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Wednesday, 15 February 2012

Getting separate tracks with Audacity

I was able to get separate tracks of each sentence using Audacity. It worked very well. It was a lot simpler than I thought. The key is to press "Stop" if you want to pause the track anywhere and use the menu. If you use "Pause", the menu items will be grayed out.

So the process is relatively quicker than I thought it would be though of course it's going to take a long time because there are so many sentences.

The KGIU will be a nightmare because there are 226 chapters. With about five sentences, it will be over a thousand tracks. Then I have to create folders in Documents and in the external hard drive labeled "Movies". I also have to create Playlists. It might swallow up a lot of hard space. I will have to remove movies and other stuff.

That will be a lot of practice. I can do shadowing using iTunes. iTunes is good for shadowing because you can repeat "One". So you can repeat the sentence as many times as you like with relative ease. When I want to stop the repetition I just click onto the next track.

I think this is going to take ALL DAY to do. Oh well.

I have to then do the same process for all recordings. I need to make sure that there are pauses between sentences so that I can make the segments easily.

What about videos?

I found King Gwanggaeto not that useful.

I have Stairway to Heaven. I think I will watch that. I might buy Golden Fish using one of those companies that sell DVDs.

I really want to get Golden Fish.

Posted by honeybearsmom at 3:22 PM EST

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More on chunks

I think I understand why these language enthusiasts want to spend every spare minute learning languages. I am the same. I found I was studying grammar while waiting at the bus, waiting for the doctor or any available time I could. It was more fun studying than watching TV or even - browsing the Internet!!! (Surprise)

Now back to chunks.

I have to start creating that list and get work on getting the translations. Who shall I ask? I can ask Bbensi. He's interested in languages.

I think I will have insults. This will be of interest to people. Stuff like "Mind your own business!"

I think that will be good. Lots of insults and colloquial expressions. A few sayings as well.

So there will be about 500 to start off with. And if that goes well, another 500 and keep going until you have about 3000. I think I will stop at 3000.

And then do another language.

And keep going.

So that will be it. Lots of categories. Insults. This is everyday language.

So insults, arguments will be in order.

It's to let people communicate. They don't even know what they are saying really but they know what they mean when they say it.

What other interesting categories are there?

Shall I mix everything up or put things into categories?

Shall I make a dialog like a skit or something?

Might be too difficult.

I think the key is to make short chunks.

The problem with Korean are the many speech levels. You are actually learning several languages not just the one.

That's the problem with Korean. Say there are four speech levels, you are learning about three languages.

So that's why the language is difficult.

You need to learn each of the speech levels separately.

I think the chunks business will be great.

There will be audio and pictures, photos and cultural tips, points of interest, and interesting stuff all around.

And the thing is the person will be talking after the first day!

Doing the revision will be tricky.

I don't know how to do the revision.

Maybe repeat the previous part's lesson. So keep the revision in cohorts.

Don't do too much revision, the student gets mixed up. After about thirty chunks, there will be a fun revision section.

The thing is that they speak too fast in these dramas.

So the good points about CHUNKS! are:

1) Speak slowly enough for the learner's ear to catch

2) The listener has to depend on LISTENING only

3) There is no grammar but the listener uses grammar perfectly in their speech!

4) These chunks are USEFUL, every day things used in speech.

5) A lot of variety.

6) Colloquial expressions galore!

7) Short so doesn't tax the listener

IDEA for Korean:

* Make two CDs - one for each level.

8) Fun

9) Easy

10) Good pronunciation

11) Person is speaking meaningful chunks straightaway

12) Person is learning how to express themselves straightaway

13) The person is learning to speak rapidly

14) Listener doesn't have to know how to read the target language

15) Interesting pictures

16) The page is interesting as it has lots of useful information

17) Beautifully presented

18) Suitable for any ages

19) Really good for beginners or for learners who are stuck and aren't making progress

20) Bypasses the need for immersion

21) Learner can go as rapidly or as slow as they want

22) Learner will be speaking fluently, automatically from early on

23) Not much memorization, just repetition

24) Revision exercises are built in.

25) Enjoyable activity - addictive

26) Person can readily see the progress they're making

27) Person can try out the language the first day

28) Their pronunciation will be good from the beginning

29) The person will be able to "converse" from the beginning

30) No need to learn grammar formally

31) No need to learn vocabulary formally

32) No need to learn how to read

33) Learner will be a good listener of the language

34) Learner will be picking up grammar automatically and effortlessly without even trying

35) Learner will be picking up vocabulary even without trying

36) Program is whimsical and appealing for many tastes

37) Easy to use

38) Can pick up at any point

39) Easy to repeat because chunks are short and slowly spoken

40) Normal speed chunks as well. Person practises the slower speed until they reach the faster speed.

41) The chunks go into long term (aural) memory

42) Learning is effortless, pretty much subconscious

43) Learning style follows "best practice".

I should charge about $200 for these CDs.

I don't want to undercharge for these CDs.

Posted by honeybearsmom at 10:30 PM EST

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Chunks

I'll call it "Chunks".

That will be the theme.

So how will I compile the list of chunks?

I should keep a notebook, and keep a list on the computer as well.

I think a notebook on the desk is a good idea.

I like the idea of a large desk. The books keep falling off a small desk. Perhaps, a desk that's intermediate in size between the dining table and the smaller one.

I think I will get an intermediate desk later ... or add the desk next to mine ...

And I will do the drawings - get them done! I can tidy them up later. Experiment with different styles.

Try and tell the short story in pictures.

Don't put the Korean anywhere!

This isn't about teaching how to read Korean.

The key is easy to learn, useful chunks.

Use your brain to observe what is used in language. There are common phrases or chunks that are used in language.

Sometimes it's only one word. Sometimes it's a group of words.

The key is to make the chunk short as possible.

Keep the chunk useful and EVOCATIVE!

You can do that by picking a chunk that is spoken, is commonly used in speech, is short, and the ones that are exclamations are particularly memorable.

So get the chunks, and think of the pictures that are useful for that.

Some chunks are just CLAUSES and PHRASES.

Very common phrases.

It might be a problem of cutting down on the number of chunks. Because drawing all these things is going to take a lot of time.

What's the pull?

Chunks concept.

Best method to learn language.

The most natural way to learn language.

Communicating from the beginning. Can use it straightaway.

Useful language.

Good pronunciation.

Just focusing on one thing so simple method.

Way that children learn.

Quickest way of learning language.

Learn grammar as well. But not taught explicitly.

Learn vocabulary as well. But it's not taught explicitly.

Fun pictures.

Suitable for all ages.

Can get a boost quickly.

Fun revision, repetition.

Puts it into your long term memory.

TRY FORGETTING THE CHUNK. YOU CAN'T.

Good pronunciation. Communicating.

You can EXPRESS yourself.

These are the building blocks for more learning language, for learning other skills. Learning vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing will be helped a lot by learning these chunks.

These chunks are the basis for learning more language.

So these chunks are the things that will fuel learning. They will rocket learning.

This will be FUN, PAINLESS, and give IMMEDIATE REWARDS.

The program will be fun to do.

It's easy.

Anyone can use the CHUNKS system.

The thing is cute and fun.

There will be fun tips as well.

The thing is easy to navigate.

I think each CD should be 500 chunks each.

Once again, you have to get the most common 500 chunks in a language. This is actually the equivalent of learning about 2000 words.

The thing is that you are learning 500 chunks but in the process SUBLIMINALLY learning 2000 words! And you are learning about 100 points of grammar. You are getting grammar lessons as well.

And just stick with the chunks as much as possible.

Don't make the chunks hard.

The longest should be six words.

Remember to break it up into short segments.

How much is this?

Keep a chunk book on the desk.

Where shall I find chunks? Watching TV.

Some tests will not have English.

Shall I call them "tests"?

Reviews?

Some tests will just have the pictures.

I think if the person wants to find the English, they can. But they should try to do it from the pictures first.

These are simple tests. The person says the chunks, and then listens to the correct answer afterwards by clicking on the mp3.

I think the mp3 in the actual teaching of the chunk should be one file. It should consist of SIX recordings from slower to fast.

I won't slow it down using artificial means as it distorts the pitch. I will just ask the speaker to speak slowly. But not stilted.

What about people who want to see the Korean sentences?

I would advise against it.

What about the different speech levels?

Well, they might have to just buy a different speech level CD.

I can't do anything about that.

Just use the casual speech level. Though some people might be scared off by it. The advantage is that casual speech level is easier.

Maybe use the polite informal level: "yo" level.

I could do that too. This might be the most sensible solution.

Posted by honeybearsmom at 11:25 AM EST

Updated: Friday, 10 February 2012 11:58 AM EST

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More on chunks

The chunks must be completely understood. There should be no ambiguity about the chunks. So you need easy chunks.

Maybe I should start a language program called, "Learn from chunks".

Some chunks are:

• Don't touch!

• You surprised me!

• There's a problem.

• Insult words: "Drop dead!"

The problem is analyzing the English language and getting the CHUNKS. Working out the chunks. These chunks are common in any language.

• Stop

• What I mean

• You know

• You understand?

• Don't do it!

The thing about these sentences is that they should be as short as possible. Bigger sentences can be made from these short chunks. These chunks are actually the building blocks of these sentences.

So once you have a stable of about 500 chunks, you can make an interactive CD-ROM.

Call it CHUNKS!

The CD-ROM has lots of pictures to make it interesting. There is slow repetition and then faster repetition.

There should be a PHONETIC translation below. Do you think this will help? There should be lots of little notes about how to pronounce ...

So lovely cute pictures. Phonetic translations. Tips on pronunciation. Repetition of audios from slow to fast.

About five hundred of them.

Then three thousand of them.

There is a little individual vocabulary to learn but not much.

Grammar and reading are taught another way. AFTER the person has learned chunks.

Short dialog situations.

Short little tests.

So the task is to get the CHUNKS. Then to draw pictures relating to the chunks. The ideas for the pictures will come easily once the chunks are worked out.

Don't worry about the alphabet.

Just get the chunks down!

Get as many chunks as you need.

You can learn any language quickly like this. Get the native speaker to read the chunks.

So work out the chunks FIRST. Spend about a week?

Get as many USEFUL chunks as possible. You can look at dialogs and see what chunks are commonly used.

The chunks should be useful to daily life and conversation as possible.

So think about commonly used phrases and expressions.

Dictionaries can jog your memory.

Just listen to things.

Watch something.

The pictures will create the situation.

I prefer animals in the pictures.

Just think about the chunks.

Later on, you can create about thousands of chunks. There is no limit to the number of chunks.

Might it be too much trouble creating pictures for everything? Note there are no drills.

Maybe have a fun review part where you put the chunks together or there is a test for recalling the chunk.

It's important the person does NO TRANSLATION. So individual words will NOT be taught or emphasized.

Because there is LOTS of review, the person gets practise and a kind of spaced review.

They will hear the chunks over and over again.

They will see the phonetics as well.

I am unsure about the phonetics though ...

They might get the wrong idea about spelling from that ...

I am not sure.

Maybe they can turn on and turn off the phonetics.

Just listen ...

And get the most useful chunks.

Once you've done it for ONE language, you can do it for MANY languages.

So work on just the ONE language.

Get the phrases bank.

Work out the scenarios for the pictures and then draw the pictures.

Get a Korean person to translate.

Get the recording.

Then make the exercises.

Design just one chunk with all the bells and whistles.

Then do it for the rest.

I think 500 chunks is enough.

This will be good for a test CD-ROM.

You can advertise that they can learn twenty of these chunks a day as a part time learner. 20x5 minutes = 100 minutes. So they will learn everything in a month.

Then if they are really keen, they can learn fifty of these chunks in a day. So they will complete it in 10 days.

If you have a CD-ROM that teaches 1000 of these chunks, they can complete this in twenty days.

If you learn fifty of these chunks a day. Say it takes five minutes to learn a chunk and revise it, that will be 250 minutes or about four hours a day. Then you can learn 1000 of these chunks in about 20 days.

Then there is a 5000 chunk one. You can learn these chunks in 100 days.

With 5000 chunks, you should be pretty good at the language.

The strength is the repetition and review exercises.

The pictures should trigger memory.

There will be some pictures with English translations and some without.

How many revisions should be done?

After about ten of these chunks, there should be reviews. There should be about one review of each chunk ...

There could be another review after about twenty of these chunks ...

I think this could work.

The CD-ROMs should be broken up into 500 chunks. If the person collects them, they should buy about 6 of them. So 3000 chunks in total. Each CD should cost almost $50. There should be an interactive component too.

As for reading, vocabulary and grammar ... this should not be emphasized at all. None of this is TAUGHT.

There should be minimal Korean or whatever target language.

Students can learn vocabulary and reading separately AFTER they have learned the chunks.

You can direct them to learning these things. But really these things should be learned on their own with books.

So these CHUNKS are really useful for me too.

Make a list of chunks.

How are you going to keep tabs of the chunks? So you don't duplicate them? I don't know.

Make a list of chunks and get a Korean person to say these chunks and then repeat them, shadow them.

Keep the Korean to a minimum.

Speaking and reading are two separate tasks.

What a great idea!

I've breathed life into the CD-ROM!

CHUNKS!

Posted by honeybearsmom at 2:07 AM EST

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Is there a systematic way of learning chunks?

If there is a systematic way of learning chunks, it will make my learning faster and easier.

I like to follow a system if I can.

There are some ways I believe.

Chunks should be short, consisting at the most of five words.

Chunks should be clearly delineated so you are learning the chunk and nothing more.

You should understand what the chunk means in English.

You shouldn't worry about the grammar of the chunk.

You should hear the chunk read clearly and slowly.

You should be able to repeat it easily (because you can hear it well).

You need someone to read very slowly. But not in a stilted way. They should read smoothly but definitely not fast. They must pronounce words distinctly. If they speak too fast, eliminate them as potential readers. Only keep the ones who can read slowly but not artificially.

Then learn the chunk without reading the Korean too much. Just get the English meaning.

Now about the English translation - it's best if you get the colloquial translation rather than the word-for-word translation.

You are learning the whole "chunk", not the individual words. So focusing on the separate words interferes with learning.

The chunks must be meaningful though.

Try and get commonly used chunks.

Don't spend time on chunks that you will rarely use. Those are for later.

So English translations are useful.

Don't worry about grammar when doing shadowing.

Grammar is only useful for learning to read primarily.

Vocabulary ... what's this useful for? For everything. It's useful for reading and for speaking but more important for reading. If you focus on the individual words too much, you will miss the chunk. You will be missing the forest for the trees.

So it's emerging that there are two different but related tasks.

One of them is: SPEAKING. The other is READING. Writing is related to speaking.

For speaking, grammar isn't that important. For speaking, a little vocabulary is helpful. Good colloquial translations are helpful. Good audios are helpful, meaning the readings are slow, clear and therefore easy to follow and repeat. The chunks should be short. How are you going to get short chunks? You have to get short sentences shadowed. Maybe dialog is good for that.

Tintin is good for that. So I will get that done. Also, movie scripts are good. So I will buy several books with movie scripts.

Movies like King Gwanggaeto are too difficult to shadow and the chunks aren't that useful for modern life.

So we're getting warmer. Get the movie scripts, the Tintin books and shadow them and try and learn chunks. Short phrases and sentences are better than longer ones. Break down a longer sentence into digestible chunks.

How many times should you repeat the chunks? Until you remember them in your LONG TERM memory.

Try and associate an EMOTION with them. This really helps. Maybe think of a color? Try and get the emotion behind the chunk.

So I will be learning CHUNKS. Don't worry about the whole long sentence. Try and SEE the chunk.

That's the secret. Learning chunks. There's no other way to become fluent. So basically learning a language is about having a GOOD EAR.

Things that speed the process is having someone speak in a COMPREHENSIBLE fashion. Not too slowly so that it sounds really unnatural. But not so fast that you can't repeat it.

You really need something slow at first. Then repeat it as many times as you have to so that you have placed it in your long term memory.

Rinse and repeat. Keep doing it. The newspaper articles aren't that good for shadowing. Neither is the IL textbook really. The Tintin books and the movie scripts are good for shadowing. Stuff with commonly spoken phrases. The shadowing of textbooks, and more formal, less colloquial stuff is for LATER.

Right now, you have to shadow chunks of phrases that are commonly spoken. So the type of movie scripts matter. You want something contemporary and not too far out a subject.

So shadow these things. Get the rough meaning but don't worry about the grammar and the meanings of the individual words. Just concentrate on learning chunks.

Shadow these chunks as much as possible. Get the sounds right. Get the emotions behind the expressions.

Repeat until saying the phrase becomes automatic. Worrying too much about the meaning of the individual words and about the grammar INTERFERES with your acquisition of language.

But of course, meanings and grammar are helpful for READING.

And since reading is a priority, you need to do a lot of study of vocabulary and grammar ...

You can just read the English and then listen to the chunk. Don't worry about reading the Korean too much.

How to find the chunk? That's the problem. You have to hunt for short phrases to shadow. Ideally a chunk is less than five words.

So treat READING and SHADOWING as completely different activities with different methods of study required for each.

READING requires: vocabulary, lots and lots of it. And a good knowledge of grammar.

SHADOWING requires good material to shadow. Dialogs are good to shadow. Short sentences are good to shadow. Simple sentences are good to shadow. Well-translated sentences are good to shadow, ones that have their colloquial meanings.

So just concentrate on those things.

Maybe skip grammar study for the time being.

Just make lists of words and memorize them, using mnemonics. Use lots of mnemonics. You can do the grammar workout later ....

The priority is picking up chunks.

Just try and pick up chunks as many as possible.

So memorize long lists of words.

What about common collocations?

Are dictionaries good sources of chunks?

Actually, they aren't bad sources of chunks.

Write down the phrases and collocations, the examples from the dictionary and you can get someone to read them.

That's a good thing to shadow.

But the main thing you are reading these articles is to mine them for useful vocabulary.

And you will get some reading practice.

See if there are any useful chunks in the articles. Probably not that many ... maybe a few ... it depends ... whether you can see the chunks or not.

Slowing down audios of videos ... How can I extract audios? How can I slow down the audios?

I can do that on the Galaxy Player. I can slow down the Gwanggaeto videos on the Player. You can try. Now that you have the hard subs you can try. Then just repeat and try and pick up chunks.

Learn the chunks as much as possible. Try and learn the chunks!!!!

I found a way to slow down video! I can use vlc for this! This is great!

But doing this for sageuks isn't good. The speech is obsolete, especially the word endings.

I need to watch contemporary dramas but there aren't ANY that are interesting for me. Maybe some movies? So there is a hunt for good videos to shadow. I want to shadow L dramas. I only like watching him. :) I don't like anyone else actually. I don't really like Love in Heaven ... I think Golden Fish would be good. I will do that one when I find it.

Hooray! I have a found a good way to watch dramas and learn from them. Maybe I will watch Jewel Bibimbap that way. I will shadow it.

So there will be lots of good chunks for me to shadow in video format:

• Dramas that have been hardsubbed

• Some Korean DVDs

So just keep in mind there are TWO things to learn:

1) Reading - requires vocab and grammar

2) Speaking/becoming fluent in the language - ie producing language automatically - requires shadowing and picking up chunks

Hopefully, the two things don't interfere with one another.

The problem with shadowing is finding easy material that progressively gets harder as my level improves.

Reading isn't that big a problem ... It's just BORING looking up all those words. Getting collocations might help ... maybe I will pick up the collocations in speech ...

So pick up CHUNKS of language, learn PHRASES. Don't learn individual words ... learn PHRASES.

Try and recognize the useful PHRASES.

You should shadow about 200 of these phrases a day.

So three months shadowing phrases - maybe about 100 of them a day. So about 9000 after 3 months. It would take about 2 minutes to repeat a chunk so about 200 minutes a day ....

And then three months of learning vocabulary. It takes longer ... about three minutes to learn a word and translate and do all those things ... so about 300 minutes a day (100 words a day) which is about 5 hours a day ... Then in about 3 months, you will have learned about 9000 of these words.

About 1000 of these words are vocabulary words ...

So this is a very interesting post.

I've learned a lot about CHUNKS and how to acquire language.

Try and pick up SHORT chunks and internalize them as much as possible.

Try and watch slowed-down video.

So ditch the sentence-making. Just memorize the words using mnemonics. Try and translate the article. Move on to the next article.

Later on, you can learn the grammar and stuff and make sentences.

Just try and understand the article, get the vocab down.

Maybe learn the words using mnemonics. Should you write down the mnemonics? Maybe. Write them in your notebook.

So most of the time is spent thinking of the mnemonic.

Just try this method and see what happens.

If you learn the word properly the first time you come across it, the better.

What if you pick up chunks in your reading?

Those chunks might be useful for later ...

Then you can ask someone to shadow for you.

If you translate and understand something really well and then read the Korean sentence many times, maybe some chunks will stick in your head. And especially if you get someone to read the sentences ...

It wouldn't take long to record some articles and shadow them. Don't get stuck on all of the sentence; just concentrate on shadowing the chunks.

Shadow USEFUL chunks.

The chunks should be as short as possible.

Posted by honeybearsmom at 12:40 AM EST

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Thursday, 9 February 2012

Learning in chunks

There's something to be said about learning language in chunks. That's how kids do it. They don't understand the parts of speech, grammar and so on but they can be fluent. I think that's the only way to be fluent. To learn phrases. So when I do shadowing, I have to be alert for phrases. Don't focus so much on the individual words but think in phrases. That's the way to do it. And listen a lot. You'll hear the same phrases over and over again.

So there is a drive on many fronts:

• The drive to learn as many chunks as possible and speak these chunks fluently.

• There is the drive to acquire as much vocabulary as possible.

• There is the drive to remember as many grammatical forms as possible.

Those are the main drives.

The vocabulary acquisition can be measured by how many articles, books, materials I process using vocabulary acquisition methods. Don't neglect mnemonics when learning vocabulary. Mnemonics is very very important. They will lock the word in your long term memory.

It's not that hard to learn 200 words in a day if one has the time. So in about one month, you should have learned 6000 words.

How long would it take to learn 200 words? Well, if you spend five minutes per word, that will be 1000 minutes. That is 16 hours a day, I think. And I think five minutes is a long time to spend learning a word.

Maybe a better figure would be 3 minutes. So 600 minutes. That will mean 10 hours a day. So that is doable. I will have time to do shadowing as well. So I have to try and keep to this figure of 3 minutes per word. Three minutes per word involves thinking of a mnemonic. Writing a sentence with the word in it, looking up the dictionary. Repeating the word several times a day. Using visualization. Reading the phrase I've learned with the word in it. So I think 200 words a day is doable. Then afterwards, you can do some shadowing. Shadowing doesn't take too long. Try and listen for chunks. That will be hard actually. The English translation may get in the way. That's why learning languages through pictures is better. Because the English doesn't get in the way.

Learning individual words is also helpful. But learning phrases is the best way of becoming fluent. I wish I could do shadowing soon. But I will eventually have to move away from shadowing too.

The problem with shadowing is that one is relying on English too much. Even reading Korean might be a problem. Try and listen to the sounds. Try and pick up "chunks" or phrases.

I will have to learn intensively for the next six months. Just relax. You've made a lot of progress. Korean is a difficult language to read. Try and get to the point where you recognize 98% of the words in any text without looking up any words.

By then your progress will be rapid. You want to get to the point of reading where you don't want to parse all the time.

By the time you've translated and parsed 100 newspaper articles (easy and difficult; short and long) and shadowed all the sentences in them, and then translated and parsed one Tintin book and then done the shadowing for it, and parsed and translated the grammar book and shadowed the sentences, and then done a lot of shadowing of the essential mp3s, and then done revision of the grammar in the IL book as well as the grammar in the KGIU book ... my Korean - meaning my ability to read, my pronunciation of words and the ability to say a few phrases, will be pretty good.

I will be especially pleased when I can read an article of a newspaper easily. That will be a thrill. I really hate looking up words. I hope my method of study will help me remember words. I think the words I learn from newspapers are repeated many times in articles. So learning from articles is a way of revising stuff I already know.

I also must not neglect listening. Not just listening of stuff I want to shadow but listening to contemporary dramas.

So this is the make and break stage. Reading newspapers won't be such a chore as it was before. I can understand a lot now. I really can. I can translate articles a lot more. And then I can work on speaking. So it's not only about reading and translating, it's about speaking and listening and memorizing words and phrases in my aural memory as well as in my visual memory.

I have to learn all these phrases, maybe about 5000 of them. That will be great when I've learned so many phrases.

And then I can work on being more fluent by practising with Koreans. It will be a pain because many of them aren't that interesting to talk to.

I can watch variety shows and things like that and try and understand them.

It will be great once I can understand a show on TV completely. That will be great.

So the key is to learn tons of vocabulary - not just sight recognition of the word but the spoken form of the word. Keep an eye and ear out for "chunks". If you catch a chunk, that will be golden.

So try and learn common collocations and phrases. Don't worry about learning whole sentences.

Don't worry too much about the different speech levels.

The news articles will be a good source of vocabulary. Tintin books won't be too bad. And then you can do the teenage books as well. The manga like St Marie, forget about. It's too colloquial.

I should really be good by the end of one year. I am understanding more, and listening is my weakest point so maybe my listening isn't too bad.

If I were able to study as much as I had wanted, I would be doing vocab study and shadowing by now. I would have made the vocab lists of the grammar book, done the self-testing of the grammar words, done the workbook, made the categories of grammar words, and I would be at the stage where I am writing sentences for the words and making up mnemonics.

And then I think in six months, I can learn 20,000 words. If I learn 200 words a day, then in six months, I will have learned 200x6x30=36000 words. So after three months, I should have learned all the words I need and more. When I mean "learned", know them to a sufficient level so that I can learn them for good the next time I "learn" them. Some words will stay in my long term memory if I use mnemonics for them.

I will get better and better at understanding written grammar too. So probably my reading and writing wouldn't be too bad but I won't be fluent. The only way to become fluent is to shadow.

I will just have to shadow as much as possible. I will do TONS of shadowing and then reassess my methods to see if I am making progress. I will test my newspaper reading too occasionally. Right now, I am having trouble because I don't understand near enough higher-level words.

I need to learn these words as quickly as possible. But you've made progress. You were at the stage where you didn't know many simple words.

You are at the stage of learning intermediate-level words.

So when you practice speaking, don't obsess too much about the meaning. Try and get the intonation down pat. Try and get the pronunciation right.

I think you will make it. You will be better than the FSI people because you will be able to read and write fluently as well as speak fluently. Once you learn many "chunks", writing will be easier. Chunks will help you write, speak and read. Chunks will be helpful for understanding grammar too.

So looking up words, doing mnemonics, doing tons of shadowing and trying to pick up chunks and doing tons of free listening as well will all help. Also, try and get your reading up to speed. Test yourself with simple stuff when you get back to your apartment. Also, try translating Tintin and see whether it's easier with the better dictionary that you have and also with your knowledge of grammar.

I think your understanding of Korean has improved so much. You can't expect miracles of course. And watching sageuks isn't really helpful for your Korean. Watching contemporary shows is good for your Korean.

I love learning grammar though. It's a good feeling when I have a handle on it. When I approach it as learning vocabulary, I feel the pressure is off.

So just approach it like that. And try and "simplify" it. The book makes it more complicated than it is.

So concentrate on learning as many chunks as possible. If you learn ten chunks a day, after a year, you will learn 3500 chunks. That's a great many chunks and you will be effectively fluent. So try and learn as many chunks while you are studying.

Is there a systematic way of learning chunks?

Posted by honeybearsmom at 11:29 PM EST

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There is a lot of pressure on me

but I think I am going about things the right way. Learning grammar really has helped me. I think I've made a lot of progress in the last 6 months. I really need to concentrate on finishing the grammar and following the study plan. Once I learn vocabulary, that will be fun. Maybe I should approach the learning of grammar the same way that I learn vocabulary. I should just try and memorize the meaning of the grammatical words by using mnemonics.

I am in love with mnemonics again. Words that I remembered using mnemonics I never forget.

I think it's useful to make my own mnemonics. Now that I have got the right pronunciation, it's easier to make mnemonics.

Don't make too complicated mnemonics. Even though you might forget the word a short time later, the next time you learn it, the learning time is quicker and you are more likely to remember it.

So don't give up on mnemonics.

Also, use the words you learn. Again, you might forget it a short time later, but it will be easier to lock into your long term memory the SECOND time you learn the word.

So hurry up and finish the grammar exercises treating the grammar words as words to learn. Then move onto vocabulary. And learn masses of vocabulary. Just learn and learn lots of words using mnemonics. You will probably need to do shadowing at the same time. So concentrate on the grammar book and shadow that well. Translate the newspaper articles and the Tintin books. And take it slowly bit by bit. You will get there. Pay someone a small fee and record them. Keep good records of the recordings. Put them in a playlist and label appropriately. You might use "Get Info" to label them well.

And then it will be fun. You can check your progress because you have a list of words. Then you can do listening practice as well by watching TV and favorite dramas. As you do shadowing more and more, your understanding will improve. Your vocabulary really improved after you studied the grammar book and looked up all the words in the dictionary.

Some of the newspaper articles are quite high-level and use specialized vocabulary, I think. But don't be overly impressed with people who can speak Korean fluently. You will be able to read as well. And write well.

The speaking will come in time. People will be impressed at your ability to communicate.

Posted by honeybearsmom at 11:19 PM EST

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