 & 5.14).

Grammar has always been a weak point of mine; nothing seems to work well, so I like the results I'm getting so far with these reviews. I feel I'm truly getting comfortable with the actual grammar point, rather than just memorizing sample sentences. This is key, especially since I'm quite often scrambling to remember vocabulary during conversations. Trying to remember grammar and vocabulary at the same time makes for a very slow talk.

I like this targeted study so much that I plan on doing it in every language, every time I do a spurt, from now on.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Fri Jun 02, 2017 1:24 am

I’d like to write a bit about what I like in a tutor, with a focus on things specifically important to my method of learning languages.

I normally say I use tutors for conversation practice only, and leave it at that. While it’s basically true, it’s oversimplified. I have several goals for learning languages, but my biggest by far is being able to converse well. So my method is highly geared towards conversation.

Here’s something to keep in mind before I talk about teacher requirements. I like to spend 10-25% of my total daily study time doing vocabulary reviews, because, other than listening, I believe vocabulary is the most time consuming road block, and I’ve found this percentage of review time to be my sweet spot. If I put every new word I encountered in everything I studied during the day into anki, I’d be spending over half my time reviewing, which is much more than I want. So I have to choose where I want to get my vocabulary from, and it should come as no surprise that I choose to get it from conversation. When I talk to a tutor, I write down the words and phrases she says that I don’t understand, and the things I want to say but don’t know how. Later I put these items into anki.

So in my classes I practice speaking, not only for getting comfortable with what I already know, but also for collecting new vocabulary and grammar. As in many aspects of language learning, you can see the intensive and extensive possibilities in conversation. My teachers need to be able to switch modes from a nice comfortable conversation to times when my curiosity is just brimming with vocabulary and grammar questions. Because of my intensive spells, I have no problem getting enough items to hit the 1 hour (12.5% of my current daily study time) review mark in anki. If my anki review sessions exceed 1 hour, then I delete enough of the oldest cards to keep them under, and may do more extensive conversing for a while.

With all that in mind, here are the things I seek in a good tutor:

1) Doesn’t correct me unless I request it, I’m truly not understood, or I make a really big mistake. This is probably the single hardest quality to find in a tutor; it goes against most of their training. But it’s necessary to lay off of me so I can get comfortable and not have to focus on making perfect sentences all the time. My performance with someone who overcorrects me and one who just lets me be are like night and day. With my well-rounded method, I’m constantly getting correct language reinforcement and seeing the errors of my ways anyway. I notice my mistakes frequently. I don’t need one more source of correction hounding me, especially during conversation, when we take everything we’ve got and try to put the show on the road.

2) Is engaged and engaging. Again, very difficult to encounter. Tutors who are actually into the conversation and are more interested in it than trying to make me a good speaker are pure gold.

3) Has a positive, somewhat fun attitude. I’m a happy person; I smile and laugh a lot during lessons, so it’s nice to talk to someone who genuinely feels the same way.

4) Native speaker, good at translations, good internet, able to type, punctual, reasonably priced, compatible schedule and a lot of other general stuff that I’ve probably forgotten. But this stuff isn’t as specific to my method as the other items.

After thinking about this for a while and writing it out, I’m a bit surprised that there are only 3 items that are pretty specific to my method. So how successful am I at finding these tutors? I use italki. Continuing with Korean as my example, I’ve worked with about 60 of the 82 teachers presently on the site, and taken 135 lessons. Typically I take a lesson, and if I like the teacher I book her again. Although one of us might be having an off day, or the teacher might be fine at a later stage when I become more advanced, I have to draw the line somewhere, and I think 1 hour is a fair amount of time to see if someone is compatible.

I only took 1 lesson from half the tutors (30) I met with. There were many reasons for dropping them, with the most common being over correction. Before we met, I told every single teacher I didn’t want to be corrected except in the situations mentioned above, and everyone agreed to that, but most still corrected me. Sometimes I let it slide, but when it started to interfere, I reminded them of what we agreed to, and most made an effort to not correct me after that. Some didn’t, even after repeated reminders, so they didn’t get more bookings from me.

Of the remaining 30 tutors, I probably dropped about 15 after 2 or 3 lessons because they just aren’t into the conversation. I’ve had tutors whose idea of a good conversation is firing off question after question without letting me ask anything. I’ve had others that think it’s ok to talk 90% of the time. Still others sit in silence and wait for me to drive 100% of the time. These are just a few of the situations I’ve been in where the tutor clearly isn’t engaged or engaging.

Amazingly enough, there were a handful of the remaining 15 that I dropped after 4 or 5 lessons who weren’t terribly friendly, or had negative attitudes. They often wanted to argue or challenge me on trivial stuff. I actually like a good debate, but not all the time. There was also one teacher in this group who, in addition to having a bad attitude, inserted English into our conversations even after repeated warnings from me.

That left me with 8 tutors, but because I found out that nighttime lessons don’t really work for me, the number went down to 4. All of these are absolute superstars. I decided to book a whole month using only these 4 tutors. I did this because I found that I use more vocabulary and grammar, and just speak better in general with this group. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Sun Jun 04, 2017 8:23 pm

leosmith wrote:One of the things I'm doing now almost every day is targeted grammar study. For this I use the nicely organized TTMIK grammar lessons.

So I have a list of 10 topics that I review. I've been through it once and I'm starting round 2 today. The first item on my list isn't in TTMIK, I call it the counting system and I go through this page in How to study Korean. You have to know all the numbers before using it, but other than that it's the most comprehensive free resource on numbering in Korean that I've found. TTMIK is surprisingly weak in this area, which is sad because for the longest time it was my biggest problem topic.

I also wanted to say that I hit another benchmark last week. I reached the lingq intermediate2 avatar level (14550 "known words"), and broke 15000 today. It looks like I'm on track to hit all my metrics for the time being.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Sat Jun 17, 2017 4:58 am

Whew – I’m now down to an equivalent of a 90 day challenge to finish this thing off. It’s been a hard pull, but I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve learned a lot, not just Korean but about methodology too.

One new thing I’m doing is reading the drama script with a tutor for 30 min of our 60 min class, twice a week. I immediately felt some very minor improvement in listening after doing this just 2 times, so I’ll continue and see what happens. I suspect that the improvement is due to the fact that I’m actually writing down, memorizing and putting words and phrases from the drama into anki. Previously I only memorized stuff from pure conversation. Improved listening seems to be carrying over into the iyagi lessons too, even though I’m not memorizing material from them. I’m not seeing a change in conversation listening skill yet, but I hope that will change.

I feel like the ice is finally starting to break up a little bit regarding listening. My skill level felt stagnant for so long it’s surprising, but very pleasing, to see this happening. Whether it happens fast enough so that I’m understanding over half of the dramas I watch by the end of these 90 days remains to be seen. I'm doing better with iyagi though. With the new iyagi lessons I’m probably around 50% at first listen. With the old ones I’m significantly better, not just because I’ve read and listened to them before, but also because they were just easier lessons. It took me a while to realize that the iyagi lessons are graduated. It’s not a linear graduation, but newer lessons are significantly harder than old ones on the average.

My reading has improved, but my rate of improvement seemed to stagnate along with my listening. I just timed myself on an iyagi, and it took 31 minutes to finish an 8.5 minute recording. I seemed to be stuck at 4 min reading for every 1 min of audio for a long time, so I’m hoping it’s finally starting to move again. I was hoping to get below 2 by the end of this challenge. Reading the drama dialogs and news articles was very hard at first, but at last they are starting to soften up. I spend a higher percentage of my time doing intensive reading than extensive reading now, which is a first for me in any language I think. Iyagi lessons started out really hard, but aren’t bad at all now, so I hope the same thing will happen with dramas and news.

Conversation is going well, although improvement has been very slow here too. I’ve been writing down my perceived level after every class, and it looks like an even B1.5 right now. Somewhere between B1 and B2 anyway. Let’s hope this last push will put me over the top!
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby MacGyver » Mon Jun 19, 2017 5:09 am

Assuming you make it to B2 after your final push, whats your plans for Korean after that? Do you intend to push on to C1, or will you look at a different language or something else?
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:07 pm

MacGyver wrote:Assuming you make it to B2 after your final push, whats your plans for Korean after that? Do you intend to push on to C1, or will you look at a different language or something else?

I'm not sure, to be honest. If I feel I can maintain it as easily as I maintain my other B2 languages, I'll probably go after Portuguese. But no definite plans yet.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Wed Jun 21, 2017 7:55 pm

(은/는) vs (이/가) vs (을,를) vs (no particle)
These are tricky. Because I know the basic rules (ttmik lesson 1.9 & ttmik lesson 2.2) and I converse with them a lot, I think I use them correctly over half of the time. But because they’re so frequently used, basic and carry so much important nuance with them, I’d to get them right “almost always”, which I think requires more focused grammar study. Unfortunately I haven’t found a good resource for this.
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