Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

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Will he make it?

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

Postby Wurstmann » Tue Dec 20, 2016 7:43 am

Evita wrote:
Wurstmann wrote:What about the Korean Grammar in Use series? Isn't that quite complete?

I love those books and I have all three of them, but they are reference books, not textbooks. They are also not as complete as you might think. Here are some of the missing grammar points:


Good to know. I have only just started learning Korean and I'm using the "Beginning" book right now. Do you think I need a real textbook? At the moment I just put every sentence from that book into Anki.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby Evita » Tue Dec 20, 2016 5:35 pm

Wurstmann wrote:Good to know. I have only just started learning Korean and I'm using the "Beginning" book right now. Do you think I need a real textbook? At the moment I just put every sentence from that book into Anki.

I sent you a PM. The short answer is Yes.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Thu Dec 22, 2016 12:53 am

Something interesting happened today. I listened to TTMIK 이야기 lesson #33, which happens to be about Koreans' opinion of and behaviour in restaurants, and I realized I understood just about everything in the first minute, and maybe about half of the last 7 minutes. So I wondered how long it would take me to read it, and decided to give it a try. I'd tried lesson #1 over a month ago, and called it quits less than a minute into it; it was just too hard. Although #33 had about 350 unknown words, I didn't let this discourage me and I pushed on through. The good news is I finished it; the bad news is that it took me about 1.5hrs. Ideally, I want to read material that has 10 unknown words/minute, so this should have been 80 rather than 350. And I want to finish one in less than 30 min. But if I wait until I hit those marks before starting to read them, it will take forever, so I'll work one in now and then and hope to make it my main reading source as soon as I dip below 200 unknown words/podcast.

Although the podcasts from koreanclass101 are practically ideal for my current level, it's a pain to create so many new lessons. It only takes about a minute to create one, but it's tedious when I need to do 10 to get in an hour worth or reading/listening. C'mon intermediate!
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby qeadz » Thu Dec 22, 2016 1:23 am

leosmith wrote:Something interesting happened today. I listened to TTMIK 이야기 lesson #33, which happens to be about Koreans' opinion of and behaviour in restaurants, and I realized I understood just about everything in the first minute, and maybe about half of the last 7 minutes. So I wondered how long it would take me to read it, and decided to give it a try. I'd tried lesson #1 over a month ago, and called it quits less than a minute into it; it was just too hard. Although #33 had about 350 unknown words, I didn't let this discourage me and I pushed on through. The good news is I finished it; the bad news is that it took me about 1.5hrs. Ideally, I want to read material that has 10 unknown words/minute, so this should have been 80 rather than 350. And I want to finish one in less than 30 min. But if I wait until I hit those marks before starting to read them, it will take forever, so I'll work one in now and then and hope to make it my main reading source as soon as I dip below 200 unknown words/podcast.

Although the podcasts from koreanclass101 are practically ideal for my current level, it's a pain to create so many new lessons. It only takes about a minute to create one, but it's tedious when I need to do 10 to get in an hour worth or reading/listening. C'mon intermediate!


Thats some nice progress right there!

Much earlier on this year I decided that despite the Iyagi series being a bit above my level, I'd tackle them anyways. Now there are a couple of Iyagi episodes, admittedly only 5 - 7 minutes in length, which I can listen to and follow almost the entire thing. I can freely read the PDF's for those episodes too and it *feels* great because it's a little (although still nowhere near) like reading English - I'm not trying to work out the grammar or the words but rather just easily reading to understand the meaning and content.

When I began the Iyagi series there were only a few complete sentences which I actually understood - many were a guessing game as to the meaning since the construction and grammar was so new. So the fact that there exist entire episodes in which the majority of the sentences are understandable to me *even when listening* shows, in my humble opinion, that it is advantageous to push those bounds - so I say: keep at it! Work through your ideal material as well as the Iyagi series - theres a tonne of expressions, phrasings, colloquialisms and such packed in there.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Thu Dec 22, 2016 1:51 am

qeadz wrote:When I began the Iyagi series there were only a few complete sentences which I actually understood - many were a guessing game as to the meaning
So glad I'm not the only one! :lol:
Thanks for your comments. Did you end up reading all of them? What do you normally read these days?
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leosmith
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Thu Dec 22, 2016 1:52 am

Step 2 cont’d: continue listening
Of the 2 skills used for conversation, last time I talked about reading, so this time I want to explain how I’m continuing to attack listening.

During step 1, I listened to a lot of beginner podcasts and watched many language learning videos. These were the main source of my comprehensible input. I listened to intermediate conversation podcasts, which I understood very little of. I also watched many native videos and TV shows with English subtitles. These were mainly useful for getting the feel of the language, and occasionally hearing my dismal vocabulary being used. It was a 3 month step, so of course I saw some improvement over that time, but not enough for me to consider anything except the beginner stuff comprehensible.

When I studied Russian, for step 2 I spent a lot of time and money getting my hands on movies with Russian subtitles. But in hindsight, while I feel this was a very good reading exercise, it was a mediocre listening exercise. Eventually I started watching sitcoms, then reading their transcripts later. Finally I watched a Ukrainian travel show that was pretty comprehensible due to the fact that the nature of travel requires some occasional use of English. After all this, I feel I made pretty good progress my last year of studying Russian, where well over half of my 600 hours of listening occurred.

After that, I did an 8 month spurt to resuscitate my Mandarin. I watched a lot TV shows, and most of them had subtitles. While my Mandarin improved a lot overall, I wasn’t really pleased with my final listening level.

Based on those two most recent experiences, I’ve decided not to use subtitles for Korean. If I have the opportunity to read transcripts for shows and movies after I’ve watched them, I’ll take advantage of it. But as a condition, I must watch them first. This aligns with my philosophy for lingQ – listen first, read, then listen again. This is an example of LIE guiding my learning method.

I’m going to use TV and movies without subtitles, radio, and 100% Korean podcasts designed for learners or native speakers. Getting the TV shows I want for free without subtitles or ads can be a little troublesome, so I decided to join DramaFever for $4/month. Of course this stuff isn’t very comprehensible at this point, but I’m still listening to some beginner podcasts when I walk and such. I will wean myself off of it. Also, I’m being very aggressive, meaning I’m listening/watching 2 hours per day of 100% native material. I figure at this rate something’s got to give. Even though it’s only been a few days, I feel like I’m progressing now, whereas during step1 I felt pretty stagnant. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby qeadz » Thu Dec 22, 2016 6:19 pm

leosmith wrote: Did you end up reading all of them? What do you normally read these days?


No, I havent read all of them. I've done about half of them so far. I usually end up going over the same one multiple times - so I'll read it once, followed by listening many times... then a few weeks later I'll read it again and listen to it a bunch.

Aside from the Iyagi series, which as mentioned I've yet to finish, I've pulled articles off a kids news site, KoreaTimes, Wikipedia - none of which have audio of course. I've ploughed through a lot of what LingQ has listed on their content database (but only recently tried to tackle upper-intermediate/advanced content).

It's interesting how some content can be listed as advanced, even if the grammar isn't actually that advanced. For example I worked through an advanced rated podcast, which I mentioned in my log. Upon providing my understanding of a short section of it, Jiwon confirmed that my understanding of what was said was accurate.

So in that case the podcast was rated as 'advanced' but I think 'intermediate' is probably more accurate. I suspect it was primarily rated as advanced because of the vocabulary in it. But I think for an adult learner the only 'advanced' vocabulary should be those words which are, how can I say, 'linguistically' advanced. For example 'political party' is probably no more advanced than 'table' as a word, and whole articles can be written about presidents, impeachments, resignations, petitions without being necessarily 'advanced' material.

Anyway I don't mean to rant or diverge from this thread being a language log, but I guess I realized that there is a lot more content out there which I am able to work through right now, it has just been erroneously categorized as above my level.

PS: I'd advise against Wikipedia entries though - the 3 that I read were quite tough, and I mostly learnt words from them - the sentences as a whole I wasn't ready for. Then again, you're likely a fair bit ahead of me in Korean, so maybe you could give them a whirl for fun!
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leosmith
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Thu Dec 22, 2016 8:03 pm

qeadz wrote:It's interesting how some content can be listed as advanced, even if the grammar isn't actually that advanced.
Yeah, I ignore the levels, and go by unknown words per minute of audio. I'm going to try to only read material with audio this year.
Then again, you're likely a fair bit ahead of me in Korean
:lol:
I'm at 1400 in lingq. you?
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby qeadz » Thu Dec 22, 2016 8:19 pm

leosmith wrote:I'm at 1400 in lingq. you?


I presume you mean known words here. On LingQ I'm at 5100-ish. I'm extremely conservative in marking words as known. My general criteria include that if I were to see the word, on its own, I would know its meaning AND the role on particular particles added are playing. Its a general criteria because there are words that you really can't distinguish without some context. However for me it then represents an approximate tally of how much vocabulary I know so well that it helps me understand new content. Were I to be very generous in promoting words to Known like Steve himself does, I'd be in the awkward situation where I can encounter new text with mostly (allegedly) known words but not understand it.

At any rate the way LingQ measures words further muddies the meaning of this statistic. So I put to you a different statistic (which I prefer): I have 126k words read and 150-ish hours of listening. How are you doing?
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Thu Dec 22, 2016 9:30 pm

qeadz wrote:I have 126k words read and 150-ish hours of listening. How are you doing?

LingQ says: 3167 Words of Reading, 1.24Hours of Listening. Keep in mind that I did a lot of repetitive reading of pimsleur sentences in anki before I started using lingQ, so a pretty high percentage of blue words are already known by me. Either way, you appear to be waaay ahead of me in reading. Regarding listening, I do very little of it on lingq, in fact I never listen to a lesson more than twice. I have about 100 hrs of non-lingq listening though.
Last edited by leosmith on Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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