When I feel discouraged I have got to realize that I have made solid progress. Reading and grammar I am starting to get a better handle of. If I know nearly all the vocabulary one needs to know to read say a newspaper, then I can just concentrate on grammar when reading. It's because I don't know vocabulary and I don't know grammar that well that reading a newspaper article, for example, gets very hard.
I DO want to master reading.
I think I have to make the learning I do applicable to my needs. For example those small business owners paid interest to the Korean words that they needed for their business so they were motivated to learn these words.
I have to do something similar. Learn the vocab that's applicable to my business/personal needs. Then I will pick things up fast. Once I have a core of vocabulary, picking up new words becomes much easier. You already have good listening comprehension so you can guess the meaning of new words by the context they are in ....
So an environment rich in CONTEXT is what I need. So newspaper articles are good. They have pictures and they have topics pertaining to current affairs.
I will learn from mangas as I am interested in certain mangas.
I will organize myself and set up some time to read and learn vocabulary and study a little grammar. I don't feel ready to tackle the Grammar for International Learners yet and the Using Korean is kind of very comprehensive. I only find it useful if I just glean general principles from it. I don't have a hope of remembering all the examples in it.
I think I will have to be patient. This is an experiment to see whether this immersion helps not only with SPEAKING and LISTENING but also with READING and WRITING and understanding GRAMMAR.
I just have to persist with it. I really do.
I just am not good at multi-tasking and it looks like that's what I will have to do ........
