My korean adventure: fun and enjoyment as a guide

[AndyMeg]

I haven't done much of the parallel sentences (korean-english) activity I had recently started. My sister was recovering from a surgery and I had to help her with many things, and I also got sick for a bit over two weeks. But now that both, my sister and I, are better, I plan to go back to this activity using lines from one k-drama I'm currently watching: "Angel’s Last Mission: Love" (단, 하나의 사랑).

Even if I haven't been able to do much formal study lately, I continue to watch k-dramas quite often. And I've started to have the general feeling that dramas are getting easier to understand as time goes by. Now I can at least get the gist of more than half of the dialogues lines in k-dramas that don't use vocabulary that is very field-specific or too technical (like detective dramas or medical dramas usually do). So slice-of-life dramas and rom-coms are now relatively easier to enjoy and follow even when I watch them without subs.

Yesterday I had to write something in korean and the form 재미있게 just popped up in my mind. I wasn't sure what the 게 was for, so I had to look it up. It was fun that I had to look up the meaning/use of a form my mind was suggesting me to use even when I hadn't formally studied that grammar point before . It made me feel that korean is starting to become a bit more spontaneous and automatic for me and that makes me so happy!

[qeadz]

Yesterday I had to write something in korean and the form 재미있게 just popped up in my mind. I wasn't sure what the 게 was for, so I had to look it up. It was fun that I had to look up the meaning/use of a form my mind was suggesting me to use even when I hadn't formally studied that grammar point before . It made me feel that korean is starting to become a bit more spontaneous and automatic for me and that makes me so happy!

Thats what its all about! Small victories. Lots of small little victories which over time add up to winning the war, so to speak

[AndyMeg]

Thats what its all about! Small victories. Lots of small little victories which over time add up to winning the war, so to speak

I completely agree. Those small victories are such a huge motivation!

[AndyMeg]

I recently watched a video that got me thinking a lot about my language learning journey:



As the tittle of this log says, I'm trying to use fun and enjoyment as a guide. One of the main reasons for this is that I dramatically improved my english by having fun and enjoying activities in the language when I was at a lower intermediate level. At that time I didn't start to do those activities in order to improve my english. At that time I started to do those activities because I genuinely wanted to do them and english just happened to be the language that gave me the best opportunities to engage in those activities. I'm trying to achieve the same with korean, but now there's a difference: I'm making a conscious effort. And this has let me to think of "the best ways to learn a language while having fun" instead of just "having fun" in the languages I want to learn. And there's a big difference between those two.

Watching the video made me rethink some of the things I've been doing and I decided to make some important changes to my current approach.

-> I'll stop to try to consciously analize and compare the languages while I watch korean content without subs or with korean subs.
--> I'll stop watching dual english-korean subs for a while.
--> I'll stop trying to understand each and every bit of the content I'm watching. I'll just enjoy it, even if that means that I'll pay more attention to context clues (non verbal communication, sounds, images, etc.) while watching the videos instead of trying to hear clearly what they are saying.
--> I'll stop counting how many minutes of korean videos without subs I watch. But just as a reference, I'll let my current progress bar here:

: 3537 / 18000 korean videos without subs (minutes) :

(I stopped counting a few days ago, and since I did that I noticed a considerable increase in the amount of korean video content that I've been watching without subs)
--> I'll stop doing the parallel sentences activitiy

So, what I'll do now?

- I'll watch videos with korean audio in the following way:

--> I'll watch new k-dramas (or movies, or TV shows episodes) with or without english subs. Whatever way I want at the moment.
--> If I've already watched the k-drama or k-movie before with english (or spanish) subs, then if I want to rewatch them I'll do so either with korean subs or without any kind of subs.
--> I may rewatch talk shows with english or spanish subs, but I'll re-watch other kind of shows (the ones which provide more contextual clues) with korean subs or without any kind of subs.
--> I'll watch animated series that interest me. I'll watch those without subs.
(Before, when I was counting minutes I restricted myself with the amout of series and I wanted to finish one or two before tackling another. But now, as I'm focusing just on enjoyment, I've started watching four different series. And I found out that I actually prefer to change between series instead of watching a ton of episodes in just one series. Two of the animated series I've already watched in my native language. And for the other two, I had watched a few random episodes before in my native language, but never completed them, so I don't know the full story, but I at least have an idea of what they are about).

- I'll read the following books:

--> "A frequency dictionary of korean" (Frequency index) by Sun-Hee Lee, Seok Bae Jang and Sang Kyu Seo (I'll read it out loud)
--> "Essential Korean Grammar" (the 5, 4 and 3 star grammar points) by Laura Kingdon
--> "Let's Speak Korean" by Fandom Media (this is a special kind of phrasebook. I'll read it out loud)
--> "Mild Korean"and "Wild Korean" by Han Haemin and Sanghyun Ahn (I'll read the full book: the english explanations in my mind, and the korean and its english translations out loud)
--> "Speed Up Your Korean" by Lucien Brown and Jaehoon Yeon (I'll read the full book: the english explanations in my mind, and the korean and its english translations out loud)

Just as I'm doing with the animated series, I'll go from reading one book to another as I feel like it.

- I'll continue taking the once-a-week korean classes.

[Cèid Donn]

This really should be the international symbol of the adult language learner



Anyhow, I still maintain that one of the smartest things I've ever done in my life regarding language learning was when I started learning Gaelic. For about 2 months, all I did was listen to audio files. At that time we didn't have a lot in the way of materials online for Gaelic learners--we still don't but there are sites like LearnGaelic now that provide us with some variety of good content for learners, which I didn't have when I started. Mostly what I had was whatever audio files I could scavenge off the BBC site from their old Gaelic pages that had left to rot and a load of mostly dead links on sites like the old SMO site. But that's what I did--just listened, not even intensively, while I played the video game Civilization III. I didn't have a grand learning philosophy behind this--I did it simply because I had never heard Gaelic spoken before in my life and had no honest idea what it was suppose to sound like. That ignorance really intimated me when I would pick up a book like Teach Yourself Gaelic and look at the first pages of dizzying pronunciation rules. So I just listened at the start, very passively, because I lacked the confidence to try to do more than that.

I suppose part of that was informed by my earlier experience with French. My first ever experience with learning French was a 6-week intensive summer class at my uni where our instructor, an utterly charming fencing champion from France who has decided to go into teaching French in the States as his next big life adventure, used a method rather similar to the one Dr. Brown eventually created, although there was much more attention given to speaking--or rather imitating our instructor. But there was a ton of listening, our instructor spoke in French almost all the time, we never wrote anything down except on the last at of the week as a review, and being a very physically fit former fencer, our instructor really got into acting out a lot of the material we covered. This was an intensive course in the summer--every weekday for 8 hours, not including the break--and no one drop out and everyone passed (our "final" was basically an oral exam where we had to interact with the instructor and then with one other student, covering the material we had learned). It was one of most happiest classes I've ever taken and to this day I'm still impressed how no one in the class had lagged behind. The positive, relaxed, low-pressure atmosphere I think went a long, long way in helping us as a group feel less anxious and just by making it such an enjoyable experience, everyone was able to stay engage and keep up even though we were doing this 40 hours a week. And of course that left me with a lasting impression that, yes, I can learn languages, and that making it an enjoyable, fun experience, as opposed to a stressful one where you pick yourself apart over what you don't get right, is incredibly important.

Of course, as a self-learner, this can be very difficult to replicate, especially with a language you're still fairly new it. But that's why I've always been a supporter of extensive passive exposure to one's TL, however one can manage it. There will always be time to learn grammar down the road and that's not something you're going to master overnight anyhow, so don't stress over it. I love that idea in the video about forming a coherent image in one's head of one's TL because that's really what I try to do in my own ways, because without that, studying feels like an exercise in futility to me.

Anyhow, best of luck to you with your changes. I hope they prove beneficial for you.

[Bex]

Very interesting video. I too am coming to the conclusion that I need to just consume the language and in the most entertaining, and therefore easy way

Since I started the Super Challenge, I've been forcing myself to read. I have noticed that as I am consuming material I am not really enjoying, I have not really been learning much from it and I am now starting to avoid the activity. I do find reading easier than I did but I'm not sure I'm actually gaining much from it. And I think that my lack of enjoyment is key to how I'm feeling about it at the moment.

I have learnt more grammar this year and my ability to understand has slowly improved, but I think that comes from forcing myself to read and it hasn't felt very effective or efficient. Reading has not compelled me to spend any time with Spanish.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion, that the main reason this or any other method works, is time on task. But the enjoyable bit is really important, otherwise your brain just shuts off, so it has some effect but it's really slow and doesn't really engrain itself like it does with children or people who come to love the language.

I think you need passion to become good at anything and to me, passion without enjoyment is impossible. If you can't find passion, then yes courses, textbooks, classes etc will force you to spend time with your language but it won't become part of you, part of who you are; like it does with kids because the brain will think it's something to be avoided.

I'm too stubborn to stop the Super Challenge before I complete it but I am definitely not going to continue with reading afterwards. I plan to just consume as much YouTube and Netflix as I can when I've finished.

It will be really interesting to see if you feel this way is noticibly better, especially as it isn't a massive change from what you've been doing previously. Good luck with it, I for one, will be very interested to see how you progress.

[AndyMeg]

This really should be the international symbol of the adult language learner

Hahaha! I couldn't agree more!

The positive, relaxed, low-pressure atmosphere I think went a long, long way in helping us as a group feel less anxious and just by making it such an enjoyable experience, everyone was able to stay engage and keep up even though we were doing this 40 hours a week. And of course that left me with a lasting impression that, yes, I can learn languages, and that making it an enjoyable, fun experience, as opposed to a stressful one where you pick yourself apart over what you don't get right, is incredibly important.

You had an awesome experience!

I've come to realize that the more you consciously think about something, the more anxious you get and the more prone to mistakes and failures you become. But just letting things flow naturally can get you a long way. The problem is that as adults it is (quite often) really hard to stop trying to control things and just let them happen on their own.

When you enjoy something you can spend a lot of time engaged in that and time flies. But when you don't enjoy something, time seems to pass so painfully slowly that it becomes a torture and it interferes with the learning.

Of course, as a self-learner, this can be very difficult to replicate, especially with a language you're still fairly new it. But that's why I've always been a supporter of extensive passive exposure to one's TL, however one can manage it. There will always be time to learn grammar down the road and that's not something you're going to master overnight anyhow, so don't stress over it. I love that idea in the video about forming a coherent image in one's head of one's TL because that's really what I try to do in my own ways, because without that, studying feels like an exercise in futility to me.

Anyhow, best of luck to you with your changes. I hope they prove beneficial for you.

Thank you!

[AndyMeg]

Very interesting video. I too am coming to the conclusion that I need to just consume the language and in the most entertaining, and therefore easy way

Since I started the Super Challenge, I've been forcing myself to read. I have noticed that as I am consuming material I am not really enjoying, I have not really been learning much from it and I am now starting to avoid the activity. I do find reading easier than I did but I'm not sure I'm actually gaining much from it. And I think that my lack of enjoyment is key to how I'm feeling about it at the moment.

Yeah, lack of enjoyment creates a vicious cycle: you get overwhelmed and/or frustrated, then you get bored or to the point of burnout, then you start procrastinating as much as you can and stay in that state for a long time until, maybe, you feel motivated to try again, but as you keep doing the same things over and over again, the cycle just starts repeating itself.

I am slowly coming to the conclusion, that the main reason this or any other method works, is time on task. But the enjoyable bit is really important, otherwise your brain just shuts off, so it has some effect but it's really slow and doesn't really engrain itself like it does with children or people who come to love the language.

I think you need passion to become good at anything and to me, passion without enjoyment is impossible. If you can't find passion, then yes courses, textbooks, classes etc will force you to spend time with your language but it won't become part of you, part of who you are; like it does with kids because the brain will think it's something to be avoided.

I totally agree!

I'm too stubborn to stop the Super Challenge before I complete it but I am definitely not going to continue with reading afterwards. I plan to just consume as much YouTube and Netflix as I can when I've finished.

I hope it goes really well for you! If you do activities you enjoy, it'll create a virtuous cycle and you'll end up spending more and more time doing activities in your target language

It will be really interesting to see if you feel this way is noticibly better, especially as it isn't a massive change from what you've been doing previously. Good luck with it, I for one, will be very interested to see how you progress.

Thank you!

I know it may not seem as a huge change, but for me it actually is. Not because my activities are changing that much (because they are not), but because I'll be approaching the activities from a fundamentally different perspective that implies a radical change in the way I'm interacting with my target language's native material and other resources.

[AndyMeg]

Quick update:

I'm enjoying watching different animated series. Each episode is around 20 minutes long, which makes it easier to find time throughout the day to watch them. (And thanks to Brun Ugle's challenge thread I decided to also give Peppa Pig a try)

I finished watching "Angel's Last Mission: Love" (단, 하나의 사랑) with english subs and I loved it. I'll probably watch it again with korean-only subs.

I've been re-watching one of my favorite k-dramas: "While You Were Sleeping" (당신이 잠든 사이에) with korean subs and I'm currently on episode 5.

And today I also started watching a new k-drama: "Doctor John" (의사요한). I watched the first 2 30-minutes long episodes without subtitles and enjoyed them a lot (even if there's a lot I don't understand from the spoken language). I wasn't planning on starting a k-drama today, but I got a clip from the drama on my Youtube's recommended list and there was one of my favorite actors as lead (Ji-sung // 지성) which convinced me to give the drama a try even without reading a synopsis (which I usually do before starting a drama). The female lead (Lee Se-young // 이세영) is also an actress I know from past dramas and I enjoy her acting a lot, especially for comedy. I'll probably rewatch these episodes once they are subbed in english.

- I'll read the following books:

--> "A frequency dictionary of korean" (Frequency index) by Sun-Hee Lee, Seok Bae Jang and Sang Kyu Seo (I'll read it out loud)
--> "Essential Korean Grammar" (the 5, 4 and 3 star grammar points) by Laura Kingdon
--> "Let's Speak Korean" by Fandom Media (this is a special kind of phrasebook. I'll read it out loud)
--> "Mild Korean" and "Wild Korean" by Han Haemin and Sanghyun Ahn (I'll read the full book: the english explanations in my mind, and the korean and its english translations out loud)
--> "Speed Up Your Korean" by Lucien Brown and Jaehoon Yeon (I'll read the full book: the english explanations in my mind, and the korean and its english translations out loud)

Just as I'm doing with the animated series, I'll go from reading one book to another as I feel like it.

"Essential Korean Grammar" and "Speed Up Your Korean" come with lots of explanations, so I decided to not read them for the time being as I'm trying to not overthink about the language.

I'll continue working with the other three books, but each one in a different way:

- For "Mild Korean" and "Wild Korean" I'll use them as textbooks and I'll do the activities and take notes.
- For "A frequency dictionary of korean" I'll continue reading it out loud, but for now only until the first 1k words (and their example sentences). After I reach the 1K point, I'll just go back to the beginning and I'll keep repeating this cycle for a while. I'm currently at the 31st word mark of the first cycle.
- For "Let's Speak Korean" I won't read it out loud. The book is divided in 21 sections/topics, and each section comes with audio for each sentence/phrase. The audio is repeated four times, the first two are slower and the last two are normal speed. My plan is to, each time, listen to the full audio of a section/topic while paying attention to the pronunciation, the korean transcript and the meaning. So far I've done this for the first section.

[AndyMeg]

Quick update:

Today I was watching a scene from "While You Were Sleeping" (당신이 잠든 사이에) and the female lead was doing something embarrassing. I'm rewatching this drama with korean subs. Without realizing it I started laughing while watching the scene and then I said (while looking at the character): 뭐 하고있어? (What is she doing?/ What are you doing?) and continued laughing and then I suddenly stopped when I realized I had just spontaneously said that in korean!