I've decided to just jump head first into native content. My long-term goal isn't to converse with natives (although it would be a plus), but to watch/read korean media without needing translations. Particularly, K-dramas. I realized the only way I'm going to get good enough to watch K-dramas is to just do it. So, that's what I'm going to do. Screw it.
So, my starting point:
- Grammar: good enough? Lol. I'm at the point where I'm no longer interested in following any textbooks. Which is somewhere around level 8 TTMIK (though I can't say I've retained much from level 6-8), and realizing I'm vaguely familiar with over half the vocabulary points in KGIU: Intermediate AFTER I already bought it. There's a ton of grammar out there that I've learned and forgotten and it's a continuous, vicious cycle.
Vocabulary: This is the one thing I have no idea how to track. I'd say I know somewhere between 1000-2000 words, which is incredibly vague, but honestly I don't know. Sometimes I can understand a lot of what I'm reading, and sometimes I can't understand any of it and I question my progress these past two years.
Listening: Non-existent. I can understand small sentences like 밥 먹었어? but add anything with more than two clauses, and I've clocked out. A lot of it has to do with listening speed, I think, because my ears can't keep up and also just comprehension.
Now what I want to accomplish. My goals for this challenge are to:
- 1. Increase my vocabulary. I want to end the year knowing (passively) 3000 more words. So far, this year, I have about 600 new words in my Anki.
- 2. Increase my reading comprehension. Since I'm going to be doing a lot of subtitle reading, I want to get better at understanding what I read, and reading faster. Currently, I have to pause to read the subs, which isn't ideal when you're watching something.
- 3. Listening? I don't know. Currently, I'm doing a lot of subtitle reading which puts my listening at secondary, but if it passively improves, that would be great.
- 4. I'm hoping the time it takes me to watch 1 K-drama episode will also dramatically decrease as I get to the end of the series. Which means pausing less, reading faster, having to add less words to Anki, etc. I'm hoping for some obvious improvement!
So, for this I'm going to track unknown grammar and vocabulary, time spent watching, and just for fun, I'm going to share some cool slang words I learn. I'll be updating this everytime I finish an episode.
The drama I'm going to be watching first is Love Alarm. It's a simple, high-school Netflix drama about an app that rings if someone around you likes you. I'm already about halfway through the first episode, and I'm excited to share my results so far.