Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

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Picaboo
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Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby Picaboo » Mon Nov 21, 2022 11:17 pm

It's been 10 months since I began to learn Korean. I've probably averaged 3 hours a day, if you include dubious activities. Let's say around 1000 hours. It has turned out to be a much harder task than I ever imagined. I'm a natural learner and have never really "studied or drilled" anything, outside of cramming, despite lots of years at universities (10) and then doing online courses. Language learning certainly changed that. Luckily, I've enjoyed the process of learning how to learn and have tried practically every known method that doesn't involve chatting.

At this point I am fueled by sheer stubbornness and the dismay at the sunk cost. 1000 hours doing almost anything else and I'd most certainly have had a bigger payout.

I won't go into all I have tried, but will simply record where I am now and what I'm doing. I will probably have less time for Korean going forward but I wish to stay motivated. Maybe this log will help.

Currently I am reading Olly Richard's Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners. Which is beginner-level in grammar and Intermediate in vocab, as far as I can judge. There certainly has been no grammar that has confused me. I am reading intensively due to the number of unknown words. (I have no idea how many words I know, but it's not bad (1500? 2000?) for someone just leaving "beginner" world and is now going all input all the time.)


Technique with the text. Part of my time is pushing on through to the end of the book. I'm currently at 70%. This is slow. My first read through I don't add anything to Anki or do any kind of vocab review. I simply understand the story. I find this slow (compared to English, painfully slow) but very rewarding.

My second time through a story is a day or two later. At this point I enter every word I don't know into Anki (on average, this is less than 10 words per page. This sounds time consuming, but it's not that bad.). I add a mnemonic because I don't remember anything without one and I have learned how to generate good ones based on quick associations in a matter of seconds. Over a short period of time, I forget the mnemonic but remember the word.

The face of the card is simply the word to recognize. The back has the sentence the word is from and the mnemonic I used to memorize it. And the answer which is the English 'equivalent'). I don't like using Anki, but I like results. I do my card review first thing in the morning. I spend less than 7 seconds per card in review, including cases where I have to rework a non-sticky mnemonic, or put in some sort of memory effort.
By my third review (third day) I can instantly give a one word definition for most items. This is because of my simultaneous work with the text. Anki is simply a supplement to streamline my process (and has built in spaced rep). Also putting the card into Anki is actually a huge part of the learning process.

My third time through the story is reading along with audio (which is read quite slow by the narrator). By this time, I many of new words more or less in the "known" category though Anki and the previous readings. The story is a graded reader-style so I get some awesome repetition to cement the word into memory with context.

My fourth time through the story and beyond is listening only, while I'm doing other things. I may also read and listen, if parts are escaping me and I have the time or motivation.

My goal from this activity is to improve my reading speed, my general fluency with Korean, and expand my vocabulary. I am very happy with the results so far. The results are so good that I don't mind the repetition of content.

--
I am also breaking down and shadowing Talk to Me in Korean Iyagis (conversations at a slower than normal speed). At this point, I'm taking a break from them, but will listen to the ones I know for easy listening practice.

--
I never saw all of Star Trek Deep Space Nine. I am watching it with Korean subtitles on and trying to catch as much as I can while they go by. My reading speed isn't fast enough, but it's amazing how much I can grasp because it's so simple. Not very productive, but it amuses me.
--

I watch part of a K-Drama with Korean subtitles and the pause button, and English subtitles blurred until moused over. I enjoy this for about 15 minutes, then grow bored and stop. I would say, having done this for the last six months, this above all else, gives me a sense of accomplishment. My Korean is horrifyingly bad... but wow, there is so much I can actually follow now, at least while reading.... It just doesn't feel like a 1000 hours worth of skill! I'm so happy I never counted the hours. :roll:
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Re: Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby Picaboo » Wed Dec 21, 2022 8:04 pm

It’s been a month (3 weeks of study time) since my last update. I’ve carved out two hours a day for Korean. No media, just studying. This excludes the week I had to take off, which created an Anki-mess of backed up cards and catastrophic forgetting, and which took 5 dull days to sort out and get back on rhythm.

PROCESS
My time, other than a few days down a rabbit-hole or two (I am great at finding new resources and bouncing around. Not recommended, but whatever. It’s easy to get bored and no effort is a completely wasted effort.)
My two hours were loosely divided in terms of time, given my mood, but somewhat strict in terms of activities allowed.

1) Vocab. Anki review. This took anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes depending how much I had been shoving into my deck and whether I was making good mnemonics when I did. I keep it brisk. After a week off I did a second session for a few days to catch up.

2) Production. This usually filled out the remainder of my first 50 minutes. I have a handful of intermediate conversations in Korean (TTMIK Iyagis) that I have previously translated into English. For this task, I take those English sentences and verbally translate each one back into Korean. I do as many as I can. I’m pretty slow, as I’m far from fluent when it comes to production. At the end, I listen to the Koreans doing the conversation. This is now crystal clear. If I can produce it, and have produced it, listening becomes easy. I can also hear these people speaking when I fall off to sleep at night, like a song playing.

3) Ten minute break.

4) Extensive Input. Continuing to read my Intermediate story book through to the end not looking up anything.

5) Intensive Input. Reading and Breaking down previous chapters. Any sentence I don’t understand I put into a translator. Any word or grammar I don’t know I put into Anki. I got 66% of the way through the boo

6) Total of one hour for activity 4 and 5, divided however I felt. Later days I had finished with my first read through, so began extensively reading the earlier, well studied, chapters as a replacement activity and to help cement new vocab.

If I didn’t feel like doing any of the above activities on a particular day, I didn’t do them. That is my primary rule of language learning, but I always did something else. Good habits but not boring ones, is my moto. Also, a couple of times I also had to slow down on shoveling words to Anki so I didn’t get overwhelmed. Anki is boring, but for me, an annoyingly effective part of my routine.

One side journey… I got caught up in http://xn--hu1b40go5ck8x.com/ a series of narrated picture books with six levels. All of them seemingly below my level. So I took it on as a good quick review. Turns out nothing is “below my level” because of the huge gaps in my vocabulary. Even some seemingly basic concrete nouns any 5 year old would know, like leaf or zebra, I had to learn. So I put what I didn’t know in Anki and pushed on through some of the stories. But I left it to the side, given it wasn’t proving to be a quick review, even if it was simplistic.
Another side journey. I breezed through the 2000 Evita Korean Grammar Sentences (in Anki) in four sittings. This felt great because the last time I tried, some of it was beyond my level. This supposedly includes Topik grammar up to level 4… and I didn’t really even notice anything out of the ordinary…. my main fails were on high numbers, which I refuse to sit down and learn. Previously, I refused to learn low numbers and the days of the week I am sort of okay on those now. If you don’t mind me mistaking seven for eight.

I also squeezed in a small amount of listening while doing chores. However, I was more interested in English language podcasts, so didn’t force it.

RESULTS
The basic idea these three weeks was to internalize the material and make my reading of the stories far more fluent. I added 450 words to my passive vocabulary in three weeks (about 48 hours of study time) and an unknown number to my active vocabulary. (I use the terms passive and active as a dichotomy for explanation purposes, not because two such categories actually exist. It’s a continuum of knowing.)

I’d go so far as to say, for me, this is the best learning system. Only downside is it requires discipline because it’s not all fun and games due to the repetition I reading, the slowness of reading, and Anki work.
It is somewhat rewarding though because the improvement is noticeable, with the learning material and real world stuff, with listening, reading and speaking.


RANDOM THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE LEARNING

People say beginners feel like they are making rapid improvements, but I never really felt that way. I felt like I was slogging through mud and Korean never felt natural. They also say that there is some sort of Intermediate plateau and I could see that happening. It makes sense in terms of the research on expertise in all fields, and in terms of the basic logic behind diminishing returns, and also word and grammar structure frequency.
But right now, I feel like I’m consolidating all that beginner stuff while gaining actual usable skill with the language. My learning feels nothing like the rapidly accelerating graph that levels off, that one they always show. This may be a result of self-learning, I don’t know.

Personally, I don’t even know what they are measuring on that y-axis, so who knows? Words known? How many different foods you can order in a foreign land? How your teacher feels about you?
For my progress over time I would definitely draw an extremely gradual line upward with sudden discontinuities/spikes where so much clicks in a short time (although, obviously based on all that work toiling out on the gentle grade, not due to some sort of마법…magic).

Next month
For the next month, I plan to finish the intensive reading of the intermediate reader and re-read the later chapters a number of times. I think I will also drill sentence production. I am much better at reading sentence than creating my own. For example in the Evita deck, I bet a majority of them I couldn’t do in reverse (from English to Korean), due to gaps in production of both vocab and 100% correct grammar (even though they were very easy to read and understand).
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Picaboo
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Re: Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby Picaboo » Fri Jan 20, 2023 10:55 pm

Before I begin, an aside.

I checked out Bluebird (an Assimil-style learning website). I tried some Japanese and I am in awe of people who can learn this way. Trying to blindly repeat a string of sounds without anything meaningful to latch on to apart from the English translation… well, I was pretty bad at it. Both at pronunciation and retention. Worse, I quickly got bored. Had I started with this I would have given up on language learning and thought myself hopeless. It is very intriguing to me, given I previously gave little weight to “learning styles”… probably because my preferred styles matches how they teach most subjects in school.

---
It was a year ago when I decided to learn Korean. I remember checking out Steve Kaufman, Olly Richards and others who advocate extensive input, and thinking how hard can that be? I like reading!

Turns out I was not ready for (exclusively) learning through extensive input and remained so for a whole year. It was a bit of a pipe dream, really. Maybe because it’s my first new language, maybe because Korean is so far from English, more likely because any extreme one-sided method is not likely to be effective for most people, especially, at the beginning stages without the perfect materials.

Anyway, I am slowly giving extensive input a chance as my primary activity. I have been doing more and more now that I am good enough to actually have things I can understand without intensive effort.


But first, there was the first half of this month. Where was I at? Well, my reading comprehension far outstripped my ability to do anything else in the language. My speaking was atrocious. As my own personal language trainer there was only one thing to recommend: drill speaking.

So that’s what I did, three hours a day of Anki, translating English sentences into Korean ones. I would see the English sentence, speak out loud in Korean, then listen to a Korean saying it, then repeat it again. If I made any mistake, no matter how minor, I would hit not known.

This was time consuming. But I have built good study habits (hard won, after decades of none at all). I had no trouble doing it every day, this Korean workout of mine. It was rewarding to see progress, even though some days I was more tongue-tied, less Korean, than on others.

Then one day, I was too bored. So no more of that Anki deck! Off with it’s head!

Results: My spoken language was much improved due to the speaking drills. My general agility with the language was also improved. It was an excellent technique and I may return to it at some point, but I think it has a shelf life due to its repetitiveness.

-
For the last ten days of the month I did three things.
First, extensive/intensive reading of intermediate learner materials. I must say it was a bit tiring, a bit boring, at times. This hour also included anki vocab review and adding new words to my deck. I have come to the end of Anki-fying all unknown words in Olly Richard’s storybook. Not sure how many words are in the book but I know them all! *Cough…. If you define “knowing” as recognizes them bare naked or in a few contexts. This is of course only the start of knowing. The end being them popping effortlessly to mind when needed. But I will take the win. It seems like it must be a lot of words. Certainly a lot with 공s and 장s in them.
-
Second, I also returned to translating my previously studied IYAGI conversations from English to Korean. My method, this month, was to push through the entire conversation in English, translating out loud to Korean, as best I could. Basically, acting out both sides of the conversation and not stopping if I made a mistake or couldn’t remember a word or the proper grammar.

I then read the conversation in Korean, taking mental note of the things I had gotten wrong. I then listened to the conversation in Korean, doing my best to visual the two people talking, and trying to generate feelings and images concerning what they were saying, rather than repeating after them. This activity made time fly by.
-
The third thing I did, for fun, was start to break down scenes in Korean dramas. I played the scene with English subtitles. Then I broke down the subtitle text by investigating new words or expressions or grammar forms. This proved to be time consuming for a single scene and productivity-wise not a good use of my time.
I realized I need to better curate the scenes ahead of time—choose ones with vocabulary and grammar that is not too far beyond me. And with actors who pronounce decently. This activity was partially motivated by the talks at New Years new language conference. I wanted to move to things I enjoy.


-
My first self-challenge for the month is to let go of the impractical need to understanding everything. I have to let the natural process of learning take place. I probably slow it down by stopping and looking up every word, or rewinding, or putting on google translates. I remember when I was ten years old and I read Lord of the Rings. I had no trouble being completely lost, being way over my head, nor had any impulse to look up a single word. The experience of struggling through to receive the story, in fact, taught me so much about reading and put me way ahead in school, but that was not my goal. As an adult, it’s hard to let go of the need for perfection.

-
My second self-challenge for the next month is to begin to write. My spelling is terrible so this will be a challenge. But I have put it off for too long. Given I am very much a read-write thinker/learner, who does best by pondering things and writing them out, this should be a good modality for me. The slowness of it does worry me. I prize efficiency to some degree, um, just because learning Korean seems to take forever.

All my activities apart from writing will be comprehensible input. No more adding things to Anki (But I will review what is in my deck, from time-to-time). I will try to focus more on the extensive aspect and not push new content that I have to work too hard at. Regarding reading, easy content will be easy to find, with listening maybe not so much. I will listen to things I have previously read, I suppose. Thus, none of the listening will be that compelling. Also, I might use the limited amount of TPRS on YouTube.


--
In the upcoming months, I hope to be ready to read Harry Potter and Almond. By the end of the year I hope to be able to watch some K-Dramas without subtitles, or at least sans English subtitles. I won’t feel bad if I can’t get there. These are simply aspirations. My level of suck is so high that I had to leave ego far behind. In fact, all that remains of that once proud appendage is a charred lump. We will call that lump “stubbornness”. Luckily, as it turns out, this might be the best appendage for the job.
…Unless you were blessed with that mythical limb celebrated by every culture—exceptional talent.
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Re: Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby CDR » Sat Jan 21, 2023 1:45 am

Your hard work and consistency is wonderful, and makes it easier for me to remember why I am trying to return to studying 3+ hours a day :lol:

Some questions about your technique:

Picaboo wrote:...So that’s what I did, three hours a day of Anki, translating English sentences into Korean ones. I would see the English sentence, speak out loud in Korean, then listen to a Korean saying it, then repeat it again. If I made any mistake, no matter how minor, I would hit not known...


Did you use Anki's feature to record yourself speaking so you could compare? Or, something else? Or just from memory?

Did you give yourself a time limit?

Did you only have the audio on the back of the card, or the Korean sentence as well?
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Re: Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby Picaboo » Mon Jan 23, 2023 11:07 pm

Thanks for the kind words. I'm retired so finding 3 hours in my day is a lot easier than it is for most people. I'm just happy I can make use of it. I wasn't so good about such things for decades. :)

Did you use Anki's feature to record yourself speaking so you could compare? Or, something else? Or just from memory?


I just went by memory. I'm sure my accent wasn't perfect, by any means, but my words were fresh in my mind so it was clear where I flubbed it.

Did you give yourself a time limit?

I try to give myself an internal time limit, but my brain just doesn't work that way. Using Anki automatic time limits makes me frustrated! Time limits in general frustrate me. So I did my best and/or gave up on my own terms. For longer sentences, I tried to pause in natural, or at least logical, places while I thought through the second half.

Did you only have the audio on the back of the card, or the Korean sentence as well?

Yes.
The audio automatically played when the card flipped. I think this was quite important as it was easy to compare to what I just said, using auditory short-term memory. I looked away and listened blind before I read the back of the card.
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Re: Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby Picaboo » Wed Jan 25, 2023 4:23 pm

I should add that I marked myself "incorrect" if after I had done a card, I thought I had been too slow. This is where I tried to be strict. (But not in making myself feel rushed. It hurt my performance whenever I tried to hurry and felt really bad).
It helped for me to think something like "Awesome, I said that right, but I'd like to see that card again today so I can be even better with it." Rather than thinking that "sucked." Positive mindset is important. Even if you know you're playing positive mind games with yourself... it works.
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Re: Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby Dr Mack Rettosy » Thu Jan 26, 2023 12:59 am

Really resonated with your intro post. Posting to follow.
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Read: 2146000 / 10000000 /10,000,000 汉字
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Re: Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby Dr Mack Rettosy » Thu Jan 26, 2023 1:00 am

Really resonated with your intro post. Very much like my experience with Mandarin as an L2. Throwing mud to see what sticks at the wall. Enjoy the meta-learning process!
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Mandarin goals:
Read: 2146000 / 10000000 /10,000,000 汉字
Study: 2006 / 5000 / 5000 hours

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Re: Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby Picaboo » Mon Feb 20, 2023 9:28 pm

I spent an average of four hours a day on Korean this month. Plus an hour watching K-Dramas. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) 2,200 hours of dedicated study estimate helped motivate me. My goal was to consolidate my skill so I could go all input all the time and enjoy the fruits of my labor to date. Here is a summary of things I tried.

Listening while re-reading my Intermediate Story book.
Reading stories in my other learner storybook. Used the English translation whenever I got stuck.
Two days of eight hour immersion in all Korean via YouTube.
As further review, worked through some chapters of the KIIP 2 textbook/workbook and watched lectures for it all in Korean. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39r33AwAL5U
Reviewed the dialogues for Sejong Korean Levels 1, 2, 3.
As a further review, watched the Korean lectures for Sejong Korean 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkS5ta5 ... FN&index=7
Tried Clozemaster for a few days.
Added words I didn’t know into a spreadsheet with sentences. No English. The spreadsheet didn’t seem to learn the words for me.
Made 300 cue cards for fairly common Korean verbs and adverbs. Wrote out by hand the very short example phrases with 3 levels of politeness. Studied them.
Tried to talk to myself in Korean but mostly failed. Seems to go better when I’m about to drift off to sleep.
Did some audio-only, whole sentence, comprehension in Anki.
Made stories with ChatGPT and read them. Also talked with it in Korean. My Korean typing and spelling is so bad this was terribly slow.
Watched some K-Drama and reality shows using dual subs and some pausing or repeating.
Listened to the various learning materials while I exercised. Sometimes.

Results. I’m finally where I thought I “should be” for the last 6 months. Listening to beginner materials makes me want to speed things up and say things more naturally. My reading speed has improved. My comprehension of K-dramas or YouTube without subs has greatly improved. I would say right now my lack of vocabulary is holding me back the most, especially a lack of highly fluent vocab and phrases. This leads to a lot of black holes in the middle of sentences when listening.

--
The months ahead I’m relatively busy. Next month I plan to do an hour when I first get up.

Depending on my mood I’ll do some or all of these:
I’ll listen to/recognize sentences in Anki. https://ankiweb.net/shared/byauthor/967867359. The Naver Today Korean deck.
I’ll have conversations/mess-with ChatGPT to work on my typing, writing and reading.
I will read and listen to intermediate materials on Language Crush. Or whatever I import.


The rest of the time I carve out, I’ll have fun. And won’t be counting hours.

I’ll start reading the book Almond at some point.

I’ll also casually learn through K-Dramas using dual subtitles and pausing or rewinding or repeating in my head, when I’m curious. This has become a more effective technique recently. When watching the rather dull The Understanding of Love [In the Interest of Love], I was following along nicely in some scenes (cued by a quick glance at either the Korean or English subs)… because I had nothing better to do except hate on the actors and their constant furtive looks or really wonder about the one actress’s plastic surgeon.

Anyway, I hope the hardest work is done. Now comes a million hours of input, which is way more fun that it might sound.


- Some links----
For anyone looking for (relatively!!) easy Korean listening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnDImwF ... iXWeoFTJIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctZcYBw ... wvMXUFC0M7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TejTgNhjgeo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33GBGYx_go0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4lNz1x ... sXmeE2ukzd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMe4yTeyiPs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji_mkos ... Amg_5bUcyz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGcVHUDrV98
https://www.youtube.com/@kingsejonginstitutefoundation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhQFDuGT5Vs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHbwaMJ ... Xs52LuoF7p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3qtARk ... S85fbyaeAr
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Re: Picaboo Learns His First Second Language--Korean

Postby noblethings » Sun Feb 26, 2023 11:49 am

Wow your technique seems really high in difficulty. I would personally start a new language like a child - no books, just songs and baby videos. It's admirable that you're able to just get into books right away - and that you've stuck with it for so long, too. You definitely have a will of steel! Keep it up.
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FSI vol 1 [89 tapes] : 30 / 89
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