Endless Log Of Doom: Korean and German

[Dak]

Hi,

Decided to start a log to track my Korean progress and significant milestones. My focus is on being consistent, because that’s my biggest obstacle. I tend to study in bursts of intensity with long breaks (weeks) in between. I believe that by studying with more regularity I can improve faster.

For reference, on Lingq I’m at around 9k known words, 8k Lingqs, and 57k words read. I’ve met with a language exchange partner a couple of times to practice speaking, and will continue that with some regularity as well.

Edit May 20: Started German

[Dak]

Known words milestones

Korean

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| July 20, 2017      |   1000 |
| September 01, 2017 |   2000 |
| November 15, 2017  |   3000 |
| November 25, 2017  |   4000 |
| February 07, 2018  |   5000 |
| February 28, 2018  |   6000 |
| March 03, 2018     |   7000 |
| April 04, 2018     |   8000 |
| May 17, 2018       |   9000 |
| May 20, 2018       | 10,000 |
| May 27, 2018       | 11,000 |
| June 2, 2018       | 12,000 |


German

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| coming soon |


[Dak]

Might as well start with an update from yesterday. After a few weeks of not reading much, I spent some time on Lingq. I’m going through a podcast, this time 김영하의 ‘책 읽는 시간’ 팟캐스트. He’s reading a portion of 미시마 유키오의 ‘금각사’. Pretty interesting so far.

[Dak]

Today I went through a bit more of the podcast but I’ve been pretty busy at work so haven’t gotten as much time in as I want. Tomorrow I’ll study in the morning instead.

Thinking about what sort of metrics I want to track in this log, I’ll keep it simple for now and just track milestones for total number of known words on Lingq.

[eido]

I'm rooting for you!

[Dak]

I'm rooting for you!

Thanks!

---

So today I did a bit of studying in the morning, just to finish the lesson I was halfway through the night before.

Tonight I moved around the furniture in my apartment, cleaned my desk, and sat down to read. Made ~450 lingqs. It's almost midnight now! But I got a lot done.

[Dak]

Woke up in the afternoon, got quite a bit of reading done today. Should be hitting 10k known words tomorrow.

[Dak]

Have you just been using LingQ since you started learning Korean?

Kind of. I first started with Korean Made Simple and Lingq at the same time. I went through about half of the KMS book and put all the vocab in Anki. I found it frustratingly difficult to memorize the vocab, mostly because it felt like a drag to do flashcards. By that point I had a few hundred words in my vocabulary thanks to Anki and general exposure to the language so I was actually able to read the beginner texts on Lingq at a good pace. For grammar, I have all 3 levels of Korean Grammar In Use. Highly recommended series. I have a book on Hanja as well (Korean Reader for Chinese Characters) which I plan on working my way through soon...

I have also at various points spent a lot of time on HelloTalk and Kakaotalk; every few months I go on it and chat for a few weeks, helps me to see what my level is in terms of how much I can understand/express.

[Dak]

Side note: this log might soon start getting German updates as well. I’ve dabbled in it very briefly but up until now had little practical reason to learn it. Lo and behold, I ended up buying a math textbook in German (Einführung in die Kategorientheorie) because there’s no translation, and am excited to actually have a concrete goal to reach, not to mention learning the math which was the primary reason I got the book

[Dak]

As planned, broke past 10k known words for Korean, and started working on German. I ordered 4 books for learning German last night, and will skim/reference them as I keep going on Lingq. My first goal for German is a large vocabulary, though there is a German language meetup in my area that I might attend once I get more comfortable.

Anyone have recommendations for German television or movies? Definitely going all-in on some German literature soon, but haven't ever looked into modern German media.