I've found that learning both individual words and phrases is helpful. I have been learning vocabulary from a Korean children's book for learning English. I use it to learn Korean of course. It's been great. I probably cannot recall most of the words I've learned but if I come across the word somewhere else with the English definition, I can memorize the word faster on this occasion. The book has 600 words. The words are basic words that a beginner should know. I am also going through a phrase book, "Surviving Korean" and many of the words are familiar and do not take very long to learn because I already encountered them in the vocabulary book.
I have found that it's really useful to learn these words. "Surviving Korean" is good because the word is demonstrated in very simple sentences.
I have started to learn phrases today. I am learning from another children's book for learning English. The sentences are really simple. Some of them have colloquial phrases.
I recognize most of the vocabulary in the sentences now because I studied the vocabulary book.
So it's more a matter of memorizing phrases than memorizing vocabulary.
I repeat the phrase aloud 40x. I read the phrase very slowly the first few times and then I speed up and eventually say the phrase very fast. I try not to read the phrase after the first few times.
Most of the phrases are simple, but if I come across a complex one I memorize chunks of it.
I don't worry about parsing the grammar of the sentence overly. I just concentrate on memorizing the phrase.
I am sure I am going to immediately forget most of the phrases I've learned but I think if I come across the phrases in the future and try and learn them, the learning phase will be much quicker. In the sense, future learning of the phrase is revision. I don't have to make as much effort to memorize the phrase again.
And if I come across the phase in reading I can understand it and not stress too much about the grammar of the phrase which I tend to do when I am translating a phrase for the first time.
It does take a long time to repeat a phrase 40x. But I think it's useful. I like this book because it goes beyond the usual conversational phrases such as greetings, ordering a meal and so on. I am sick of these types of phrases actually. Almost every book I have studied has these phrases repeated. Then I get stuck in greetings, grow bored and then don't go past greetings.
The children's book I am studying from has interesting characters like Mr Fox.
So I have to just persist with this kind of thing as I am having trouble finding an environment I can immerse myself in and have COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT.
That is the thing. Watching TV can be considered "immersion" at a pinch I guess, but the content of it is incomprehensible so it's mostly useless.
Also, I like these books because unlike movies with English subtitles, they don't stray too far from the literal meanings of the words. There is less interpretation done by the translator.
So the English subtitles thing might be really damaging for me and harming my efforts to learn the language. I don't mind a translation that is far from the literal translation but so long as a word-for-word (or close to it as possible) exists somewhere.
Because literal translations give a clue as to how Koreans think when using language.
So that's my pet gripe about English subtitles. There should be an industry where there are literal translations given for the benefit of the language learner. If they provided these for my favorite dramas, I would buy them in a flash because this kind of thing is EXACTLY what I am looking for.
So I have to just keep memorizing phrases. One day I will wake up and realize that I can SPEAK Korean fluently because I have learned so many phrases. I hope that day happens soon.
Korean grammar is SOO different to English grammar. This is what makes the language so hard. You can't rely on learning a grammar rule and making substitutions as much. You have to rely more on just memorizing phrases and then hoping the grammar sticks in your brain eventually. Repetition then seeing the same phrase in another source are the keys.
Of course using mnemonics helps when learning new vocabulary. I found that using mnemonics really helped me with the study of vocabulary words.
I think after a certain stage, one's learning just accelerates. This happens when one has x number of vocab words under one's belt and y number of phrases. After that, learning depends just on exposing oneself to the Korean language. You will pick up more of the language like a sponge. You don't have to make such a big effort. Unlike the initial stages, you will retain phrases without having to do rote memorization, just by the virtue of coming across the same phrases many times in different reading materials or on TV, movies, radio etc.
I really am impatient for that day when that happens. That will be when I can read for pleasure. Improving my vocabulary then is a matter of looking up a word or two that I am unfamiliar with. And I won't have to memorize phrases.
Then I can concentrate on being an advanced learner of the language -- college level user of the language.
It's much harder for me to do that than for people like The Korean (Ask the Korean blog); I am not immersed in the language like The Korean was.
Oh well. I did try. I got language partners but I found them pretty much USELESS. They didn't try and provide comprehensible input, spoke about boring topics and just forgot most of the time to speak in Korean and lapsed into English (when it was their turn to speak in Korean).
I can't help feeling sore about some of the partners. I felt I was making much more of an effort than they were. I really need a language partner or teacher who is gentle and understands the theory behind language learning techniques and is enthusiastic about applying these rules.
I have to say Korean is a rubbish language. The rules in informal speech are plastic. Even Koreans don't know how to use banmal correctly in speech! What kind of language is that? It lacks the grammatical sense that English has. For example, a sentence in Korean can read either as "tiger scared" or "tiger is scary". In English, it's impossible to be confused as to the meaning. Korean grammar rules are bad; they don't make sense some of the time. I prefer English grammar. I prefer English as a language. It's a lot more logical.
Colloquial Korean is the worst! It really tries my patience parsing the grammar of it.
I just can't wait for the day that I have reached late intermediate level and can read Korean fluently. That would be good. At this point, I am not a fluent reader. Every sentence stumps me. And I am talking about simple Korean readers. I also need to find easy material. The children's books are good because the level is kept low. When they teach adults, they don't do this. They skip these early steps.
I just wish I was a genius. Then it would take a month to learn a language fluently. Can you imagine how great that would be? There is a Korean genius - Kim Un Yong - and he learned about three other languages (other than Korean) by the time he was five or so. He appeared on Japanese TV and showed his fluency in these languages.
"Shortly after birth, Kim began to display extraordinary intellectual ability. He began speaking at 4 months, could converse fluently by 6 months, and was able to read Japanese, Korean, German, and English by his second birthday. Furthermore, it took him about a month to learn a foreign language ..." (from Wikipedia).
SO CUTE
It would make life so much easier if learning Korean was a breeze. Korean is one of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers and I suspect in general for everyone (except for the Japanese - almost the same grammar - and the Chinese people - many words are the same in both languages).
"By the age of four he was already able to read in Japanese, Korean, German, and English. At his fifth birthday, he solved complicated differential and integral calculus problems. Later, on Japanese television, he demonstrated his proficiency in Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Tagalog, German, English, Japanese, and Korean. Kim was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records under “Highest IQ“; the book estimated the boy’s score at over 210.
Kim was a guest student of physics at Hanyang University from the age of 3 until he was 6. At the age of 7 he was invited to America by NASA. He finished his university studies, eventually getting a Ph.D. in physics at Colorado State University before he was 15."
I think his real IQ is much higher than 210. It's probably immeasurable. At least 1000 or something.
Who taught him these languages? Was there a native-speaking teacher? Did he use books? Without being exposed to people speaking these languages, how did he know how to pronounce words correctly and have the correct intonation? Back in the 60s there wasn't the availability of language-learning materials as there are today. Did he use the immersion technique - an accelerated form of it (instead of immersing oneself for six months for example, he immersed himself for a month)? I doubt that he was immersed in these languages in that he had a native speaker talk to him for at least a couple of hours a day. But he must have been fluent if he was able to speak in these languages on TV. I wish there was a recording of that on Youtube. That would be great. It would really motivate me to learn Korean and try harder learning it.
I think we need to study those people who have been able to learn a foreign language and be fluent in it (speaking AND writing) in less than six months to find out what is their secret to learning languages and attaining fluency in them. If they say they learned by memorizing vocabulary and phrases then I would do the same. If they said they did a lot of listening and reading, I would do the same. If they said they studied grammar most of the time, I would do the same and so on ...
Of course it would not necessarily mean that my learning improved as it could be that these geniuses have very different wirings of their brains so that whatever method they used wouldn't work for normal people, but still .....
I am interested in getting Rosetta Stone. This fits in with my style of learning which is highly visual. I like looking at pictures. Seeing English translations distracts me and makes me focus on English. It's just the cost. Is it better to invest that money in say paying someone to speak in Korean, making trips to the hinterland where there aren't many English speakers ... or something else?
I want anything that SPEEDS up my language acquisition. I am interested in minimizing the TIME spent learning. So I am investigating the most EFFICIENT and most EFFECTIVE ways of learning languages.
