My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

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AndyMeg
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby AndyMeg » Fri Feb 02, 2018 4:41 pm

- Finished watching [While you were sleeping - 당신이 잠든 사이에]: A rookie prosecutor, a former reporter and a cop get entangled into each other's lives because of prophetic dreams.

I enjoyed this drama so much!!!

What I liked the most was the chemistry and synergy between the three main characters. They made such a wonderful team!

I also liked that this drama made really wise reflections about life and made me see things from a more mature point of view.

And I also loved that the first episode felt like a complete movie by itself.

One weak point is that sometimes things seemed to be resolved too easily or too cleanely, but overall I think it is a really good drama and it left me with a lot of teachings.

I'll probably going to rewatch this in the future. :D

- I started reading the book "El coreano básico" by Bag In-Sung. I'm on page 22.

- I decided to take a small break from the "Viki's K-drama Quiz".

- I worked through the first three lines of the k-drama "W". I'm currently at min 0:18 of the first episode.

That's been basically it for the last few days.

I want to try something on February:

One week I'll focus on working through the "맞춤 스페인어권 한국어-1: Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante" book. And the next week I'll focus on working through the k-drama "W" in the way I already mentioned in a previous post. These two activities will be my main/focus activities for february, but I'll do other activities if (and whenever) I feel like it.
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby AndyMeg » Wed Feb 07, 2018 1:05 pm

- I continue to watch korean TV (mainly with english subs) and listening to korean songs.

- I continue going to my once-a-week korean classes and doing related activities (homework, reviews, etc.)

- I continued reading the book "El coreano básico" by Bag In-Sung. I'm on page 27.

- I continued working through the k-drama "W". I'm currently 9 lines in at min 0:45 of the first episode.

I want to make a small change to my plan for February:

Instead of alternating weeks of focus, I want to try a slightly different approach: I will work through the k-drama "W" until I reach the 5 minutes mark of the episode. Then I'll stop and start working through the "맞춤 스페인어권 한국어-1: Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante" book until I finish a unit. After I reach the end of a unit I'll go back to "W" and work through it for another 5 minutes of the episode and then I'll go back to "맞춤 스페인어권 한국어-1: Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante" for another unit. I plan to repeat this cycle for as long as I enjoy it.

The reason for the change is that I'm not equally free or busy every day, so there are weeks I can dedicate a lot of time to the focus activity and other weeks when I can dedicate almost no time to the focus activity. So far this week (which for me started on Saturday) I have not been able to dedicate as much time as I would like to my focus activity (working through the k-drama "W"), so it is a bit frustrating that the time for change of focus activity is approaching with me feeling that I've not made much progress. That's why I decided to make this change, because I want to feel the progress and I can only feel this with objectives achieved and not only with amount of time spent (except, of course, if a determined amount of time spent were my objective; but that's not the case at the moment). Also, from past experiences, I've learnt to not make my short and medium term objectives too ambitious or difficult because that's one of my paths towards procrastination. So 5 minutes of a "W"'s episode before switching to "맞춤 스페인어권 한국어-1: Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante", and 1 unit of "맞춤 스페인어권 한국어-1: Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante" before going back to "W" look like very reasonable objectives to me. ;)
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AndyMeg
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby AndyMeg » Mon Feb 12, 2018 3:11 pm

Quick update:

- Finished watching [Tunnel - 터널] (Detective, crime, thriller, fantasy): While investigating a serial murder's case a detective from the past travels 30 years into the future ("present time"). Before he can go back to the past, there's a mystery he needs to solve in the future.

It was a very well made drama. I enjoyed every chapter and all the actors did a great job. :D


I'm also near the finish line of another drama I had started last year: This Is My First Life / This Life Is Our First - 이번 생은 처음이라. I sometimes stop watching some dramas mid-way and then I continue watching them after some time. And sometimes I completely drop a drama. For this drama it was the first case: I was enjoying it a lot but then I got really busy and I was also dealing with some health problems, so I stopped watching it until about two weeks ago when I remembered about it and decided to continue from the point where I had left.
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby AndyMeg » Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:12 pm

I made another adjustment to my plan for February:

Instead of waiting to complete 5 minutes of a "W"'s episode before going back to "맞춤 스페인어권 한국어-1: Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante" I decided to just complete 1 minute of an episode and then do 1 unit of the book. There are many reasons for this change:

- It took me a lot of time to just reach the 1 minute mark of the first episode, so waiting until I comple the 5 minutes felt like too much.

- I wanted to go back to "맞춤 스페인어권 한국어-1: Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante" and I didn't want to wait any longer. Besides, I tend to finish a unit really quickly, so I wanted to get a better time-balance between the two activities I'm intercalating.

- I added some steps to the way I work with "W", which makes me spend more time in each line. This is what I'm doing now: 1) I listen to the line and try to understand it. I replay the line as many times as needed until I think I can't understand anything else from it. 2) I read the line word by word, using the pop-up dictionary. I listen to the pronunciation of each word alone and pay attention to their individual meanings. 3) After that I try to guess the meaning of the whole line and then I check my guess against the official english sub. 4) I go back to the korean line and look for words which meaning in the pop-up dictionary didn't match the final meaning in the english sub. I look for the meaning of those words on the internet (Naver, Wiktionary, etc). 5) I look for the grammar used in the line and I try to understand it. For this I use the grammar index of some books I have (that helps me to identify more easly the components of complex grammar patterns). As some grammar patterns may have more than one use or meaning, I try to identify the one that best matches the line I'm working on (for this, all the context from the story and the previous lines becomes very helpful). 6) I take some notes using a program called "Scrivener" (I usually add the words which meaning doesn't match the pop-up dictionary's definition. I also add some grammar explanations or just some notes about the book and pages where a certain grammar pattern is explained). 7) I listen again to the whole line with my eyes closed. I do this many times until I feel ready to move on to the next line.

As all of this takes quite some time, I usually work on only 1 to 3 lines before stopping and doing something else for a while. I'm loving this activity so far! :D

- Finished watching [This Is My First Life / This Life Is Our First - 이번 생은 처음이라] (Romantic drama): Nam Se-Hee, a single man with a huge mortgage for his house , needs a housemate to collect money for his mortgage; but no one meets his expectations so far. Finally, he meets Yoon Ji-Ho, a single woman who aspires to become the main writer of a TV drama. She is the only housemate to ever fulfill all of his expectations. But is not seen with good eyes that a single man and a single woman live together. Yoon Ji-Ho has nowhere else to go for the time being. Both need each other but they don't want to be frowned upon for living together. Will a fake marriage solve their problems or will it create more trouble for them?

I love how they explored love, compromise and romantic relationships through three very different couples. They also explored the meaning of marriage and its influence in the lives of the ones involved and the social and cultural expectations that come with it. It was a very interesting drama that by the end left me deep in thought about love and marriage. The main couple was a very different couple from the usual ones in romantic dramas as both the female protagonist and the male protagonist were very unusual characters on their own. I think this drama is possibly based on a japanese drama that came some months before it [The Full-Time Wife Escapist (逃げるは恥だが役に立つ)] because they have really similar concepts.

- I continue to watch korean TV (mainly with english subs) and listening to korean songs.

- I continue going to my once-a-week korean classes and doing related activities (homework, reviews, etc.)

- I continued working through the k-drama "W". I'm currently 16 lines in at min 1:11 of the first episode.

- Working with the book "맞춤 스페인어권 한국어-1: Coreano para la Comunidad Coreana Hispanohablante" (doing the lessons and analizing and comparing the dual texts, but without going out of my way to look for things I don't know, except for things strictly related to what each lesson is trying to teach): I finished page 50 and now I'm ready to start unit 5.
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AndyMeg
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby AndyMeg » Fri Feb 23, 2018 2:16 pm

I just noticed that I forgot to mention two of the steps I'm following with "W". So I'll make a new summary with the missing steps added:

1) I listen to the line and try to understand it. I replay the line as many times as needed until I think I can't understand anything else from it.

2) I read the line word by word, using the pop-up dictionary. I listen to the pronunciation of each word alone and pay attention to their individual meanings.

3) After that I try to guess the meaning of the whole line and then I check my guess against the official english sub.

4) I go back to the korean line and look for words which meaning in the pop-up dictionary didn't match the final meaning in the english sub. I look for the meaning of those words on the internet (Naver, Wiktionary, etc).

5) I look for the grammar used in the line and I try to understand it. For this I use the grammar index of some books I have (that helps me to identify more easly the components of complex grammar patterns). As some grammar patterns may have more than one use or meaning, I try to identify the one that best matches the line I'm working on (for this, all the context from the story and the previous lines becomes very helpful).

6) I take some notes using a program called "Scrivener" (I usually add the words which meaning doesn't match the pop-up dictionary's definition. I also add some grammar explanations or just some notes about the book and pages where a certain grammar pattern is explained).

7) I copy by hand the korean line while paying attention to its meaning.

8) I write the english translation of the line. I may tweak it a little if the official english sub doesn’t match too well with its korean counterpart.

9) I listen again to the whole line with my eyes closed. I do this many times until I feel ready to move on to the next line.
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby Bex » Fri Feb 23, 2018 2:39 pm

Sounds like you're really working hard on each line. Does it not drive you mad focusing so hard on each one before moving on?

I know I couldn't do it, (I wish I could) I find it hard to listen to a podcast more than once without my attention drifting off :lol:

Much kudos to you for such focused work. Go you!
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby AndyMeg » Fri Feb 23, 2018 9:32 pm

Bex wrote:Sounds like you're really working hard on each line. Does it not drive you mad focusing so hard on each one before moving on?

No, I actually enjoy it. I think it is because of the mentality I'm working with.

I don't have a time limit. And I can stop at any time if I'm not having fun or if I feel tired. Each step is like a small game for me. When I'm doing each step I completely focus on that step. By working like this I don't get stressed thinking about how many lines I have left before finishing the first episode and then the whole drama. That's the beauty of having an objective without a time limit. I just focus on each small step at a time and I think about nothing else. I'm in no rush, so I can take things slowly and give them all my attention.

Each line is the only thing I "care" about when I'm working on it. Nothing else matters. It's kind of a "zen" state or something like that. At that time I just live the present and it feels wonderful. It is a state of deep focus.

Of course, as it takes time, I don't work on many lines in one sitting, because I have other things to do too. I usually only work on one line each time and sometimes, if there's enough time and I have enough energy, I may work up to three lines and then move on to something else.

I think in the future I'll probably start to go faster. Grammar patterns and vocabulary are finite things and the most frequent repeat a lot in a drama. So I think I'll eventually get used to the most frequent vocabulary and grammar patterns and then I'll be able to move faster. I believe this because I had a similar experience with english: Some years ago I wanted to read japanese manga (comics), but they were hard to find in spanish (my native language), so my best option was reading manga in english. I had good grammar foundations, but my vocabulary was lacking a lot. I had gotten really interested in the story of a manga and I wanted to read it so bad that I didn't stop to think if my english was good enough for me to understand it, I just tackled it head on. At first I could only read about 3 pages, looking up almost every word in the dictionary, until a headache would stop me from going further and then I would call it a day. But, as I was so engaged with the story, the next day I would go back to it and read 3 more pages. I continued like this for many weeks until, three months in, I was able to read around 5 or 6 chapters the same day and without any headache. After I finished that manga I started reading others. Ten months after I had started with the first manga, I read all the 189 chapters of my favorite manga to date in just 5 days (and I was going to college at that time). This experience is part of the reason why I decided to work through "W" in the way I am. It is also part of the reason why I believe that we can achieve wonderful things when we enjoy what we are doing: at that time my main objective was being able to enjoy the mangas I wanted to read; improving my english was just a very welcomed byproduct of it.

Bex wrote:Much kudos to you for such focused work. Go you!

Thanks! :D
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby AndyMeg » Sat Mar 03, 2018 8:14 pm

Finished watching [The Best Hit - 최고의 한방] (Slice-of-life, Comedy, Drama, Youth, Romance): Yoo Hyun-Jae, a pop idol in 1993, accidentally travels through time to the year 2017. There he discovers that, according to history, he mysteriously disappeared in 1994 and is presumed dead. While trying to adapt to life in the future, he'll meet old not-so-friendly friends and acquaintances and try to solve the mystery surrounding his dissapearance in 1994. But things will get even more complicated when he discovers than in the year he has not lived yet (from 1993 to 1994) he conceived a son with a girlfriend he has not dated yet and who now is the love interest of an old friend.

I had started watching this drama last year but at that time I could not watch it complete, so this year I decided to come back to it and watch it again from the beginning.

It was a really funny drama that had many special guest appearances throughout it, especially most of the main cast from 1박 2일 (2 Days & 1 Night). 윤시윤 (Yoon Shi-yoon), the first male lead, is one of my favorite korean actors and I loved him in this drama. Some people found confusing the time-travel plot, but for me it made sense (spoilers ahead):

In 1993 and because of a magical twin typhoon, Yoo Hyun-Jae split into two identical copies of himself. One of the copies kept living in 1993 and the other one traveled through time to 2017. The copy that kept living in the past dated Bo-hee and had a son with her: Ji-hoon. And the copy that went to the future never loved Bo-hee and instead fell in love with Choi Woo-seung who happened to be the love interest of Ji-hoon, the-other-Hyun-Jae's son. Both Hyun-Jae can't live at the same time because if that happens one is bound to dissapear; so the Hyun-Jae from 1994 decided to stay in the past and die, while the time-traveling Hyun-Jae discovered that his place was in 2017).

I enjoyed this drama so much that I'll probably come back to it many times in the future (it is mostly a light and funny drama with a warm feeling to it) :D

By the way, today is the premiere of a new drama with 윤시윤 (Yoon Shi-yoon) on it: 대군 - 사랑을 그리다 (Grand Prince). So I'm eagerly awaiting to watch the first episode :mrgreen:
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby AndyMeg » Thu Mar 08, 2018 1:08 pm

Lately I've been on "low-energy-level" mode in relation to korean. Many other areas in my life have been demanding just too much energy from me that when I finally have a good chunk of time to engage with korean, I can't get myself to turn my "study mode" on. So for now my main activities have been watching korean TV content (with english or spanish subs) and listening to korean songs.

Still, I sometimes find myself spontaneously doing some of these activitities I've mentioned before:

when watching a TV program with english subs I often find myself comparing the korean I hear with the english subs I read and I analize them both. Sometimes, also while watching korean TV, I repeat outloud short lines of korean dialogue, and sometimes I pause the video to pay special attention to things like street signs and any hangul I find there (for example in uniforms, supermarkets, etc.).

Even if at a slower pace, I can still feel that I keep learning and noticing things and that makes me happy :)

I hope I can gather enough energy in the following days, because I really want to go back to my line-by-line work with the k-drama "W".

By the way, I enjoyed 대군 - 사랑을 그리다 (Grand Prince - Drawing Love) more than I initially thought I would (I mainly started watching it because because 윤시윤/Yoon Shi-yoon was on it and I had been waiting for a new drama with him, but I was not completely sold on the story yet). As the subs were not complete when I watched it, I was happy to see that there were some lines here and there that I could understand reasonably fine myself (but, of course, I still have a long way to go before I can completely, or even almost-completely, understand a k-drama, especially a Sageuk - 사극). I also watched the special episode (something like a BTS special) and I could also understand some things here and there without subs, and later I could check that I was mostly right when they subbed those parts in english. :D
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Re: My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

Postby AndyMeg » Sat Apr 21, 2018 8:19 pm

Hi!

It's been quite a while!

My situation stayed basically the same as it was in my last post.

We also took a long break from my weekly korean classes (the teacher got busy with other things) and in the last three weeks I've been watching more thai and chinese TV dramas than korean TV dramas.

I think I really needed a break from korean.

I've been watching two TV shows without subs (one thai and one chinese) and two thai TV dramas with english subs. I started watching the chinese one with english subs but from episode 5 onwards there were no more subs, so I decided to continue watching it without subs. There's a saying that we can get a lot of meaning just from non-verbal communication, so I decided to watch the unsubbed TV dramas while paying a lot of attention to non-verbal communication, but also to the sounds, even if I didn't know their exact meaning. It has been a fun ride and I've started to isolate some words here and there and guess their possible meaning (like "mae" for mom, "chai" for "yes" and "mai" for "not" in thai --> I don't know the official transcription of these words as I've never studied thai). It's been a really interesting experience because even if I don't speak those languages I've been able to follow the general plot of both stories and I've enjoyed both of them. I also started to subconsciously do something I tend to do when I watch korean dramas with english subs: in the subbed dramas I started to compare the thai I heard with the english subs and would also repeat from time to time some fragments of speech.

All of this got me thinking about the general approach to language learning and why many people can read rather well but their speaking and pronunciation is not up to par. I want to sound as native-like as possible in the languages I learn, but I've found that sometimes trying to match the official script with the actual sounds creates an interference that makes the learning more difficult. So, thinking about all that, I want to make a small experiment with korean (and maybe later with other languages as well).

In our native language we usually first learn to listen and speak and then we learn to read and write. But that order tends to be inverted when learning a foreing language. I think that's one of the reasons why many people have difficulty with speaking like a native. Learning the script first and then trying to connect it with the actual spoken language creates interference because the script usually doesn't exactly/perfectly match its spoken counterpart. So one of the things I would like to do with this small experiment is to try to follow the natural order of when we learn our native language. Of course, as learning a first language and learning a second language are not exactly the same (the conditions vary quite a lot) I'll be making some modifications in order to make the best use of the available material while trying to accommodate it to the general guidelines of this experiment.

As we learn best when we go slightly out of our comfort zones, but not too far away as to feel too stressed and overwhelmed, I'll try to graduate the stages/steps of this small experiment keeping this in mind.

I want this small experiment to be more of an intuitive exploration, so instead of making a complete plan from start to finish, I'll just decide on the next step when the time comes (and I also may change a step/stage midway).

So, the first step for me is/was this:

1) Look for a short complete audiovisual story with both english and korean subs.

I did my search in Viki because I want to take advantage of the "Learn Mode" and be able to see both subs at the same time.

For now I have two candidates: two very short dramas, around 10 episodes long, each episode being about 15 minutes long (so the total time for each drama would be more or less equal to that of a movie).

I still want to look for more candidates and then I'll decide about the next step.

I'll keep you updated! ;)
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