Korean - from scratch to B2 in one year

[leosmith]

(I'm re-posting this because I've added quite a bit to it, it's complete, and I want everyone to know about it/have a chance to read it since they seemed to like the first version)

Things you will find in many Korean dramas that you may not find elsewhere:
Slow motion, multiple instant-replay kisses.
Kisses that are incredibly lacking in passion.
Somebody will try to kiss somebody while they sleep, or just get in their face and do goofy stuff.
During the kiss, one person is surprised, their eyes bug out, but with time they relax and close their eyes.
People passing each other in slow motion, sometimes walking, sometimes in cars.
Someone will grab the wrist of their lover as they pass by, and pull them back.
A sleeping or hospitalized person will grab the wrist of the observing lover.
Everybody gets at least one turn in the hospital.
Flashbacks of scenes that were not previously shown are frequently used to explain current scenes. This technique is used much more often by Korean dramas than any other place I’ve seen.
Men crying buckets.
A girl will accidentally fall into the arms of her future lover, frequently on a bus.
A beautiful poor girl will hook up with a handsome rich dude.
When there’s blood, it will stay caked on for a long time. A lot of attention is paid to open wounds, scabs and eventually scars, but it progresses much faster than real life.
Blood is often pinkish.
Blatant advertising, often Subway.
The drama will start by showing a scene from the last episode, or an episode will start by showing a scene from later on in the same episode.
Very little smoking, but a lot of people with cigarettes who can’t find matches.
Way too much drinking.
Some dude will have an afro.
Lots of dudes will have bangs that are way too long.
A very tough woman with incredible martial art skills in one scene will turn into a weak little girl in another scene.
Often an actor who is in an earlier timeline doesn’t look or sound anything like the present day timeline actor.
Children rarely look like their parents.
The silverback(old dude with a full head of silver hair) is the bad guy.
A lot more emphasis on CCTV and less on forensic medicine than you might expect.
To disguise someone a baseball cap is almost always used.
Rain suddenly starting to fall is used for dramatic effect a lot.
They will often pause and make a big deal over a handshake.
A lot of important stuff will go down on rooftops.
A gurgling stomach means someone is hungry, not indigestion.
Lots of screaming is someone's idea of comedy.
Some people hiccup when they lie.
People like to cuss out the air in many comedies.
Certain people have super natural eating or drinking abilities.
There will often be amazing if not ridiculous displays of wardrobe.
In scenes that are shot in a car, they drive incredibly slowly, and other cars will pass them quickly going in the same direction.
Dead people, or people from earlier timelines, will often occupy the current scene, showing that someone is imagining something the dead person did.
There’s a baggie full of important items in the toilet reservoir.
Episodes always end in a freeze frame.
Men, sometimes in large groups, will wear face masks for beauty reasons.
When people are happily chatting and having a great time in a car, a large truck is about to smash into it sideways at high speed.
Villainous laughs, popular in movies from the 1930’s in the US, are very popular in Korean dramas. I’ve even seen a villainous laugh pulled off while crying.
Lights are always on in the bedroom, especially when people are sleeping.
Zooming in on a girls lips, which seems to be arousing to Korean men in the same way zooming in on cleavage is in the west.
Often someone will be talking on the phone, and the other party can be heard clearly. Immediately after the call ends, they’ll get another really exciting call during which the other party can’t be heard, leaving us in suspense.

[DaveBee]

A very tough woman with incredible martial art skills in one scene will turn into a weak little girl in another scene.

I saw a real life example of this once.

In UK pubs you often have an informal "winner stays on" rule for the pool table. I once saw a woman massacre the previous winner, something close to clearing up from the break, and then become barely able to hit the cue ball once she was playing her everyday-rubbish-player boyfriend.

[leosmith]

I made it! I feel like I’m finally at B2 now. Last night I had a strong conversation, and I realized that I’d been more relaxed and smooth lately, and I’d actually been in B2 territory for a little while already. This morning I had a 1 hour class on italki for old times sake, and I was even better. Smooth, very few pauses, no um’s or ah’s that I can remember. I’ve still got vocabulary and grammar problems, but I feel I’m above the B2 lower threshold.

video after 1 year

Great to see the end result! However 'after 1 year' doesn't really do it justice. Just to put things in perspective here (correct me if I am wrong here):

You began at 0, although had a small leg up from your Chinese/Japanese and of course experience having learnt languages before. And after about 750 hours of listening, 190~ ish hours of conversation practice, a tonne of reading, and presumably other activities which include grammar and other bits, you arrive at ~2300 hours' investment to achieve this result.

How do you feel this compares, investment wise, to your other languages? Say Russian, or Spanish?

Thanks, and sorry for the late reply to your excellent comments and summary. It's hard to compare it with any languages but Russian and Mandarin, because those are the only languages that I did similar style spurts in. I would say results are comparable, but Korean is unique in that I started from scratch with a spurt. I thought a 200 hour spurt would take any language in any condition up to B2 at least, but I found out that the initial condition is pretty important.

if you were to give a grade to this video you uploaded, what would you grade it?

Now I finally feel comfortable admitting that I failed at my primary public goal, which was to reach B2 in conversation in 1 year at home. I only reached a strong B1 level. I graded my performance that went with the final video as B1.5. I didn’t want to talk about level before anyone graded it for me, but nobody did so I’m through waiting, haha. I actually thought I’d recorded a better video the day before (B1.8 or so – a bit more vocabulary, grammar and smoother), so I went out and partied that night, only to find out the next morning that the teacher didn’t record it. Actually, the skype message from him woke me up the next morning about 20min late for my back-up video recording session, which became my primary video. I was shaken up, but in the end was able to pull it together for a passable video. Even given that excuse, the bottom line is I still didn’t make B2.

But now after 1 year of self study at home, and 1 month in country, I’m there. A bit late, but on a personal level I’m extremely happy. This language is mine now. I’m sure I’ll lose some ability over the next 5 months or so (time until next spurt), but I already have the feel of the language, and my brain will quickly regain that level when I do another spurt.

Right now the plan is to go after it again when I get back home from my travels in September. I plan to do a 100hr spurt, that is 100 hours of italki lessons, and they don’t count unless I memorize the vocabulary. I should be able to get this done easily in the 6 months I’ll be home.

So if I already reached B2, why do another spurt? Can’t I just put this language on my maintenance schedule and forget about it? Well, there’s B2 and there’s B2. I want to be at a “strong” B2, and I’m not there yet. Here is a comparison of my current skills and what I consider to be strong B2:

strong b2 chart.jpeg

In strong B2 languages, I can study them once a month with little if any drop in skill level. At my current level, I’d probably need to study it at least twice a month to accomplish the same thing. In strong B2 languages, if I study them more often than once a month my level actually improves a little bit. That’s a dream come true for someone madly trying to add more languages like me.

In summary, I failed the major public challenge, but I succeeded big time in learning Korean. Time was not wasted. 2 years ago I expected to spend 3-5 years studying Korean intensively to reach strong B2. I love being years ahead of schedule.

Congratulations on your result. I hope that you find your trip to Korea to be a pleasurable experience because of the efforts you put in and with any luck you'll come back and be able to tells tales of good conversations you had over there!

Thanks again! Maybe we can exchange war stories now. Er...language stories? Language war stories?

[leosmith]

fyi
The 'I don't Hate Korean' Thread
and
Korean Pronunciation

[leosmith]

Something great happened today - best Korean conversation ever. Definitely in the B2+ region. I was amazingly comfortable. I've been maintaining Korean 2 hrs once every 8 days since I left Korea (about 2 months ago), so it's not like I dropped it completely, but nevertheless I appear to be riding a nice Bow Wave. Kowabunga!

[smallwhite]

> Actively learning Tagalog (complete beginner)

Will we get a Tagalog log, with goals and plans and progress bars and all that?

[leosmith]

Will we get a Tagalog log, with goals and plans and progress bars and all that?

I want to, but I don't really want to combine it with this log. I asked if I could start an additional log here, and was told that it's ok, but they didn't like to see logs that weren't maintained. So I got to thinking that I'll be doing very little with this Korean log in the future...does that mean it isn't maintained? Anyway, no plans in the immediate future.

[smallwhite]

Will we get a Tagalog log, with goals and plans and progress bars and all that?

I want to, but I don't really want to combine it with this log. I asked if I could start an additional log here, and was told that it's ok, but they didn't like to see logs that weren't maintained. So I got to thinking that I'll be doing very little with this Korean log in the future...does that mean it isn't maintained? Anyway, no plans in the immediate future.

But your Korean project is complete, there's nothing wrong with not having further posts in this log. When did we have to keep maintaining all our logs anyway? Over 400 of our logs have had no activity for at least 6 months. So?

2 pages of a log of yours like this one is 10 times more read-worthy than logs that just list out movie names, book names, "I did nothing this week", "I maintained my language this week the same way I did last week"...

[leosmith]

I'm keeping a general log at my site now, in case anyone's interested. I've mentioned Korean a couple times, since I'm just finishing up a learning spurt in Pusan now. I agree that this log is complete, and don't plan on adding to it.