Slow-cooked Korean

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smallwhite
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby smallwhite » Tue Jul 18, 2017 8:23 pm

qeadz wrote:2016 Dec -> Now: Introduced more formal grammar study in terms of working through graded grammar (HTSK providing the ordering) and writing regularly for output. Writing would include specific focus on a grammar point, translation, free-writing.

When you make a grammatical mistake, are you usually applying the wrong grammar rule, or are you usually applying the correct rule incorrectly?

When you read native material, do you know what grammar rules are being applied and why? Eg.:

> "So my review week is wrapping up".
Adverb, comma optional;
( Possessive adjective + noun as adjective + main noun ) as subject;
possessive adjective and not possessive pronoun because modifying noun;
present continuous indicative because actively happening around the present;
verb used intransitively without object but used as vt also possible;
1 main clause, no sub-clause, SV word order;
etc?
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:03 pm

smallwhite wrote:When you make a grammatical mistake, are you usually applying the wrong grammar rule, or are you usually applying the correct rule incorrectly?

When you read native material, do you know what grammar rules are being applied and why? Eg.:

> "So my review week is wrapping up".
Adverb, comma optional;
( Possessive adjective + noun as adjective + main noun ) as subject;
possessive adjective and not possessive pronoun because modifying noun;
present continuous indicative because actively happening around the present;
verb used intransitively without object but used as vt also possible;
1 main clause, no sub-clause, SV word order;
etc?


This is actually hard to answer.

These days I am corrected mostly in two ways:

1) Grammar which I have missed

eg: 어렸을 때 학교 다녔을 때는 --> 어렸을 때 학교에 다녔을 때는...
I thought that this was a fine place to drop the '에' but the correction shows I shouldn't do this.

2) Incorrect choice of grammar (basically rephrasing a portion of my sentence)

eg: 나이가 되면서 몸이... (intention: with getting older, the body...) corrected to be 나이를 먹어감 에 따라 몸이...

Half the time I see the alternate wording and it makes sense, but the other half the time it can be a bit of a mystery to me as to why my version is incorrect. Sometimes it is grammatically wrong, but sometimes the reply is essentially "because we dont say that".

As for your question on how much I understand grammar when I read (or listen) to it:

I don't know. There are things I feel I understand. I test them by sometimes taking a piece of Korean and translating it to English then checking against a known good translation to see how far off I am. Its possibly a poor assumption, but my assumption is that if my translation is good then it is confirmation that my understanding is good - and that would include the grammar being used (to a reasonable degree).

Having said that, there are plenty of native written (or spoken) sentences in Korean which I *understand* (that is to say I could repeat it in English to demonstrate I know what is being communicated) BUT the sentence is awkward for me. Such sentences feel like foreign constructions, even for Korean, and I would be at a loss to say why they are phrased as they are.

Of course there are still lots of sentences in Korean which are more than mildly confusing - even short ones filled with words I already know! But I suspect this is the case for all Korean learners.
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby smallwhite » Wed Jul 19, 2017 8:35 am

qeadz wrote:These days I am corrected mostly in two ways:
1) Grammar which I have missed
2) Incorrect choice of grammar (basically rephrasing a portion of my sentence)
As for your question on how much I understand grammar when I read (or listen) to it:

I don't know. There are things I feel I understand. I test them by sometimes taking a piece of Korean and translating it to English then checking against a known good translation to see how far off I am. Its possibly a poor assumption, but my assumption is that if my translation is good then it is confirmation that my understanding is good - and that would include the grammar being used (to a reasonable degree).

Having said that, there are plenty of native written (or spoken) sentences in Korean which I *understand* (that is to say I could repeat it in English to demonstrate I know what is being communicated) BUT the sentence is awkward for me. Such sentences feel like foreign constructions, even for Korean, and I would be at a loss to say why they are phrased as they are.

Thank you for your detailed answer.

I think you still have a lot of room for improvement via grammar study. That is, I think further grammar study will eliminate, say, 50% of your mistakes, further native input alongside or after grammar study will eliminate 30% of your mistakes, and the remaining 20% I don't know. Native input works far, far better when you know the grammar behind. You can flip through TOPIK grammar textbooks all the way up to TOPIK6 to get an idea of how much mileage grammar will be able to give you. Have you seen those grammar rules used in real life? Would being able to apply them help your writing? Maybe TOPIK6 looks too academic for you and you're happy with level 4, then you can easily estimate how much more grammar work there is to be conquered, 3 textbooks and 2 workbooks, for example.

You don't always have to be able to express everything. You can try to express everything with the limited grammar and vocabulary you know. The more prudent you are in this process, the fewer mistakes you will make. Mistakes are not always from lack of knowledge per se.

Love your self-review. Good luck!
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby moops » Wed Jul 19, 2017 9:57 pm

Hi! One of the major ways that I study Korean is through writing and receiving corrections on Lang-8. What I noticed was that the correction style highly varies from individual to individual. There are some who prefer to keep your writing mainly intact, and there are others who prefer to change a lot more, to make it flow better, or sound more natural. It doesn't necessarily mean the grammar is "wrong" per se.

I have some thoughts as to some of the corrections you received. Please take it with a grain of salt, since I am still a beginner myself.

Regarding particles: Until you demonstrate a high level of writing ability, if you omit particles, I think people will usually put it in. It's kind of like if someone wrote "Can't say that I'm surprised" it will be corrected to "I can't say that I'm surprised".

Regarding 나이가 되면서: I think you meant to say, 나이가 들면서? which I think is pretty valid. In this case, depending on the tone of your writing, it's possible that 먹어감 에 따라 might just sound/fit better.

Anyway, I think it's always good to get more than one correction so that you can compare, contrast, and see the various ways that something can be expressed. Personally I think it has helped me improve a lot. 한국어 공부 파이팅하세요! 그리고, 즐거운 하루 보내세요~ ^^
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Fri Jul 21, 2017 12:34 am

Thank you everyone for all of your comments and suggestions.

Please make no mistake - I am reading and considering all advice given. Of course *more* study per day would be advantageous almost regardless of what activity it is filled with, so long as it relates to Korean. BUT the 'hour a day' is a workable pace for me and I can't easily make time for more without something else in life giving way. So I'm looking at the limited time I do spend and am going to consider how I might apportion it differently.

That being said, this is my conclusion of this review:

SPEAKING

I did none despite me repeatedly insisting that I would make this happen. I have tried during the past few days to record myself speaking on various topics for this review but, if anything, it feels like I have regressed since last time. Last time I had just come off a whole lot of iTalki sessions.

So my conclusions are: I need consistent practice with this or the ability degenerates. Other activities (reading/listening/writing) don't seem to actually directly help speaking all that much or I would have seen some progress despite not speaking. It's likely they have raised my *potential* for speaking, but I'd need to put in the hours actually speaking to unlock that potential.

I actually do 'subvocalize' (if thats the right word) phrases and bits of Korean while walking in town or lying in bed awake at 3am. However since my speaking seems to have regressed, I'm going to conclude its just not similar enough to real speaking out loud to help me.

WHAT I PLAN ON DOING: If I can sneak off somewhere for 5 minutes each work day, I'll speak out loud while recording myself. However this wont be completely free-speaking. It'll be more akin to me imitating set sentence structures which are either from Korean material I work with, or other native-vetted materials. I have not planned this in detail yet, but it might include a set structure for each topic which makes use of recurring grammatical structures: who, when, why, what.

WRITING

This was the big change at the beginning of the year. Well, regular (pretty much daily) writing AND more structured grammar study. I *feel* that the structured approach to grammar is working well. I'm following the HTSK structure, but referencing Korean: A Comprehensive Grammar (book) as well as TalkToMeInKorean.

What I hoped to see was a decline in grammar corrections in my writing. I think there is a slight decline, looking at the graph I posted a week or two ago, and its worth keeping in mind that the complexity of my writing is increasing too. So I *do* feel that I have made more progress in the past 6 months than I did in the whole of last year so it is an improvement.

However the progress, when I review it, is not as marked as I had hoped it would be. I felt it was working better than it evidently is (upon reviewing my writing/corrections). I *still* have sentences in my written Korean to which correctors reply "I have no idea what you're trying to say here. Please give the English". Those are by far the most depressing responses because it's evidence that the sentence was such a mess that they couldn't even infer the meaning from the surrounding text.

Currently I read about grammatical constructs, I make sure I understand the example sentences, I write my own, get them corrected, carefully go over any corrections... I don't think theres much else I can do in learning grammar. But I do find that I forget some of the details about some grammar points. I end up looking them up again and again. So...

WHAT I PLAN ON DOING: I already do a mix of types of writing which includes specific practice of grammar points. I can't think of a reasonable change to how I am writing. So I shall continue writing often as I am right now. However I'm going to go through all of the grammar points I have covered and cherry-pick sentences which use them. I'll then review the sentences semi-regularly to just refresh the uses of the grammar (with accurate English alongside). Like flashcards, but for grammar... and maybe not SRS, but certainly based on sentences which have meaning for me.

LISTENING

Of my 500+ hours spent on Korean thus far, about half of that has been listening practice. In general it is still a weak skill and will likely always be this way. I don't think there is any easy solution other than just a volume of listening. I believe it is improved from 6 months ago and continues to make very slow but steady improvement.

I still cannot follow regular adult-speed speech. The ol' KBS Radio dramas are very hard on first listen and they don't typically really use complex sentences either!

WHAT I PLAN ON DOING: More of the same. I could try more intensive listening (being I specifically re-listen to short problematic sections of audio, rereading the transcripts between each listen), but I'm happy to do my listening while walking or at the gym.

READING

EDIT: I forgot to add the section on reading!

I think this is going okay. There are times when I pause a lot to look up grammar patterns, think about sentence structures and the like. There are also times when I just read freely without pausing to look up things I'm not quite understanding.

Reading is my strongest ability in Korean. I have no way to test this or show it, but I can read and understand material which is beyond my ability to speak, write or listen to. 'nuff said.

WHAT I PLAN ON DOING: More of the same. Although maybe not as much reading. There are already flashcards for vocab, the potential to include some speaking, revising grammar... this all basically takes up time I might otherwise spend reading or listening. So time spent reading may go down a bit.
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Tue Aug 15, 2017 5:27 pm

Back after a break from Korean. Family are visiting us and we went on a fantastic trip through Banff/Jasper national parks during which time I did absolutely no Korean at all.

Right now I am on a reduced schedule until my family fly back home - pretty much just doing Anki, some listening and a little bit of reading each day.

My progress so far on Evita's Vocab deck (from which I edited out words I already knew prior to importing):

Mature: 276
Young + Learn: 427
Suspended + Buried: 2

So at least I am solidly on my way toward one of my goals: add 3000 words to my passive vocabulary by July next year.
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby BOLIO » Tue Aug 15, 2017 9:10 pm

Hey there,

Just noticed today is your one year anniversary of your log. Congrats! Keep up the good work.
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:32 pm

BOLIO wrote:Hey there,

Just noticed today is your one year anniversary of your log. Congrats! Keep up the good work.


Oh wow! It was too. Hopefully I'll survive another year of Korean study and have this log reflect my progress. I really hope the next 500 hours sees me make some breakthroughs
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby qeadz » Tue Sep 05, 2017 7:58 pm

While I meant to make my own Anki deck for grammar, I got lazy and just grabbed Evita's as a base (thanks Evita!). This in addition to my vocab on Anki which seems to be going alright.

Even for very basic things my Korean is often still challenged. One sentence from Evita's deck caught me by surprise:

이거 누구예요?

When I first heard it, I understood it right away - but my initial reaction was one of shock. Why? Because until now I've built up this strong association between 이거 and objects/things. So it felt like the person was saying "Who is this thing?" rather than "Who is this?". What did I expect to be said? "누구예요?" which is the shortened form really but I never thought about it.

With such basic misunderstandings cropping up even after 500+ hours of Korean, perhaps it provides some argument for proper course-directed study as a mainstay rather than my self-directed working through podcasts, articles and similar content.
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Re: Slow-cooked Korean

Postby Evita » Tue Sep 05, 2017 8:27 pm

qeadz wrote:이거 누구예요?

When I first heard it, I understood it right away - but my initial reaction was one of shock. Why? Because until now I've built up this strong association between 이거 and objects/things. So it felt like the person was saying "Who is this thing?" rather than "Who is this?". What did I expect to be said? "누구예요?" which is the shortened form really but I never thought about it.

That's funny, I read your post and I had the same reaction of "that doesn't sound right". I would have expected it to be 이 사람 or 그 남자 or something like that. I think I will remove this sentence from my deck. Thanks.
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