Asarena's Log

Continue or start your personal language log here, including logs for challenge participants
Asarena
Green Belt
Posts: 280
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Korean (Intermediate), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 95b1dac51f
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Asarena's Log

Postby Asarena » Thu Sep 05, 2019 3:08 am

Korean

Well, I guess I should start from where my previous log ended. Not long after I finished the KGIU Advanced book I pretty much stopped studying Korean for several months. During that time I barely even listened to any Korean music, and I don't think I watched any Korean shows. I've only just gotten back into studying Korean in the past week or so. As for why I took a break from studying, I think I just wanted to spend some time on my other hobbies, mainly video games and reading. It wasn't my intention to take such a complete break though. Originally I was just going to reduce my studying for a bit, but well, you can see how that turned out. I think the break was good for me though, so I can't say that I regret it.

Now, I'm just trying to get back into the swing of things. I've started listening to some of the newer Kpop songs that were released during my break, and I've been checking out some new Korean shows and new seasons of older shows as well. The hardest thing is probably going to be catching up on videos from the Kpop groups that I like, but I'll figure it out. I've also been reading some Korean children's books because I happened upon a Russian site with a bunch of PDFs of Korean books. I've been watching some random Korean Twitch streamers here and there as well. For Anki, I've started reviewing my sentence/grammar deck again, just a little bit each day for now. As for my vocabulary deck... I hate it. I'd actually started to hate it not long before I took my break, which is interesting because I originally really liked using the deck. Anyway, I don't know if I can bring myself to use that deck again. I might try making a different type of vocabulary deck focused on cloze deletions or such at some point, but for now I think I'll just see how I get by without a vocabulary deck. Overall, I'm definitely enjoying my return to studying Korean.

Oh, and I'd also like to talk about the two language challenges I was/am participating in for Korean. If it wasn't already clear enough by now, I 100% failed the 365 day language challenge. I'm actually not sure whether or not I'll end up completing or failing the super challenge though. I'm going to be reading more than I was before, so it's possible that I could still complete the challenge. I'm not going to stress over it too much though.


Spanish

And here we have the main reason that I decided to create a new log. My old log was purely for Korean, but I'm not just studying Korean anymore. I actually started to dabble a bit with Spanish during my break from Korean, and I wrote about my previous experience with Spanish in my old log. Korean is definitely still going to be my priority, but I'd like to at least start getting some Spanish study in as well.
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Asarena
Green Belt
Posts: 280
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Korean (Intermediate), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 95b1dac51f
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Re: Asarena's Log

Postby Asarena » Sat Sep 07, 2019 12:05 am

Korean
I've been doing pretty well with reading. I'm a bit rusty on some words I previously knew since I didn't study for a few months, but I can usually remember a word once I take a moment to think about it. For words I don't know, I've just been looking them up on the Naver dictionary site as I go. I've been listening to some more Korean music, particularly hip hop. For shows, I watched the first episode of Player, but I don't know if I like it or not. I also watched the first episode of season 2 of Guess My Next Move. The Kpop groups that I like released a lot of videos during my break, so I've been adding those to a playlist on Youtube so that I can start going through them when I get a chance as well. Vlive will be my next stop after I get through the Youtube videos, and I'll also have to check for variety show appearances and such.

Titles of the children's books I've read in the past few days:
못생긴 발
기다리기 정말 싫어!
날아가는 그림
'싫어', '몰라' 하지 말고 왜 그런지 말해봐!
영민아, 살려줘
오늘은 참외밭이다
황소가 된 게으름뱅이
눈 먼 곰과 다람쥐
백설 공주
하나에서 열까지
송아지의 심부름
숙제다!
나무가 없으면
가을 이야기
룰루와 푸른 늑대
아기게와 엄마게
낙서 괴물
동동이와 원더마우스

One of my favorite Korean songs at the moment:



Spanish
To start with I'm pretty much just going to be working through a book called Easy Spanish Step-By-Step and the Language Transfer videos. I also started looking for some Spanish music to listen to.

One of the Spanish songs that I like so far:
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Asarena
Green Belt
Posts: 280
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Korean (Intermediate), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 95b1dac51f
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Re: Asarena's Log

Postby Asarena » Wed Sep 11, 2019 4:36 am

Korean
Watching
Mafia Game In Prison- I was up to episode 10 before I took my break, so I started watching from where I left off.
NCT videos- For the Kpop groups I like, I decided to start with NCT videos. Once I've caught up on NCT videos then I'll start watching some Stray Kids videos.
I'd also like to watch Urban Cops and seasons 2 and 3 of Kang's Kitchen eventually.

Listening To
NCT Night Night- I've started listening to episodes of NCT Night Night again. It's nice to listen to because I can understand most of what's being said.

Reading
I've mostly been reading children's books and manga.

Spanish
I'm just slowly going through the book I'm using and adding things to Anki as I go. So far I've just finished the first little section on noun genders, plural nouns, definite articles, indefinite articles, and such.
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Asarena
Green Belt
Posts: 280
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Korean (Intermediate), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 95b1dac51f
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Re: Asarena's Log

Postby Asarena » Tue Sep 17, 2019 9:10 pm

Korean
I removed my vocabulary deck from my Anki app. I did export and save the file to my computer, but I don't really plan to ever use it again. Honestly, I'd just rather make a new deck. I've been reviewing my grammar deck more, and I've switched from intensive reading to extensive reading for now. I still look up some words if they seem particularly important or keep reappearing, but for the most part I'm just trying to enjoy reading. For music, I'm listening to Seventeen's new album.

Spanish
I'm still slowly working through the book I'm using, and I just finished the section on the verb estar.
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Christi
Orange Belt
Posts: 245
Joined: Thu Jan 18, 2018 7:56 pm
Languages: Dutch (N), English (C1), German (B1), Korean (high A2-low B1?)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=7574
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Re: Asarena's Log

Postby Christi » Fri Sep 27, 2019 5:29 pm

Good to see you're back, have subscribed to your new log!

You seem to be doing a lot of reading nowadays. Where did you manage to find all those books :o
And is the title of the one before last really called ''doodle monster'' haha?
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2020 resolution words learned: 472 / 1000
Pages read at end of 2020: 220 / 1500

Asarena
Green Belt
Posts: 280
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Korean (Intermediate), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 95b1dac51f
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Re: Asarena's Log

Postby Asarena » Tue Oct 01, 2019 8:23 pm

Christi wrote:Good to see you're back, have subscribed to your new log!

You seem to be doing a lot of reading nowadays. Where did you manage to find all those books :o
And is the title of the one before last really called ''doodle monster'' haha?


Thanks, it's good to be back!

I found a bunch of PDFs for Korean books on some Russian site and downloaded them to a PDF reader app on my iPad. Yeah, it was about a monster that kept doodling on things it shouldn't have been doodling on.
Last edited by Asarena on Tue Oct 01, 2019 8:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Asarena
Green Belt
Posts: 280
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Korean (Intermediate), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 95b1dac51f
x 313

Re: Asarena's Log

Postby Asarena » Tue Oct 01, 2019 8:25 pm

Korean
I made a new vocabulary deck, and I've been using Google Sheets to make cards for it. For now I'm just putting the Korean word, audio from AwesomeTTS, the English translation/definition, and the Korean definition on the cards. I've been keeping up with my reading, and I'm still watching and listening to various things as per usual. In particular, I've been listening to AKMU's new album, Hoody's new single, and so on.

Spanish
I've been keeping up with my Anki reviews, but I've kind of been focusing on Korean, so I haven't really done much with Spanish in the last week or so.
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Asarena
Green Belt
Posts: 280
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Korean (Intermediate), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 95b1dac51f
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Re: Asarena's Log

Postby Asarena » Fri Nov 22, 2019 4:41 am

I'm still reading books and such. I had too many PDFs on my iPad, so I transferred some of them to my PC. Some of the PDFs are made up of images and some are just text, so I transferred the text ones to my PC. My plan is to start using Learning with Texts to go through those books, but so far I've just been using LWT to read through the lyrics of a few songs. I'll probably try reading though a series of books to start with. From the ones I have, I think I'll try to read either Harry Potter or Dragon Raja. I can tell that reading more has improved my reading and listening comprehension, but I do still need more work on my listening comprehension. My reading speed is improving as well.

For listening, I've really just been listening to music and watching the occasional YouTube video or Twitch stream. I haven't been in the mood to watch any variety shows or such lately. There's a drama called Hotel del Luna that seems interesting though, so I might try watching that.

Some songs I've been listening to lately:


2 x

Asarena
Green Belt
Posts: 280
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2018 11:11 pm
Location: USA
Languages: English (N), Korean (Intermediate), Russian (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 95b1dac51f
x 313

Re: Asarena's Log

Postby Asarena » Sun Sep 27, 2020 10:13 pm

So, hey again everyone! It's been about ten months since my last post here. Honestly, I haven't done much serious studying for the majority of the past ten months. I dabbled in some Anki here and there, watched some things with Korean subtitles and with no subtitles from time to time, and listened to some Korean music when I felt like it. The last week has been a bit different though.

In the past week I've:
-Started going through PDFs of the TTMIK books News In Korean and Real-Life Korean Conversations: Intermediate and listening to the accompanying audio
-Started watching the drama Flower of Evil with Korean subtitles
-Started making some new Anki cards and started reviewing cards in my grammar/sentence deck again
-Started watching some videos on YouTube without subtitles
-Started listening to more Korean music

I found the PDFs for the TTMIK books on that Russian page I mentioned before, and I've been listening to the audio as well. The Real-Life Korean Conversations book is fairly easy, but there are a few words that I've learned from it so far. The News in Korean book is a bit more difficult, but I do feel that I can understand everything in the given article by the time I finish the lesson.

Flower of Evil has really piqued my interest. I'm picky with dramas, but I happened to see this one when I checked Viki for dramas with Korean subtitles. I'm only on the second episode so far, but I plan to watch more. I look up words I don't know or switch to English subtitles from time to time to check my comprehension.

At one point I was really burned out when it came to Anki, and I couldn't even bring myself to open the app. Now, I can use Anki again without that feeling of dread, so I'm making new cards and reviewing old ones. I'm trying to use it in moderation this time though. For the grammar/sentence deck, I have like 3k reviews to go through, but on the bright side it seems that it will be a couple of years until I need to review the ones I get correct again.

Music is something that I have always loved, and Korean music is no different. Here are a few songs I've been listening to recently:


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DaveAgain
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1968
Joined: Mon Aug 27, 2018 11:26 am
Languages: English (native), French & German (learning).
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Re: Asarena's Log

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Sep 28, 2020 7:15 am

Asarena wrote:At one point I was really burned out when it came to Anki, and I couldn't even bring myself to open the app. Now, I can use Anki again without that feeling of dread, so I'm making new cards and reviewing old ones. I'm trying to use it in moderation this time though.
Have you put an upper limit on the number of cards the app shows you each day?
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