Jay's 2016 German and Korean Log

[druckfehler]

Viel Erfolg beim Deutsch und Koreanisch lernen!
Although it will sometimes seem like it's taking forever, you'll be watching Korean shows without subtitles before you know it. It looks like you got off to a good start in 2016. I'll be checking your log now and then to see how it's going and wish you success for both your languages!

[JayFromNJ]

Just a mini-update because I only did a mini amount of study this week. The parents were away on vacation and I housesat for them. I took some stuff with me, but I just was never in the mood to study. I used my housesitting as my own little vacation. I did an hour and a half of German study and an hour of Korean study. Back to normal this week.

And thanks druckfehler!

[JayFromNJ]

So you know that joke about how the definition for "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

That's been me. Not just these past few weeks, but since the beginning of the year. Every day, I would block off 8pm until I go to bed (11pm to midnight) as my language study time. And every day when 8pm rolled around, I'd push it to 9 because I'm in the middle of something...until finally at 9:30 or 10 I get started on German. Most nights. And then I'd get started on Korean at 11-11:30 if I weren't too tired. Most nights, I am. And every day, I say "This night will be different. I'll start crushing it at 8pm!"...and then I don't.

The biggest issue is that I've just gotten lazy. Like most people, I like to take it easy after work. Watch some TV, play games, just surf the 'net. But once I'm relaxed, it's hard for me to un-relax and put effort into something like language learning. (Or learning to play piano, something else I'm doing. Or working on my programming projects.) Also, several months ago, I had to start getting up earlier for work. I feel like I'm still adjusting to it.

I can easily just block off time in the afternoon and evening to study. Just took me 7 weeks to realize that that's what I have to do now.

Anyway, update on the past 3 weeks

German
Weeks 5-7 Time Studied: 10 hours
2016 Total: 30 hours, 30 minutes
Extensive Listening: 23 hours, 30 minutes (no change)

Korean
Weeks 5-7 Time Studied: 3 hours, 45 minutes
2016 Total: 17 hours, 45 minutes
Extensive Listening: 21 hours, 30 minutes (+2 hours)

[Snow]

That's a lot of resources. Don't you get confused?

[JayFromNJ]

I end up focusing on 2 or 3 at a time, rather than going through all at once. I group them together based on their format. Sogang, Yonsei and Ehwa are class room textbooks. Tuttle is too but it's far more exercise/grammar based so I put that in with Grammar In Use series. I have the self-study courses like Colloquial, Hippocrene's and Spoken World. I do one book from each group at a time. Sometimes I do start thinking I'm Superman and can tackle 5+ at a time. I usually have to learn that lesson at least once every year.

Right now, I'm (very, very slowly) working through Sogang 1B, Grammar In Use: Beginner and Colloquial.

But, it was an expensive stockpile to build. I spent a good two years or so buying resources before I finally jumped into Korean. Every few months, I'd see a new one I'd want and when I started, I had a small mountain of books to work through.

[JayFromNJ]

Week 8 Update (Feb 15 - 21)

Well, this wasn't the best week to declare that I would do better as I got busy for a few days. Could only get a few good days of study in a and a few days of just doing a bit. Still, it was a much better week than the last few.

So I've relented a bit on the "no reviewing at all" mindset and have done a bit lately. When I go through a section of a textbook, workbook, or a lesson from a self-teaching course, I do several things with the dialog. Listen to the audio several times, then read along with the audio, slowly read the text, re-listen to the dialog, scriptorium the dialog, listen again. What I've been doing lately is splitting it up. I'll do the listening, (intensive) read the dialog, listen again on "Day 1". Then on "Day 2" (a few days later), I'll listen, scriptorium the dialog, listen again. And then on "Day 3", sometime between 1 week and 2 weeks later, I'll listen to the dialog several times to give me some more exposure. Nothing insane like I used to do, just splitting up how I digest a lesson into a few days spread out over a few weeks.

The way I do with a grammar book, vocab book, workbook, etc. is that I'll do the lesson normally, just reading the explanation and sample sentences and then doing the exercises (for the workbooks). A few days later, I'll use an index card and cover the English side for all of the words and sample sentences and try to remember their meaning. Anything I get wrong gets scriptoriumed. The third time through (~10 days later) is the same.

After the third time, it's over, time to move on.

It has been a good compromise between the part of my brain that constantly wants to move forward and the part of my brain that constantly wants to go back and review everything. But this only goes for some of the learning resources like workbooks, textbooks, etc., and not the native materials. I don't apply this to intensive/dual-language/extensive reading, doing any of the Deutsche Welle lessons, etc.

German

Studied: 6 hours, 15 minutes
Extensive Listening: 3 hours

Finished Practice Makes Perfect: Vocabulary up to lesson 13 and have gotten tired of it. 7 more to go, but I'll finish those up some other time. I'm moving onto PMP: Verb Tenses.

I'm level 9 on DuoLingo with plenty of tree left to go.

I did two Deutsche Welle Top Thema lessons. Their Top Thema lessons take a news story, simplify the language and provides audio of it. They end up being about two to two and half minutes long. The first from 16th about 'die Litfaßsäule' and how they were invented. The second from the 19th,'Partnerwahl von heute', which was about what men and women look for when dating. There's a new Top Thema every 1-4 days it seems.

I've also started listening to DW's "Langsam gesprochene Nachrichten" series. They take several of the top stories for the day, sum them up in one paragraph, and have someone read them slowly. I find the slow narration to be annoying. Thankfully, they provide an mp3 of the narration at normal speed so I listen to that. It's usually ~5 minutes long. A little too long to do anything intensive with it. What I do is make sure I understand what each headline means so that I know what the paragraph will be about, and then listen to the mp3 while following along with the text a few times. This is a daily series.

I'm also going to start going through their Video Thema series. They are generally 3+ minutes with video and transcript. They are also more advanced than Top Thema, but they only make 1 per week so I'll have plenty of time to work through it.

2016 Total
Studied: 36 hours, 45 minutes
Extensive Listening: 26 hours, 30 minutes

Korean

Studied: 4 hours, 30 minutes
Extensive Listening: 2 hours

Finished chapter 2 of Sogang 1B and am up to Unit 5, section 7 of Korean Grammar In Use: Beginner. I'm also finished lesson 13 of Level 5 in the TalkToMeInKorean lessons.

I don't like how the dialogs in Colloquial are really slow but I figured they'd speed up. It didn't occur to me until now to listen ahead and check for myself. They do speed up, but still have a noticeable pause between every word. I retired Colloquial to the bookshelf and have moved on to Hippocrene's Korean...which, funny enough, I have been pushing off because when I first listened to the dialogs a few years ago, I found them to be too fast. Now they're not, so I suppose i have made some progress.

One more thing I've started is translating song lyrics. I've started with 리쌍's "Ballerino".

2016 Total
Studied: 22 hours, 15 minutes
Extensive Listening: 23 hours, 30 minutes

[JayFromNJ]

Week 9 (Feb 22 - 28)

Almost forgot to update!

So, I made it about 2 months before my wunderlust got the better of me. New personal best. I'm going to start Spanish up this week.

If all goes right this year, and I finish my goals in German, the plan is to start Spanish up "full time" next year. The last few weeks, I've gotten back on schedule with my German and Korean. Not fully, but that's usually in number of days, not so much number of hours studying. This past week, I only studied on 4 days (for 10 hours, 15 minutes total between the two languages). Those other 3 days? Not good days (migraines hit me hard last week...)

My added goal this year is to get through the Spanish Duolingo tree, Living Language Spanish Complete, PMP: Basic Spanish and Easy Spanish Step-by-Step. 15-30 minutes a day.

German
Studied: 5 hours, 15 minutes
Extensive Listening: 1 hour

Completed the first two chapters of PMP: Verb Tenses and made some progress on Duolingo. Still level 9 (says I have 2050 XP left until level 10, and I do about 30 XP per day).

I studied two episodes of Deutsche Welle's "Das Deutschlandlabor", it's an A2 video series. Decent for beginners. They focus on a new topic in each lesson. Lesson 1 was school and lesson 2 was fashion. I did get several new vocab words from the fashion lesson. I might go back to this every once in a while, but this week I'm going to go back to the Top Thema and Video Thema series.

2016 Total
Studied: 42 hours
Extensive Listening: 27 hours, 30 minutes


Korean
Studied: 5 hours
Extensive Listening: 1 hours

Sogang 1B: Part of the way through chapter 3
Korean Grammar In Use: Beginner - Just about done with Unit 5
TTMIK Level 5 - Finished Lesson 17
Hippocrene's Korean - Part of the way through chapter 1

Slow and steady wins the race.

2015 Total
Studied: 27 hours, 15 minutes
Extensive Listening: 24 hours, 30 minutes

[JayFromNJ]

Week 10 (Feb 29th - March 6th)

German
Studied: 7 hours, 15 minutes
Extensive Listening: 3 hours

Finished up to chapter 4 of PMP: Verb Tenses, kept up with Duolingo and studied 2 Top Thema stories. The majority of my time was spent reading, mostly dual-language books of short stories.

2016 Total
Studied: 49 hours, 15 minutes
Extensive Listening: 30 hours, 30 minutes

Korean
Studied: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Extensive Listening: 5 hours

Didn't do much with the textbooks this week. A lesson in TTMIK, finished Hippocrene's chapter 1. I finished "intensively reading" the lyrics to 리쌍's "Ballerino". Spent most of my time watching TV shows, though.

Sogang 1B: Part of the way through chapter 3
Korean Grammar In Use: Beginner - Just about done with Unit 5
TTMIK Level 5 - Finished Lesson 18
Hippocrene's Korean - Finished Chapter 1

2016 Total
Studied: 29 hours, 45 minutes
Extensive Listening: 29 hours, 30 minutes

Spanish
Studied: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Duolingo Level 2 and I finished chapter 1 of Living Language Spanish Complete.

2016 Total
Studied: 1 hour, 30 minutes

[OwlPanda]

So you know that joke about how the definition for "insanity" is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

When I think of doing the same thing over and over until I get a better result, I don't think of it as insanity. I think of it as practice.

I hope my interpretation applies to language learning. I really hope so.

[JayFromNJ]

Week 11 (March 7th-13th)

German
Studied: 6 hours, 45 minutes
Extensive Listening: 0 hours

Finished PMP: Verb Tenses chapter 8. Chapter 8 was the first chapter that was a bit challenging as it had me producing the Imperative Form for some forms I have not seen much of before.

Been keeping up with Duolingo and am Level 10 (misread the XP before). I have 650 left until level 11, so at 30xp a day, I'll get there in a few weeks.

Studied 2 more Top Thema lessons as well as the latest Video Thema from Deutsche Welle. Even though Top Thema is labeled B1, and Video Thema is labeled B2/C1, I didn't find the content of Video Thema to be more challenging. It's just longer and maybe uses more colloquial language (Top Thema is usually 2:30-3:00, the Video Thema lessons are usually around 5 minutes).

2016 Total
Studied: 48 hours, 45 minutes
Extensive Listening: 27 hours, 30 minutes

Korean
Studied: 3 hours, 45 minutes
Extensive Listening: 1 hour

Sogang 1B - Finished Chapter 3. This grammar in this lesson was about using the honorific verb ending in the past and present (nothing new for me). The vocab as about health, and I did get a lot of new terms there. In the listening section, my ears did pick up 걱정하지 마세요 ("Don't worry about it") right away. Can't count how many times I've heard that (and read it as text on the screen) in Korean Variety shows.

Korean Grammar In Use: Beginner - Finished the last entry for Unit 5 (which was on Time Expressions), and completed Unit 6 which had only 2 entries on expressing ability. I already knew both from TTMIK. In fact, Korean Grammar In Use has essentially become a companion to TTMIK. I'll learn a grammar point in TTMIK, some time later see it in Korean Grammar In Use, and then sometime after that, come to in Sogang on Yonsei (the recent exception being -을 수 있어요/없어요 for expressing ability which was covered in chapter 1 of SG1B, and a real long time ago in TTMIK).

This is one of the main reasons I ditched SRS (besides it sucking my will to live). When I layer resources like this, my studying schedule becomes it's own SRS system with the added bonus of giving me different contexts and audio every time I see vocab and grammar again.

TTMIK Level 5 - Finished Lesson 23 - Many of the lessons in this level have been on direct and indirect quoting. I feel like I do have to do this level a second time when I finish. There is a lot here to take in in this level.

Hippocrene's Korean - Finished Chapter 1 - Basic Greetings and whatnot. Chapter 2 is on talking about yourself.

2016 Total
Studied: 31 hours
Extensive Listening: 25 hours, 30 minutes

Spanish
Studied: 2 hours

Level 3 in Duolingo and I finished chapter 3 in Living Language.

2016 Total
Studied: 3 hours, 30 minutes


2016 Overall
Studied: 83 hours, 15 minutes
Extensive Listening: 53 hours

On pace for just under 400 hours studied for the year, but I did have a few weeks where I did practically nothing. I started off wanting 1000, but that's already out of reach. If I can hit 300 in German and Korean each, with maybe 100 in Spanish, then I'll take that as a silver medal. Still going to need to up my effort a good bit to get to that.