More Korean than Japanese in 2022 - 2023

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kraemder
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby kraemder » Wed Jan 05, 2022 7:26 am

I've always felt that reading books was the best way to learn a language. I remember sitting down in my room I was renting in Berin for two months in the summer while I studied at the Goethe Institut and trying to read The Hobbit in German basically just using a little pocket Langenscheidt dictionary. It was very painful but also kind of exciting to be reading a real book in German. Nowadays, reading in a foreign language is still cool but it's not quite as thrilling in itself as it once was. Anyway, I just ran across a YouTube video on Matt vs Japan's YouTube about this guy Ken who learned Japanese essentially by watching anime once with subs then after without (he varied this a little bit but that was essentially the idea). After 11 months he could watch simpler anime without the subs and get almost all of it. I think it is a little tedious rewatching an episode you just watched but I know other people on these forums do something similar. Anyway, it sounds more fun than reading a book where I often have to look up 80 to 90 percent of the words (well unless it's dialogue anyway..) to fight my way through it. I'm going to give this a try for a couple weeks. Watching k-dramas over and over. Well, I'm going to try watching an episode once with English subs and then again without. I just did 10 minutes of it and it's not bad. It seems like it would be boring but it's kind of fun to see what you can understand (I don't understand much but it's not zero at least). Also, instead of reading books, I think watching TV episodes etc would do a better job of getting a little caught up on current Korean pop culture etc.

The YouTube video I watched is fascinating. It's a long interview but you can set the speed to 1.5X or whatever or just listen to it while doing something else.

4 x

kraemder
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby kraemder » Sun Jan 16, 2022 5:43 pm

Well Ken's subtitle method didn't work for me. I guess I could have given it more of a chance but I'm back to just using LingQ instead for the majority of my Korean. I tried it with the Korean drama K2. I really like this drama but it's also a bit hard to watch due to the emotional abuse done to this girl even though she's now an adult. Anyway, it takes a lot of discipline to rewatch scenes again I've already watched. I really want to just keep going on ahead. And without Korean subtitles it's also very hard to pick out the words I don't know unless I were to stop and rewind it every minute or so. It depends on the complexity of the Korean of course. I could see how this method might work better if you had all day to study instead of just an hour or two.

So much for that. It did get me thinking again though of using dual language or parallel texts to help make my studies more enjoyable and comprehensible. On LingQ, if you go into sentence mode, there's an option to translate the sentence. I am currently reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner from Azkaban in Korean. I was just tapping for the translation every sentence for a while and then reading the Korean. This seemed to make it easier to do. I'd had the problem of not having the energy to read every night and this seemed to help. After several days of this though I've stopped automatically translating the sentences and I'm just reading the Korean, looking up unknown words, and going with that unless I get pretty lost. But if I find myself feeling like reading Korean is going to be too hard tonight then I'll just abuse that translation button. I'm also pretty sure I'll abuse that translation button if I try getting into another Korean book. Reading learning material like Talk to Me in Korean though is not bad at all and I doubt I'd have an issue but full on novels for natives can be brutal.

LingQ is -finally- pushing out its new 5.0 version to iOS devices. They haven't pushed it out across the board yet but should soon and then I think Steve will go on YouTube or whatever to promote it. I don't know when they started on this but it must have been a while ago. It got to where I wondered if it were just hype or they didn't have the resources to even put out a new version of their software. But it's here. The interface got a long needed update. It's easier on the eyes and looks like a proper app for the most part instead of a relic from the 90's. They didn't leapfrog the competition so to speak by making it super beautiful but they more or less caught up I think. Which is much appreciated and all I was hoping for. I don't really know what under the hood changes were done but I'm told they fixed some bugs (and created some new ones..). All in all the bugs I've found aren't too bad. The biggest one I've found is that sometimes in sentence mode when you translate a sentence it translates the next sentence instead of the one you're reading. If you exit and re-enter or restart the app a few times this seems to fix it. I hope they figure that one out as this is clearly a deal breaker if you're using the translation option a lot. But at least it if you get it working it stays working for the rest of the study session (at least so far) and it doesn't happen every time I go to study either just sometimes.

I've asked them to include an option to automatically translate the sentence without your having to press a button etc. to make it more like a parallel text read and also save a bit of time while reading. I don't know if they'll do it though. Steve isn't all that into parallel text reading. I guess for the price they charge I think they should be on the ball implementing any reasonable feature they can and this feature doesn't seem too hard to implement. But clearly that's not how it works. It did take them years and years just to update the graphic interface so take it or leave it I guess. There really isn't any good alternatives that I know of to reading ebooks/texts to learn a language. The thing that LingQ does well is to let you look up words FAST. When you're reading your native language and only need to look up a few words or a 2nd language you've got a pretty high level in and likewise don't look up too many words then this isn't such a big deal but when you're at my level with Korean this is huge.

I've also gone back to Evita's Vocabulary deck for Anki. She did a great job of organizing words in an order that really makes sense for learners based on frequency and just usefulness. I don't know how she came up with the order she did but it works well. And her English definitions/translations are good too. Concise and accurate for contexts you'll need. She doesn't give any example sentences which is probably the only drawback of the deck. I currently am viewing it as a plus though. I've been forcing myself to do sentence decks for a month or so as I try to get back into Korean both doing the I + 1 method that Matt vs Japan advocates, using some old sentence decks I made, and the deck I have based on the frequency dictionary where I paid a pretty penny to get real voice actors to record the sentences. The sentence decks just take too much effort to get through for me on my off days and I can have a lot of off days. Almost every weekday I work is an off day. We're understaffed at my workplace and the pressure to work overtime (without pay mind you) is pretty high. Almost feels like a Japanese company. Our salaries are not very high so when we start doing unpaid overtime the hourly rate dips pretty low. Anyway. So unplugging mentally from that and focusing on Korean can be a challenge. Just the simple vocabulary flash cards seem to work best. And while people argue that making flash cards yourself is more memorable because you encountered the word in real life so to speak and there's a stronger context associated with it.. well.. I find myself wanting to learn words that I really have no business learning at this point. It's not black and white. The pros and cons are there and I might start making my own cards but not right now. Another reason why not right now is that I can't currently copy and paste from LingQ 5.0 due to another bug.

That's it for this update. See you whenever I decide to update again. If you don't hear from me I may have made the mistake of trying to play video games in Korean in the name of learning...
3 x

kraemder
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby kraemder » Mon Jan 17, 2022 6:59 am

I did a quick language exchange on Tandem this evening with a lady from South Korea. I chose to speak to her because she's studying Japanese. In her profile all she talks about is wanting to learn Japanese and Japanese culture. In Japanese. It turns out her English and Japanese are about the same level. Even though she doesn't have much if any experience speaking she agreed to do a voice call together. She more or less was able to understand my Japanese ok. I was pretty impressed by that when considering she had a lot of trouble outputting. Anyway, we had fun talking together. I did do a brief self introduction in Korean with her but other than that she was the one doing all the work pushing trying to speak Japanese for maybe the first time. I really admire people who agree to do a voice call in a language they really can't speak yet. I haven't been able to do that in Korean yet. I make sure they speak a language I'm comfortable speaking (English, Japanese, maybe German would work to but I'm very rusty). I got to thinking I could do a lot more of these fun language exchanges if I could just get my Korean output to level up some. Even if my vocabulary is meager, if you practice speaking, you can express simple ideas pretty well I think. But how to get speaking practice when you stink at output? I got a crazy idea. I ordered a cheap stuffed animal from Amazon. It's an elephant because that was at the top of the list and seemed more easily to speak to than the dogs did. Yes, I've decided this elephant can only speak Korean and I'm going to practice on him. Good thing I live alone so nobody will know.
Last edited by kraemder on Tue Jan 18, 2022 5:39 am, edited 2 times in total.
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AndyMeg
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby AndyMeg » Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:34 pm

kraemder wrote:Well Ken's subtitle method didn't work for me. I guess I could have given it more of a chance but I'm back to just using LingQ instead for the majority of my Korean. I tried it with the Korean drama K2. I really like this drama but it's also a bit hard to watch due to the emotional abuse done to this girl even though she's now an adult. Anyway, it takes a lot of discipline to rewatch scenes again I've already watched. I really want to just keep going on ahead. And without Korean subtitles it's also very hard to pick out the words I don't know unless I were to stop and rewind it every minute or so. It depends on the complexity of the Korean of course. I could see how this method might work better if you had all day to study instead of just an hour or two.


Maybe you could try using the Chrome extension "Language Reactor" with Korean content in Netflix?

I think it would solve most of the problems you mention.

I chose a new K-drama for language learning purposes and have been watching it with the help of "Language Reactor" for the past week. (If you would like to know exactly how I'm using it you could read my log).
2 x
Beyond The Story 10 Year Record of BTS Korean version: 36 / 522

golyplot
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby golyplot » Mon Jan 17, 2022 4:47 pm

kraemder wrote:Well Ken's subtitle method didn't work for me. I guess I could have given it more of a chance but I'm back to just using LingQ instead for the majority of my Korean. I tried it with the Korean drama K2. I really like this drama but it's also a bit hard to watch due to the emotional abuse done to this girl even though she's now an adult. Anyway, it takes a lot of discipline to rewatch scenes again I've already watched. I really want to just keep going on ahead. And without Korean subtitles it's also very hard to pick out the words I don't know unless I were to stop and rewind it every minute or so. It depends on the complexity of the Korean of course. I could see how this method might work better if you had all day to study instead of just an hour or two.

So much for that. It did get me thinking again though of using dual language or parallel texts to help make my studies more enjoyable and comprehensible. On LingQ, if you go into sentence mode, there's an option to translate the sentence. I am currently reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner from Azkaban in Korean. I was just tapping for the translation every sentence for a while and then reading the Korean. This seemed to make it easier to do. I'd had the problem of not having the energy to read every night and this seemed to help. After several days of this though I've stopped automatically translating the sentences and I'm just reading the Korean, looking up unknown words, and going with that unless I get pretty lost. But if I find myself feeling like reading Korean is going to be too hard tonight then I'll just abuse that translation button. I'm also pretty sure I'll abuse that translation button if I try getting into another Korean book. Reading learning material like Talk to Me in Korean though is not bad at all and I doubt I'd have an issue but full on novels for natives can be brutal.

LingQ is -finally- pushing out its new 5.0 version to iOS devices. They haven't pushed it out across the board yet but should soon and then I think Steve will go on YouTube or whatever to promote it. I don't know when they started on this but it must have been a while ago. It got to where I wondered if it were just hype or they didn't have the resources to even put out a new version of their software. But it's here. The interface got a long needed update. It's easier on the eyes and looks like a proper app for the most part instead of a relic from the 90's. They didn't leapfrog the competition so to speak by making it super beautiful but they more or less caught up I think. Which is much appreciated and all I was hoping for. I don't really know what under the hood changes were done but I'm told they fixed some bugs (and created some new ones..). All in all the bugs I've found aren't too bad. The biggest one I've found is that sometimes in sentence mode when you translate a sentence it translates the next sentence instead of the one you're reading. If you exit and re-enter or restart the app a few times this seems to fix it. I hope they figure that one out as this is clearly a deal breaker if you're using the translation option a lot. But at least it if you get it working it stays working for the rest of the study session (at least so far) and it doesn't happen every time I go to study either just sometimes.

I've asked them to include an option to automatically translate the sentence without your having to press a button etc. to make it more like a parallel text read and also save a bit of time while reading. I don't know if they'll do it though. Steve isn't all that into parallel text reading. I guess for the price they charge I think they should be on the ball implementing any reasonable feature they can and this feature doesn't seem too hard to implement. But clearly that's not how it works. It did take them years and years just to update the graphic interface so take it or leave it I guess. There really isn't any good alternatives that I know of to reading ebooks/texts to learn a language. The thing that LingQ does well is to let you look up words FAST. When you're reading your native language and only need to look up a few words or a 2nd language you've got a pretty high level in and likewise don't look up too many words then this isn't such a big deal but when you're at my level with Korean this is huge.

I've also gone back to Evita's Vocabulary deck for Anki. She did a great job of organizing words in an order that really makes sense for learners based on frequency and just usefulness. I don't know how she came up with the order she did but it works well. And her English definitions/translations are good too. Concise and accurate for contexts you'll need. She doesn't give any example sentences which is probably the only drawback of the deck. I currently am viewing it as a plus though. I've been forcing myself to do sentence decks for a month or so as I try to get back into Korean both doing the I + 1 method that Matt vs Japan advocates, using some old sentence decks I made, and the deck I have based on the frequency dictionary where I paid a pretty penny to get real voice actors to record the sentences. The sentence decks just take too much effort to get through for me on my off days and I can have a lot of off days. Almost every weekday I work is an off day. We're understaffed at my workplace and the pressure to work overtime (without pay mind you) is pretty high. Almost feels like a Japanese company. Our salaries are not very high so when we start doing unpaid overtime the hourly rate dips pretty low. Anyway. So unplugging mentally from that and focusing on Korean can be a challenge. Just the simple vocabulary flash cards seem to work best. And while people argue that making flash cards yourself is more memorable because you encountered the word in real life so to speak and there's a stronger context associated with it.. well.. I find myself wanting to learn words that I really have no business learning at this point. It's not black and white. The pros and cons are there and I might start making my own cards but not right now. Another reason why not right now is that I can't currently copy and paste from LingQ 5.0 due to another bug.

That's it for this update. See you whenever I decide to update again. If you don't hear from me I may have made the mistake of trying to play video games in Korean in the name of learning...


This reminds me of Satori Reader. I wonder if there are any Korean equivalents of Satori Reader.
1 x

kraemder
Green Belt
Posts: 323
Joined: Fri Aug 28, 2015 12:10 am
Location: Tucson, Arizona
Languages: English (N)
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1204
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby kraemder » Tue Jan 18, 2022 5:42 am

AndyMeg wrote:
kraemder wrote:Well Ken's subtitle method didn't work for me. I guess I could have given it more of a chance but I'm back to just using LingQ instead for the majority of my Korean. I tried it with the Korean drama K2. I really like this drama but it's also a bit hard to watch due to the emotional abuse done to this girl even though she's now an adult. Anyway, it takes a lot of discipline to rewatch scenes again I've already watched. I really want to just keep going on ahead. And without Korean subtitles it's also very hard to pick out the words I don't know unless I were to stop and rewind it every minute or so. It depends on the complexity of the Korean of course. I could see how this method might work better if you had all day to study instead of just an hour or two.


Maybe you could try using the Chrome extension "Language Reactor" with Korean content in Netflix?

I think it would solve most of the problems you mention.

I chose a new K-drama for language learning purposes and have been watching it with the help of "Language Reactor" for the past week. (If you would like to know exactly how I'm using it you could read my log).


I actually have that extension. I also have Language Learning with Netflix. I forget which one but one of them will automatically pause the movie at every subtitle so you can read/study it. I was thinking I could turn on dual language and just read the subs in English and Korean as I go similarly to the way I'm reading in LingQ right now. I definitely plan on doing this but I'm weirdly getting hooked on the Prisoner from Azkaban in Korean at the moment. I never thought I'd get hooked on Harry Potter again lol.
1 x

kraemder
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby kraemder » Tue Jan 18, 2022 5:45 am

golyplot wrote: This reminds me of Satori Reader. I wonder if there are any Korean equivalents of Satori Reader.


There isn't anything like Satori reader for Korean that I know of. Japanese really gets a lot of love when it comes to apps and stuff. I think a lot of technically gifted people are somehow also into learning Japanese. I'm sure they'll develop something but until they do at least there's LingQ.
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AndyMeg
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby AndyMeg » Tue Jan 18, 2022 2:53 pm

kraemder wrote:
AndyMeg wrote:
kraemder wrote:Well Ken's subtitle method didn't work for me. I guess I could have given it more of a chance but I'm back to just using LingQ instead for the majority of my Korean. I tried it with the Korean drama K2. I really like this drama but it's also a bit hard to watch due to the emotional abuse done to this girl even though she's now an adult. Anyway, it takes a lot of discipline to rewatch scenes again I've already watched. I really want to just keep going on ahead. And without Korean subtitles it's also very hard to pick out the words I don't know unless I were to stop and rewind it every minute or so. It depends on the complexity of the Korean of course. I could see how this method might work better if you had all day to study instead of just an hour or two.


Maybe you could try using the Chrome extension "Language Reactor" with Korean content in Netflix?

I think it would solve most of the problems you mention.

I chose a new K-drama for language learning purposes and have been watching it with the help of "Language Reactor" for the past week. (If you would like to know exactly how I'm using it you could read my log).


I actually have that extension. I also have Language Learning with Netflix. I forget which one but one of them will automatically pause the movie at every subtitle so you can read/study it. I was thinking I could turn on dual language and just read the subs in English and Korean as I go similarly to the way I'm reading in LingQ right now. I definitely plan on doing this but I'm weirdly getting hooked on the Prisoner from Azkaban in Korean at the moment. I never thought I'd get hooked on Harry Potter again lol.


Actually, "Language Learning with Netflix" extended its scope and became "Language Reactor", which has more features than the former and includes Youtube, and also reading copy-pasted text, or even Web pages, with the help of a pop-up dictionary and other tools. I uninstalled LLWN after I installed "Language Reactor" because the former version was not longer working (at least in my computer).

With "Language Reactor" you can do something very similar to what you do in LingQ with the added help of the English subs for a "parallel text" experience (or does LingQ also support "paralell texts"? It's been many years since the last time I used LingQ)

I have the auto-pause button active and dual subs (Korean CC/SDH and English) enabled, but I hide the English ones. Then I try to understand a whole line using only the Korean CC/SDH and the pop-up dictionary as help and after that I uncover the English subs to verify my understanding and correct any mistakes. The drama I'm using for this activity is one I've never watched before, so it feels like reading a TL book for the first time with the help of a dictionary, but with the plus of "complete" understanding of the story thanks to the English subs.

I love the Harry Potter series! And I remember "the Prisoner of Azkaban" was one of my favorite books in the series the first time I read it. :D

Some years ago I started reading "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in Japanese but I never went beyond the first page (I've had a hate-love relationship with Kanji for a long time. And I put the "hate" first because my first experiences with Kanji were very unpleasant for me at the time :cry:. But now I think I'm finally getting over it and starting to love Kanji more, so I may eventually, in the probably far future, go back to that book and give it another try).
4 x
Beyond The Story 10 Year Record of BTS Korean version: 36 / 522

kraemder
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Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1204
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby kraemder » Sun Aug 28, 2022 9:13 pm

AndyMeg wrote:Some years ago I started reading "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" in Japanese but I never went beyond the first page (I've had a hate-love relationship with Kanji for a long time. And I put the "hate" first because my first experiences with Kanji were very unpleasant for me at the time :cry:. But now I think I'm finally getting over it and starting to love Kanji more, so I may eventually, in the probably far future, go back to that book and give it another try).


If I could go back in time to give myself advice on Japanese it would be to read stuff with furigana as much as possible and even use machine generated furigana when necessary. Furigana is how Japanese kids really learn kanji (mostly from manga). Even now when I know a lot of kanji really well I look for a furigana option if I can. I think for the longest time I felt that if I wanted to learn to read kanji without furigana then I had to practice reading kanji without furigana. That's ok for flash cards but when you're reading it just takes away from the immersion effect when the proper Japanese reading won't come to mind for a word expect it to and especially for words you haven't learned yet. Anyway. Good luck.
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kraemder
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Re: More Korean than Japanese in 2022

Postby kraemder » Sun Aug 28, 2022 10:21 pm

It's been a lot longer than I would have thought since I posted here. I can't remember all the things I've done from January until now. I just assumed I wrote something here at least a few months ago but I guess that's not the case. Well. I guess you could say I got distracted and played a lot of World of Warcraft this year. So that may be why. I don't know how much language study I got in the first half of the year but I did quit the game and focus on Korean for a couple months in June/July. I think I was starting to make some good progress. I know I was using LingQ to read Harry Potter (and I tried out a few other things but mostly Harry Potter because everything else seems to be more difficult.) I finished the Prisoner ofAzkaban and started in on the Goblet of Fire. I haven't made too much progress yet on that one yet. I'm at the part where Harry and everyone has just arrived to see the quidditch world cup. I did some language exchanges in Japanese which are always fun and some iTalki lessons both in Japanese and Korean. I was sticking with one Korean tutor who spoke English but was ok using Korean to teach me. She seems younger (I never actually ask people their age) which makes it easier for me to make that request - I'm a bit hesitant about asking older tutors or teachers to alter their normal approach. And I signed up for an online class in Korean back in July but it doesn't actually start until well this past week. One on One lessons I think are great when you are ready to practice speaking but for old fashioned beginner or upper beginner grammar I really prefer a class. I feel dumb and having other dumb people with me really helps my morale. It's fun to meet people too although in an online class we don't get to arrive early or stay late and chat with people like in real life.

Yeah so there were about two months of good progress in June, July. Then I decided I missed World of Warcraft and got back into that a bit. I played again for a few weeks and now I've temporarily quit to study Korean again. I say temporarily because they are going to re-release the Wrath of the Lich King expansion and I really want to play it again when it's freshly released. And on a "fresh" (new) server. It should be fun. This time I am making myself promise to keep the game IN Korean. Unlike before. I wonder if I will follow through. I'm making flash cards already of some of the more important gaming vocabulary. Honestly, if I can learn, really learn, some of the more important basics then keeping it in Korean shouldn't be an issue. And maybe this time I can multi task Korean with video games.

So the class started. I signed up for upper beginner. The website is https://www.hillslearning.com/. I have homework. I hate homework. I guess I'll try to do it later this Sunday afternoon because it's always embarrassing if you don't do your homework. If it were up to me I would ask for assignments for me to learn a certain material or practice this dialogue and maybe there would be a test or quiz. I know people hate quizes and tests but I don't mind them at all - it's homework I hate. I'll happily go about learning the material my way but when you assign exercises or writing assignments (Until I can speak a language I really hate writing in it because I might as well just use Papago or Google translate to get a better result) I will fight it internally. But it's part of the class room experience. There's pros and cons to taking classes. Yeah.

It's a small online class. The first class we had 3 students and a middle aged female teacher who seems very nice and I like her. The other two students include a white American lady who seems older than me but I'm not positive and a younger asian American guy who seems like a recent college graduate. I suspect I've been studying longer than both of them. When I signed up for this class I was thinking I might want to do lower intermediate or a slightly further along upper beginner but I wasn't sure. Ultimately, this was pretty much the only class that fit my west coast schedule. It's an east coast school and frankly I'm surprised they had any classes that I was able to attend. It starts 4:40 PM west coast time and my shift ends at 4:30 PM (assuming I don't do any over time). The material we're doing is pretty basic grammar but my vocabulary is so all over the place and not really focused on what you learn in a textbook so I'm learning new vocabulary. Also, I haven't done much speaking so no matter how simple the material if the teacher makes me output I'll be pushing myself into new territory so I think that's good. The older lady seems slightly behind me and the younger guy but not so much that she's holding us back. As I mentioned I get the impression I've been studying longer than them and if you look back in my posts that's because I've been doing this several years if on and off still a long time. The guy seems very smart to me though and I get the impression he's a fast learner. I mentioned that he's asian but while his pronunciation sounds pretty good it's not scary good I don't think he has any Korean speaking relatives living with him or anything.

So the class is the most interesting thing going on for me Koreanwise I guess because there's actual people in it and real people make everything more interesting. As for studying I tried jumping right back into LingQ. I was hoping the few weeks off of learning wouldn't have hurt me too much. I don't really know how long it was though but it did. My brain was not ready to tackle Korean it was too used to video game mode to read Harry Potter. So I went back to Anki. I have vocabulary cards with real native audio and that native audio really helps make the cards more interesting to do. Doing a good bit of Anki over a few days got my brain back up to speed I think and I tried watching some k-dramas on Viki without subtitles. So far watching without subtitles is going pretty well. I recently saw a video by Ollie about Middlebury College.



That thumbnail is going to be giant and tower over my blog post but oh well. It's a good video and I recommend checking it out if you're curious. Anyway, it talks about the pledge to only speak this target language for the duration of the course (and that includes evenings etc except for maybe 2 hours on the weekend to call family or if you're shopping at the local store). People who go through this program swear by it. The teaching is first rate but more than that it's this pledge you take that makes it so effective. Even when I take a language course abroad in a foreign country, after class everyone is speaking English. Or Chinese when I went to a school with tons and tons of Chinese speakers instead. They're not speaking the target language at all or maybe 1 percent of the time outside of class. I can't quit my job and go run off to Middlebury but I got to thinking of just trying to emulate that at home. It was very inspiring at first but it's wearing off now unfortunately but at least I didn't outright forget about it. I was thinking maybe for certain parts of the day or just as much as possible when I wasn't working and I was alone I could well THINK in Korean. I've tried this a little bit in the past and it seemed to work but was truly painful and I gave up after a few minutes. I was using the internal filter we have to only let Korean into my subconscious internal monologue I do all the time. I tried doing that after watching this video and it didn't work at all. I think I just am a bit too rusty at Korean. I can't even do it for 5 minutes. But I can make myself mix in some Korean with the English which is much more realistic for maintaining beyond 5 minutes anyway. When I was in Japan and trying to get myself to think in Japanese more I would translate from English into Japanese sometimes when I was thinking in English instead I'd just translate it into Japanese. It did involve pulling out my phone and looking up stuff in the dictionary a lot but I think it was helpful. For whatever reason I didn't make a real effort to think in Japanese until I was IN Japan and had been there some time.

I didn't use a dictionary for Korean rather I used Papago translator. I then put the translations in my SRS deck (flash cards deluxe - the SRS app of choice I have for random stuff I want to SRS as opposed to pre-made decks I download). I think the more you think in a language the better for sure. When it comes to remembering new information we all have a sort of filter that is totally unconscious and dictates whether something gets stored in short term, mid term, and long term memory. You can do certain activities to try to encourage something to stay in memory like repeating something over and over or trying to recall it over and over say using flash cards. Obviously doing such activities will generally get something into your short term memory pretty easily but getting it into mid term and especially long term memory becomes really tricky. I would say that the more you think about something the more likely your internal filter is to agree that this something is important and store it in memory accordingly and if you can THINK in Korean then that's a great way to trick or maybe prove to your internal memory filter that this stuff needs to be stored for later. *edit* Basically, I think that output, which is basically vocalizing your internal thoughts, is in fact key to learning a language to your potential, and I would argue that even people who focus on immersion or consuming material in the language like listening and reading over outputting, if they're learning quickly, they probably ARE outputting - just in their head and not out loud with other people.

I'm trying my best to think in Korean but then again maybe not truly my best because I'm writing this post in English but I am trying. I think talking to myself and looking stuff up in Papago is great but it gets old too so to force Korean to be running through my head I started watching k-dramas without subs. Maybe thanks to being a bit more motivated it seemed to go well. I also motivated myself by telling myself that this is definitely an activity I would be doing if I were IN Korea and wanted to improve as fast as possible and we all know being in a country will get you the best results so thinking - hey, what would I be doing right now if I were in Korea? Is a fair think to put to yourself. Sure shopping and eating delicious Korean food comes to mind and I would like to talk to people but really I think I would still do most of my studying alone because I like to be in control of how I learn and what Korean person would want to literally teach me Korean anyway.

Anyway, it went well. The next day I then went back to Harry Potter and tried reading it. I took the same approach that I did to watching the TV show without subtitles and it seemed to work surprisingly well. I looked up far fewer words than before. I can't say I understood much better but I was listening to the language so to speak in my mind and it felt like an improvement from before when I was looking up a lot of words or using the bilingual parallel text method. They say you need comprehensible input and I CAN understand some of it but only some of it. The dialogues are definitely easier to follow. If I weren't doing lots of flash cards on top of this I think I would have to be looking up more words than I am but considering I am doing lots of flash cards already I don't think I need to look up so many words while I immerse.

That's about it for this update I hope it won't be nearly as long before I update again. Since I'm signed up for a class I would hope not.
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