for the workbook is taking longer than I thought it would. I have to look up lots of words for each page. It takes about five minutes per page. So if there are 600 pages I will have to spend about 3000 minutes altogether. That will be about 50 hours. That will be many days doing that. If I spend 5 hours a day, it will take ten days. If I spend, 10 hours a day, it will take 5 days. Anyhow, it takes a long time. I can't skip it because I need to know the meanings of the words in order to do the exercises. How boring! It takes almost as long as to do the exercises themselves. I will be really sick of looking up words by the end.
I wish there was a definition key for this book.
Also, it's unpleasant reading sentences and not understanding them scanning them for words I don't know the meaning of.
It's the most unpleasant thing of the whole thing. I am not looking forward to studying vocabulary. It's the least enjoyable thing for me, worse than grammar studying. Actually, I like grammar studying. Grammar studying was difficult because of the many words I didn't know. Once I looked them all up, studying grammar was a breeze.
Of course as I progress I will have to look up fewer and fewer words I think.
But it's really unenjoyable. I hate looking up words in the dictionary all the time. It's such a pain. I had to do that with English too when I was studying it I suppose.
I just hate Korean words because I don't like the sounds of the words.
I just have to perservere. I will get over this and then it will be fun. I can then relax and concentrate on grammar. I won't have to worry about vocabulary. So the aim is to get the exercises done, review the material as many times as necessary so it's fixed in my brain and concentrate on the difficult parts. Really spend a lot of time on the difficult parts. Also, make your own tests and make sure that you really know the material back to front. Then revise one final time to make sure there are no problem areas and to fix things in your mind, go over the weak areas for the last time and then you're done. It will take two months to finish this I think. It will realistically take four weeks to do all the vocabulary and the exercises in the book. It takes me about a week to do revision of the whole book and go into the difficult parts in depth. So I have time to do about four more reviews. And then I'm done. I hope there aren't any more grammar parts to learn! I studied KGU and then discovered there was lots more to learn. It was very disappointing to find that out.
I don't think so. I think there's so much grammar in that one book ... besides I can always look at UK and add bits and pieces that are useful to know.
That's my plan. So I have plenty of time to learn grammar. And if I have time left over I can go over the vocab in the two books. That will take me about two weeks to go through all the words actually so there is plenty to do.
I will be glad when I finish grammar. Then I will study vocab and do shadowing.
I think I will do shadowing at the same time because just studying vocab is boring.
I will mix it up. And I want to know how to pronounce words correctly too. I want this shadowing to be effortless though. I don't want to think about grammar and stuff like that when I do the shadowing. I will just use this opportunity to get used to the sounds.
Because looking up words is tedious and boring I will take things easy with the shadowing I think. I will jus switch off my brain and shadow. I will shadow each sentence about twenty times.
So I will do this for about three months and then my Korean should be much much better. Then I am ready to tackle the real world and practise speaking with people.
I will also watch dramas without subtitles.
I will have to read lots and lots of newspaper articles. Maybe if I do about five a day that will be about 150 x 5 which is 650 newspaper articles. That is quite a lot of newspaper articles actually. When will I have time to learn the actual vocabulary?
I think I will be looking things up multiple times because I will forget the meanings and by doing that, looking things up a few times, the words will stick in my mind.
So just get through the difficult part, looking up the words in the book and after that, it will be all downhill, that is, it will be easy.
So the next week, look up words in the book every day. Measure how many pages you are able to cover in a day and from that you can work out how long the whole process will take. I don't think I will do the exercises while I look up the words. I want to do them all afterwards.
So that's what I will do. I will get through it. I will. Actually, it's not that difficult work, just tedious. But anyone learning a new language has to go through this process. It can't be helped. I just have to learn the 20,000 words I need to know to be able to read newspapers.
I have a feeling my speaking will never be as good as my writing and reading. But I like to read stuff and watch dramas so that might be OK. I don't really have a chance to talk with Koreans much so I don't think I really need to learn that stuff desperately.
I should not spend too much time doing this. Maybe I should do it in the evenings after all the other important stuff is done. I don't see how I can do this stuff while waiting at the bus stop because I have to use the electronic dictionary and write in the book as well and I can't do that easily standing around. I have to have a plan for what to do while waiting for the bus etc. I can take the textbook and revise that I guess. I really can't revise that enough so it won't be wasted time. I will need to do the other stuff at the library, hotel or in a place like Starbucks where I can sit down at a table and spread out my stuff. Also when I do the exercises I will need both books so it won't be easy to do outside the home. It will be heavy carrying those heavy books.
I really do like thinking about this: planning my study. Trying to motivate myself. I do things in spurts I realize. If I had the choice, I would study all day, like 14 hours a day. I love studying Korean. I really do. Now that I am sort of near the halfway mark, past the difficult initial stages, it's becoming actually enjoyable. I floundered a bit for a while after I finished the KGU book but I have my bearings back. I wasted a few months doing reading and trying to get conversation practice. Conversation practice doesn't work because there is no purpose in talking. Unless there is this, conversation practice is boring, aimless and artificial. You repeat the same stuff over and over again.
So I have to persist with this. And then when my knowledge is of a high level I will start mixing with people and try and learn conversation ... but I will have to think of a way of making the learning of speaking purposeful ...
That's the problem.
I wish I were a genius. I would be fluent in the language by now. I think that my reading is getting better. I can read simple stuff but the harder stuff is still beyond my ken.
How did I learn English? By reading tons and difficult stuff and using a dictionary. After looking up the dictionary so much I didn't have to look up the dictionary any more except on rare occasions.
So I have to get used to reading a lot and trying to understand as best as I can. I will come across expressions as I do this reading. I will have to get used to the style of expression.
