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 Apr 03, 2017 8:01 pm

Sol wrote:How much do you feel Mandarin and Japanese are helping you with Korean?

A lot. Japanese is really helping with grammar. Both are helping with vocabulary, via pronunciation and Chinese characters.

I've poked around a little in that site. It's a good resource. I'm just amazed at how many excellent Korean resources there are out there.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby Sol » Mon Apr 03, 2017 10:28 pm

leosmith wrote:
Sol wrote:How much do you feel Mandarin and Japanese are helping you with Korean?

A lot. Japanese is really helping with grammar. Both are helping with vocabulary, via pronunciation and Chinese characters.

I've poked around a little in that site. It's a good resource. I'm just amazed at how many excellent Korean resources there are out there.


Mm I've heard Japanese and Korean grammar are quite similar.

And you're right, I've noticed it too -- considering how Korean is a less spoken or popular language than most, there are a ton of resources! Surprisingly, Mandarin, a very large and well-known language, has next to none resources. I want to get around to it some day but worry what study material I'll use :/
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby qeadz » Tue Apr 04, 2017 1:11 am

A while ago Leosmith was planning a video of sorts to mark progress. Hopefully this is still a possibility :)
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Tue Apr 04, 2017 1:25 am

leosmith wrote:I actually don’t care to be a really good reader. I have no interest in reading Korean novels, newspapers, etc. I do want to be able to read signs, menus, texts from friends, news tickers and subtitles, for example, so I need to have some reading skill, just not very advanced. I admit that in the past I haven’t read much in foreign languages; it just didn’t interest me, even though I’m a pretty big reader in English. In fact, the biggest, most consistent effort I made was in Russian, where I wound up getting to the 20k level in lingq over the course of about 2 years. For me, that was a big deal, but for people who mostly do listening/reading to learn languages, like Steve Kaufmann, 20k isn’t impressive for even one year. Incidentally, although Steve Kaufmann takes a relatively long time to learn a new language, he only spends about an hour a day doing it, and after 5 years or so he claims to understand just about everything he hears. Now this is pretty impressive, regardless of age, when you consider the number of hours he spends. 1500 hours to develop advanced listening is really good, and imo one of the main reasons he can pull it off is that he reads a lot, and most of what he reads he also listens too. He has said that he listens to a lot of additional stuff that he doesn’t have text for, but I think if he didn’t do so much reading, his results would pale in comparison.

So bottom line, I’m going to read more this time. I want to get to 20k before the end of the year. Kaufmann is also learning Korean right now, and last time I checked he was at 47k. He said he felt he had quite a ways to go to get to the point where he understood just about everything. This is in contrast to other languages, where he said he felt the magic number was around 40k. So I was postulating with some other members that for Korean it might be 60k. Either way, I think for me, hitting 20k this year is enough. When I come back after this year, and I want to go on another long spurt, I’ll probably try to come closer to whatever number Kaufmann says put him over the top.

I'm reposting what I wrote a while back to give some background for today's post. I wanted to say that, at least in the context of my method, LingQ is working really well so far. More specifically, reading stuff that's way over my head, mousing over and quickly glancing at unknown word definitions but not using flashcards and such to memorize them, has been sufficient to internalize the words. Now there are lots of caveats, for example the fact that I use flashcards to review words from my conversations and many of those same words are encountered in LingQ, but I'm very pleased it's working.

When I started reading TTMIK iyagi lingq was showing about 40 unknown words, and I was reading at about 10 minutes, per minute of audio. Now there are about 15 unknown words and I'm reading about 4 min per min of audio. So the technique is clearly working for me, and I'll continue.

I was going to only read iyagi, then I realized I'd run out before the end of the year, so I added news with video which was a great find. Then after reading emk's post about spending more time with less material, I realized I sort of did this with Russian, where I used a TV series after a lot of intermediate podcasts to boost my reading and listening. So I decided to get the script for at least one drama. The good news is the scripts are pretty easy to get. The bad news is they are complete scripts, you have to dig out the dialogs, and the dialogs don't match the audio from the actual show. So I hired someone to do the series mentioned in a previous post.

I have some stats to compare after putting the first episode in lingq. These are unknown words in LingQ per minute of audio.
iyagi - 15
drama - 20
news - 60
So news is pretty tough. I'll keep doing some news articles though; can't hurt.

In about 10 days I'm going to vacation in the Philippines for 2 weeks. I'm not going to study at all in that time; hoping to catch a bow wave.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Tue Apr 04, 2017 6:05 am

qeadz wrote:A while ago Leosmith was planning a video of sorts to mark progress. Hopefully this is still a possibility :)

I recorded a couple lessons a while back. I've intentionally left dates off of them so that you could evaluate my level without bias. I recommend jumping around a bit, as they are each about 1hr long. Enjoy!

video 1
video 2

(edit: links and descriptions 4 posts below)
Last edited by leosmith on Fri Apr 07, 2017 11:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby qeadz » Tue Apr 04, 2017 5:30 pm

Wow - you uploaded so much! I'll probably watch like 10 minutes of each when I have some time today. While I do enjoy watching other language learners, its still very awkward. Awkward because it reminds me of myself.

Good old Danny - he is very flat when he talks, but he writes most things into chat so I find the take-away notes from conversations with him to be very comprehensive.

I've been saying I'll resume iTalki sessions, but have thus far been putting off getting my tablet fixed so I can actually do so. Your videos have inspired me to actually get this done and start iTalki again.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Wed Apr 05, 2017 5:27 pm

Healer episode 2 dialogs can be found here.

Incidentally, below is the direct contact info for someone who transcribes Korean video and audio. I haven't used this particular transcriber; I received this info from one of my upwork contacts.

"If you ever need urgent korean video transcription, you can contact us at joonyup. hyun@hotmail. com
Cost per episode $12. That is actually the contact address for our Korean transcriptionist. His flat rate is $12 per 1 hour video or audio file when projects are more than 10 hours total."
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby qeadz » Fri Apr 07, 2017 10:28 pm

Nobody else has commented, so I will!

I am obviously no judge of level at all, so I cannot speak to that. I also did not listen to either in their entirety - first 10 - 15 minutes of the one with Danny and then similarly for the other video.

In total I've only done 16 hours worth of speaking all up according to my stats. I never recorded myself (I was using a work machine and it was a pretty low-spec one - barely able to run Skype!). So I have no reference of my own abilities even. Take everything I say with a huge dose of "opinions of some beginner who probably shouldnt commenting".

First you were wiser at the time of making these videos than I was. Your grammar was lacking, but you kept your sentences quite short which meant it didn't matter as much for communication. I regularly tried to say things way above my level and it was a mess. Even so your grammar in these videos is a lot better than my first attempts at speaking.

I think in my first lesson I said:

저는 들어 하고 읽어 주로 해..ㅆ...해요... 했어요.

It went uncorrected, but my 2nd Skype session was with a much older Korean lady who was a teacher. She jumped on that *immediately* and explained that if I go with her as a future teacher, we're going to cut the conversation out because I'm not ready for it. She introduced me to an introduction to Korean grammar she had worksheets for and suggested some months of filling in correct grammatical forms would precede attempts at constructing my own sentences.

Of course I *knew* better than the lousy utterances I had made - I would not have *written* that kind of sentence.

So the point I am arriving at here is: even though I mention your grammar was lacking while speaking, I know from experience that spoken Korean is not a true representation of knowledge of the language! Also that I did way worse for it in my first Skype sessions (according to my recollection of how things went).

Another thing I noticed is that - for the sections I did watch - you kept the conversation on your own terms. In fact I think Danny suggested a discussion topic which, at least immediately, you did not go into discussing. You may have wandered into suggested discussion areas later on, I dont know.

Its not a criticism, but I do regard the parts I watched as possibly being areas where your abilities are stronger.

I made the silly mistake in one of my sessions by telling my tutor I had read an article on Cicada's (as an excuse as to why I hadn't done as much preparation for the discussion topic we had set for the lesson). She then jumped right on that and the wheels came right off. All I knew was basically Cicadas, seasons, being plentiful, and how to say some people found them frightening. I did not actually know names for any other insects, dirt, earth, or any vocab needed to carry any discussion more than the sentence I had already uttered.

But despite my observations on your videos, they're great. I think the problem with looking for a rating on the CEFR levels is that they're centered around someone who is studying to *use* the language while traveling, working or living in the target country.

For example Steve Kaufmann was focusing on political related material in Korean. With sufficient time invested in it, he'd probably still be lacking the vocabulary required to do travel-related things in Korean. Ultimately he already stated he doesn't care for the mundane stuff because he has no interest in it.

So IMHO judging ones ability is very subjective and probably the best judge of it is how naturally or easily you find the conversations that you have to be going.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby leosmith » Fri Apr 07, 2017 10:37 pm

qeadz wrote:my 2nd Skype session was with a much older Korean lady who was a teacher

The second I read this I knew there was gonna be trouble :lol:
Thanks very much for your critique. I filled in a little more information on the videos in youtube now.

video 1: leosmith talks with Danny Yeon from italki in Korean, January 25, 2017
This video was made about 4 months after I started learning Korean, and 1 month after I started conversing on a regular basis. Although I felt like I was A2 at the time, I didn’t perform as well as expected. I believe the level displayed is A1. What level do you think is shown here? Please comment.

video 2: leosmith talks with Havina from italki in Korean, March 10 2017
This video was made about 6 months after I started learning Korean, and 3 months after I started conversing on a regular basis. Although I felt like I was B1 at the time, I performed poorly due to nerves or something. I've got to learn to just forget about the camera. Anyway, I believe the level displayed is A2. What level do you think is shown here? Please comment.
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Re: Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

Postby qeadz » Fri Apr 07, 2017 11:02 pm

leosmith wrote:Although I felt like I was A2 at the time, I didn’t perform as well as expected. ... I performed poorly due to nerves or something....


I don't know how much of your lessons you have recorded, but if you have others than take a look through them.

I don't want to sound like I am bringing you down - I think you should be quite happy with the outcomes of those Skype sessions! But something which has jingled around in my head ever since I did a 'review' of my own abilities last year is that reasons for poor performance should be looked at closely.

You *will* have off days, also times when you have nerves or things just don't go well. However if off-days are common, then they're not really off-days but more like average days and as such probably *are* indicative of true ability.

Incidentally by the definition of A2:

Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e.g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).
Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters.
Can describe in simple terms aspects of their background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need.

In my very uninformed opinion, you hit that mark for sure.
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