Re: Rdearman 2016-22 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어질 때가 있다 (Sometimes even monkeys fall from trees)
Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2022 1:39 pm
Mandarin
I'm probably going to remove Mandarin again, I'm not really doing anything and my friend disappeared again.
Korean
So.... since the last update, I've had one more lesson in Korean. This time we went off-piste and off the lesson plan. This is because the week before, my teacher had taught me the conjugation for being very formal. Like speaking to the president or a stranger's grandmother. Anyway, this prompted me to sort out my notes. Twice now, I have collated all my notes and verbs on handwritten pages. I didn't have enough blank space on the papers to include another column for formal conjugations, so I decided to put them all in a spreadsheet.
I have installed a Korean keyboard for my Linux machine, so it was a simple operation to open a spreadsheet and type in the infinitives, then present tense, then past tense and the new formal tense. I've been given ~60 verbs so far, but on my handwritten notes I'd only spent time conjugating about half. Basically, when I figured I had got the gist of it, I stopped. In the spreadsheet, I decided I would do all the verbs regardless. I would also be able to add more tenses like past progressive, etc. easily.
Flash forward to last week's lesson and just before we started speaking on Skype, I asked my teacher if we could quickly run through the spreadsheet to make sure they were right. (If you guessed that they were not all right, then you are correct.) I had about 30 errors out of the 240 cells. Some were straightforward typos, since I'm doing a lot of "hunt and peck" typing with the Korean keyboard. I'm a touch typist on an English keyboard. Other errors were more basic and showed that I had misunderstood some lessons from way back when I started. So it was an excellent reminder and review of things I should have known.
My teacher is really cool, and he is so driven to help people learn Korean, we actually went an hour over my allotted hour of class so that he could explain everything I'd got wrong. He also gave me a homework assignment to "Think of a question!" since it is much easier for him to explain things in detail which I don't understand than it is for him to try and figure out what I don't understand. This homework assignment seems simple, but there is a clause at the end of it. Which was using the verbs and the words you already know, make simple sentences and find a question. He isn't going to look at my sentences, I can check really simple ones with Google Translate. But the point is to try and identify gaps.
I have also started to read 조지의 놀라운 마법의 약 / 로알드 달 (George's Marvellous Medicine - by Roald Dahl). I bought the Kindle version in English, so I could read it and know what was going on, and I've started intensive reading. This was one of the books which I'd picked up in my travels in Korea. It is one of the simpler books which I have.
I did manage one Korean language exchange and reviewed some of the stuff I've been learning and getting help with pronunciation.
Italian
I had to cancel my LE with my Italian friend, who has now gone off to Italy for 2 weeks, so probably not going to do any Italian speaking for a little while. I'm still trying to read a page or two a week of the Italian books I have. I might switch out the book I'm reading for something less... large.
French
My French friend had to cancel on me because her daughter came to visit. So probably not going to be doing my French. Although oddly I did watch a French film on Netflix today and I have been watching a lot of the travel programs in French on YouTube. I suppose when I don't "have to study French", I tend to do a lot more stuff in French. Go figure, huh?
I'm probably going to remove Mandarin again, I'm not really doing anything and my friend disappeared again.
Korean
So.... since the last update, I've had one more lesson in Korean. This time we went off-piste and off the lesson plan. This is because the week before, my teacher had taught me the conjugation for being very formal. Like speaking to the president or a stranger's grandmother. Anyway, this prompted me to sort out my notes. Twice now, I have collated all my notes and verbs on handwritten pages. I didn't have enough blank space on the papers to include another column for formal conjugations, so I decided to put them all in a spreadsheet.
I have installed a Korean keyboard for my Linux machine, so it was a simple operation to open a spreadsheet and type in the infinitives, then present tense, then past tense and the new formal tense. I've been given ~60 verbs so far, but on my handwritten notes I'd only spent time conjugating about half. Basically, when I figured I had got the gist of it, I stopped. In the spreadsheet, I decided I would do all the verbs regardless. I would also be able to add more tenses like past progressive, etc. easily.
Flash forward to last week's lesson and just before we started speaking on Skype, I asked my teacher if we could quickly run through the spreadsheet to make sure they were right. (If you guessed that they were not all right, then you are correct.) I had about 30 errors out of the 240 cells. Some were straightforward typos, since I'm doing a lot of "hunt and peck" typing with the Korean keyboard. I'm a touch typist on an English keyboard. Other errors were more basic and showed that I had misunderstood some lessons from way back when I started. So it was an excellent reminder and review of things I should have known.
My teacher is really cool, and he is so driven to help people learn Korean, we actually went an hour over my allotted hour of class so that he could explain everything I'd got wrong. He also gave me a homework assignment to "Think of a question!" since it is much easier for him to explain things in detail which I don't understand than it is for him to try and figure out what I don't understand. This homework assignment seems simple, but there is a clause at the end of it. Which was using the verbs and the words you already know, make simple sentences and find a question. He isn't going to look at my sentences, I can check really simple ones with Google Translate. But the point is to try and identify gaps.
I have also started to read 조지의 놀라운 마법의 약 / 로알드 달 (George's Marvellous Medicine - by Roald Dahl). I bought the Kindle version in English, so I could read it and know what was going on, and I've started intensive reading. This was one of the books which I'd picked up in my travels in Korea. It is one of the simpler books which I have.
I did manage one Korean language exchange and reviewed some of the stuff I've been learning and getting help with pronunciation.
Italian
I had to cancel my LE with my Italian friend, who has now gone off to Italy for 2 weeks, so probably not going to do any Italian speaking for a little while. I'm still trying to read a page or two a week of the Italian books I have. I might switch out the book I'm reading for something less... large.
French
My French friend had to cancel on me because her daughter came to visit. So probably not going to be doing my French. Although oddly I did watch a French film on Netflix today and I have been watching a lot of the travel programs in French on YouTube. I suppose when I don't "have to study French", I tend to do a lot more stuff in French. Go figure, huh?