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My Blog
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Enjoying the process

I really like studying Korean. I like the challenge of it. I like studying languages in general. I enjoyed studying French when I was a student in middle school. I even studied by myself using my own books.

I enjoy the sense of understanding something. It's a thrill. It's a reward in itself. I like the sense of achieving something. I am a little anal so I am not that good at picking up speaking. But I think I am OK at reading. I am at the stage where I am really enjoying learning. This is because I can read simple comic books. Reading these short comic books is enjoyable even though the subject matter is a little childish. 

I think that could be why polyglots are polyglots. They get particular pleasure out of achieving understanding. It is self-reinforcing. 

I think as with anything you will learn fast if you enjoy what you are doing. I remember the kids LOVED getting reward points. It wasn't so much the prize they would collect after receiving so many reward points, it was the actual receiving the bit of paper that they LOVED. 

So it made learning a self-reinforcing process. 

I have to think of a way of making learning a self-reinforcing process. I think there are several ways of doing this. Using NLP techniques, I have come up with my own ways of doing this. I can use tapping for instance. I tried this with learning Korean grammar quite by accident. I was tapping a pencil on the desk with the sharp point up and I wasn't aware of it, but I was tapping in rhythm with my learning. When I understood a point, I would tap the pencil and I would feel the sharpness in my thumb pad. For some reason, this was a satisfying sensation. 

As I said, this was entirely unconscious (or subconscious) what I was doing. I only realized I was doing this when my thumb got sore. Then I started to do this consciously. I found that for some reason doing this tapping really was enjoyable. It marked off the learning of a grammar point and made me realize I understood something. I felt a sense of achievement and moved on to the learning of another point eagerly. There are other methods like this. 

The trick is to find what works for you. 

I think I get a reward when I read a word I recognize from the memorization of vocab I did. It's thrilling to recognize a word. So memorizing vocab and then reading and recognizing words becomes an enjoyable and self-rewarding process. Similarly, recognizing grammar rules that I have learned in the reading material is very rewarding. A light goes off in my head and I say, "Aha! That's how they use the grammar rule." It's very enjoyable. 

I think pattern-recognition is very rewarding for the human psyche. 

So after a while, when you have gone past the stage where everything is new and bewildering and you are trying to make some sense of the new language, learning becomes a self-rewarding process. Not to the point where it is addictive in my case as I don't really like studying THAT much, but it makes the process bearable. 

I really get a psychological reward reading fairytales I haven't read before. I am learning a new story and I am learning a language at the same time. If I can unlock the secrets of a language, I can learn a new tale and learning a new tale is rewarding as the tale is entertaining. 

For example, I read the story of "The Tinderbox" and "The Donkey Skin" today and yesterday. I did not know these fairytales so reading them was entertaining for me. 

So I think the key is to find material that is interesting for you. Reading about Korean history is interesting for me. Reading fairytales is interesting. Reading about baeoos I am into is rewarding and interesting. 

Reading very difficult stuff is not entertaining. I am anal as I said so I don't feel comfortable letting too many words I don't understand go by. Reading just a little bit above my level is the best. Reading too easy stuff is boring. I am not into beginner's grammar books and unfortunately I bought quite a few of these books before I realized I wasn't really a beginner like that. I am still a beginner but not an absolute beginner. 

I want to find reading material that matches my level. 

I really like comics because they have visual content. This really helps with comprehension. I am a highly visual person so I am really attracted to pictures. 

I remember as a child I would stare at a picture for a long time, looking at all the details in the picture in the book. I especially loved pictures that had lots of details. Some illustrators were very good at this - they included lots of details that only someone looking for them would notice. For example, I loved a picture showing all the food on a kitchen dresser. I loved looking at drawings of a table set for Christmas dinner. 

So I like manwhas. Most manwhas for adults are too difficult for me. And many of the manwhas I see in manwha shops are not that interesting. I don't like the styles of drawing that are popular these days. I like adventure, mystery and detective stories. I HATE fantasy and sci-fi with a passion. I hate futuristic stuff. I don't like American comics like DC comics. I like good realistic dramas with a bit of romance and mystery. I don't like too much action. For example, Old Boy is an interesting comic for me - IF I could read and understand it.  That is the style I like.  I like Asian comics, particularly Japanese and a few Korean comics. For example, I like Saint Marie by Yang Yeo Jin. This has futuristic elements and some sci-fi but I still like it. I think because it has a lot of drama, romance, mystery and a little action. Even though it has sci-fi, it has a lot of everyday realism. 

I would love to be able to read these kinds of comics. I wish I could read them NOW. But my colloquial Korean has to improve a lot. 

I think I would be one of those people who read manwhas a lot. I can see the attraction. Asian societies have a rich range of manwhas. You don't find this sort of thing in western countries. 

I like the mixing in of Asian themes too. The characters look white but act Asian. 

I think once I reach that stage of being able to read manwhas for adults, reading Korean will be a highly rewarding process. I will be encouraged to read more Korean, I will learn more Korean, and so I will be able to understand a lot more, enjoy reading more and so on. 

So the key is to be MOTIVATED to learn a given foreign language and finding ways of making the process enjoyable and a self-rewarding one. 

I also enjoy watching SOME K-dramas -- not too long ones. It would be great if I could watch the ones I enjoy watching without relying on subtitles. I want to reach the stage where I can just watch them without consciously thinking about trying to understand what the actors are saying. Just following the drama and the unfolding of the events. I also want to watch some comedy shows like "Happy Together". This show is funny. 

I am not into music that much so learning Korean by studying pop songs doesn't work for me. I don't like K-pop besides. I know many people do and even learn the words of the Korean song by heart and pick up Korean this way. I could NEVER do that. I suppose if you are really into a band to the point of being obsessed by them you would make the effort to do this. I can't understand how non-Koreans got into the band in the first place when they didn't understand what the band was saying in their songs in the first place. 

So I know some people recommend this method for learning languages but it doesn't work for me. But of course it could work well for other people. Some very aural people might take to this as a method of learning. I have never been able to learn a language using this method. I am just not into songs. I DID try it for a short while and abandoned it after I found it too hard and confusing. And I learned NOTHING from it. 

My ear is a lead ear when it comes to picking up languages. I cannot distinguish what people say easily. I don't have that talent. I often doubt myself - did they say a "d" sound or a "g" sound? Does that word have three syllables or four? With that level of uncertainty, I cannot trust myself to have heard a word correctly and say it verbatim. I know some people can though. I am just not one of them. 

That's why I find Korean subtitles useful but because of the problems of extracting Korean subtitles and then subbing them I have given up on the idea of adding Korean subtitles to movies. And I have to have the English subtitles to understand so just having the Korean subtitles there by themselves doesn't work. I guess I just have to depend on seeing the word in a book I am reading and recalling that I have heard that word before to link the sound of the word with the word's meaning and the word's spelling. 

When I say I enjoy studying Korean, I mean it's a little better than watching paint dry on a wall. And I am motivated to study. I like the lift I get when a light beam goes off in my head when I recognize a word. 

 

 


Posted by honeybearsmom at 5:54 AM EDT

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