Chunks is part of that. Also movie scripts are good for this. Journals are good too. Making up your own sentences when learning new vocabulary is good for this activity as well.

So to summarize: 

• Chunks

• Movie scripts

• Vocabulary study - translating the translation back to Korean, making your own sentences with new words you're learning.

• Keeping a journal

Posted by honeybearsmom at 7:21 AM EST

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Perhaps do the translations of the articles from TL to NL and then do the reverse? So you have practice doing the translations and you have a template? It will take longer to do.

Supplement this with a journal or something and spend time translating that. This should be done ... when? During the vocabulary phase or the fluency phase? 

Am not sure. 

I can't wait to do the shadowing and the chunks and the translations from NL to TL but I will do this activity LAST. I will do the grammar and vocabulary study first. 

I am different to most other people who learn speaking first :). I always do things differently to other people. 

I think I will do the NL to TL translation in the shadowing and chunk phase. I am eager to get the chunks down though. 

But I am also eager to get the 20,000 vocabulary I need to read newspapers comfortably. 

Wow, that's a lot of words and a lot of mnemonics I have to make up. It's doable I guess. If I learn 200 words a day then it will take me about three months to learn 20,000. I already know about 4,000 I think. 

If I studied 14 hours a day, I could finish this in six months. I can pick up the 16,000 words I need to add to my vocabulary knowledge and I could shadow everyhing and I could translate a lot and get all the chunks I need to know down. 

The key is to be able to go from TL to NL both in speaking and in writing. 

Posted by honeybearsmom at 7:07 AM EST

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I never thought of studying like this. When will I be ready to do this? I am eager to start. I will be doing a little bit when I do vocab study as I will make my own NL sentences using the target word and then translate into the TL. I will see how it goes. I think I will start doing this when I do the chunks and the fluency stuff. I will keep a diary about learning languages or will translate my own writing in this blog although that will be harder to do. I should maybe aim for something less hard?

The teenage book is great for colloquial everyday conversational Korean. I should really study that when it comes to learning every day Korean. Also that book is GREAT for shadowing. 

So don't forget to shadow that book. 

Now videos. As I've said previously, video-studying is more for the advanced stage. When you're pretty much fluent. Then it's a gold mine because it reinforces what you already know and perfects your pronunciation and intonation. 

So just forget about videos for the time being. They're for much much later. You know that you are becoming fluent when you can understand 90% of what they say in dramas. The language is much simpler in general than the language in sageuks.

So the takeaway is stick to your gameplan. It was a very good one and bore much fruit. Don't be impatient to be fluent. That will come. 

Remember, if you know a lot of vocabulary and grammar, shadowing will be faster and more efficient than if you hadn't known vocabulary and grammar. 

If you had concentrated on fluency from the start by doing lots of shadowing you might be halfway to being fluent by now. But you didn't choose that path. You wanted to learn pedagogically, and your priority was reading, not speaking. 

And also, now you've worked out a good method, well at least better than before, of learning how to be fluent, namely shadowing individual sentences that are repeated many times. The recording of separate tracks for sentences was a BREAKTHROUGH. 

Now, it's straight out study, following your plan. 

SO ... once again the plan is ... 

* Finish the grammar study - make the testing list; make the categories; do the workbook

Posted by honeybearsmom at 6:43 AM EST

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# New internal hard drive that stores at least 500 GB

# An external hard drive of 500 Gb that I can play around with, test Parallels and so on. This is quite urgent! 

# Movie script book

# Electronic dictionary that's better than the Galaxy Player dictionary

# Korean slang book

# American slang book

Posted by honeybearsmom at 6:38 AM EST

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Learning will get very easy once you reach the advanced level.

I think you've done well learning by yourself. 

You got spooked and derailed reading the "How to" site. Reading what other people do can make you go off-course down unproductive paths.

So just stick to your game plan. 

That's the key. You KNOW you have to learn the vocab in IL. 

You know at some point you will have to complete the IL workbook. 

You know that you have to memorize the grammar terms the same as if they were vocabulary to be memorized. 

You KNOW ... and so on. 

So the way I'm going about things is very systematic. 

I don't think it will harm me to study grammar first. I have a basic idea of pronunciation. I will do shadowing of the KGU book to get my pronunciation up to speed. 

But I won't do any more than that. 

I also did that as an experiment too. 

So I am glad my curiosity was satisfied. And I solved a problem - of how to get separate tracks for each sentence. 

So that's that. I can set that aside. 

You can't learn fluency, grammar, reading skills, vocabulary, writing skills ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It's just not possible. 

And writing skills - I mean formal writing skills - are learned differently to speaking/conversational skills. There is a lot of OVERLAP, I have to admit, but there are differences. With writing skills (I don't mean online chatting with friends), you have to use a formal register. You need a very large vocabulary and you have to be familiar with MANY collocations. And you have to be very good at grammar. And you have to have read a lot of formal writing such as is seen in news articles. 

So don't compare yourself to others. The ones you see that are fluent on Youtube may not be able to read the paper fluently. Or it may have taken them years. And their writing and spelling may not be crash-hot. They might be limited in the vocabulary they know. You can hide your lack of writing and reading skills with fluent speech. 

So just remember that all the formal stuff you did, such as learning grammar and vocabulary from the IL book, is NOT WASTED. 

And remember, just do one activity at a time. Don't be hassled by others who try and make you feel inferior or inadequate because they can speak well. 

You can too. Just stick to your plan. 

Chunks are great for SPEAKING FLUENCY. But they're not that great for writing and for reading. 

You've got to know grammar and you've got to know many words before you can read fluently. 

I think you can hold off the speaking/fluency part a bit longer. Finish the grammar study. Do vocabulary study - getting the vocab from the IL book first. Then move onto news articles. 

Then after you've done a few news articles - maybe about ten or twenty - move onto speaking. Speaking involves doing the chunks, making recordings and shadowing a lot. 

People might say that you are doing things backwards but you've always wanted to read stuff from the beginning. That's kind of more important than speaking really. I think picking up speaking will be easy. If those migrant workers can do it, then I can too. It's just a matter of shadowing a lot. 

So I estimate it will take about two more months to finish the grammar study. Then it will take about one month to do the vocab from the IL book. Then it will take three months to translate and learn the vocab of 100 news articles. 

Then it will take six months to do the chunks and the shadowing and become super-fluent, knowing slang and everything. So how long? About another twelve months. 

That's the order of doing things. So don't worry about immersion and stuff. 

If you learn another language, you can learn to be fluent first by translating the chunks. Then you can learn grammar, vocabulary and other stuff. 

But you do need to learn grammar. If I hadn't learned English grammar and vocabulary, I would be semi-illiterate, like many Aussies I come across on the net. 

And those learners become lazy. They just stick with speaking and don't do study of grammar, reading and vocabulary-building and formal writing. 

I think it's easy to pick up speaking fluency. You can do this any time. What you can't pick up is ability to read newspapers and communicate at a high level. You can only do this by studying grammar and studying lots of vocab. Once you have enough vocab and grammar under your belt, it becomes easy to listen and understand Korean. Already you are understanding a lot of what you hear. You are picking up grammar particles and stuff like that. What is limiting you is your lack of VOCABULARY knowledge. The sageuks you enjoy watching actually have high level Korean words/vocab. They're not like the modern dramas. 

So ... once you pick up enough vocab, learning to be fluent by listening will be easy.

So don't drift away from your game plan. I'm afraid that going to that language site made you deviate from the original plan. 

So don't really worry too much. Just go at your own pace. And don't worry about what others say too much. 

When you do the KGU shadowing you understand it better and get more out of it this time around because you know grammar much more than you did before and you know vocabulary much more than previously. 

So don't worry about chunks too much. Just add to your collection every now and then when a good chunk comes to you. But the chunk study is for later. 

In the future, when studying another language, you should focus on translating your own material. Instead of translating a news article, you should translate some pages you've written in English. Looking up words and so forth.  The stuff you've written should cover a wide variety of things. And you should look up grammar books and get collocations from the dictionary.

An excellent dictionary is a must. I wonder if there's a better dictionary than the Player. There might be some very good electronic ones out there. I think I might enquire about electronic dictionaries. I might have to buy an expensive one. Probably have to go to TechnoMart. I'll bring my Galaxy dictionary to compare with. If the electronic dictionary I check out compares favorably with the Galaxy one, I'll get it. 

The Galaxy one is good but 3 out of a 100 words I look up the dictionary for I can't find. 

So, yes, I think I will follow that approach: go from English to the TL. It's a counter-intuitive approach but a very helpful one. You waste less time learning stuff you don't need. You go and learn the stuff you really need and will likely use in the future. 

So I've got to think about this approach to learning. I think it's a revolutionary way of learning languages. 

Most people go from translating TL to NL. But NL to TL I think bears a lot of fruit. But you really need a teacher for this. A bilingual teacher. 

Most of those polyglots are good at both directions and they practice translations in both directions. 

Tintin is good for those sorts of NL to TL translations but not 100%. Sometimes the dialogs are very different. You can only trust the material if the translations are EXACT. The Essentials books are good for that. 

Sometimes though exact translations sound funny. So you might have to know the idiomatic phrase in Korean. This is hard. You really need a Korean bilingual teacher for that. Movie scripts might be good. 

So there are lots of strategies for becoming FLUENT. But just stick to the original game plan and you will reach the fluency part soon. Just be patient. 

Posted by honeybearsmom at 5:51 AM EST

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There is a bit of envy I feel. I shouldn't really compare myself to those out there who are fluent. I am envious of migrant workers who are fluent in Korean after one year. Also, I am envious of non-migrants who study Korean and are fluent in it.

I really shouldn't compare myself to them. They got fluent after like four years. They didn't do much else. They studied full time and they attended those language institutes. 

So I think after four years of full-time study you should be fluent in the language. 

I think I am doing all right. Realistically, if I study five hours a day, I will be fluent in Korean in six months, and I will be able to read newspapers and most material online. 

So that's great. I will be teaching myself too! And I won't have much contact with Koreans. 

So stick to your plan. 

Studying Korean grammar from advanced books really has paid off. I mean it doesn't help me to become fluent that much, maybe a little, but it helps me to read Korean and understand it, especially formal stuff, not banmal. Banmal is hard. 

So forget about banmal for the time being. 

I think I should complete the study of the grammar book. The chunks idea is great but maybe I should do it side by side while I am doing other activities. 

And maybe start translating your own material. 

So .... 

SHADOWING

• Shadow everything. A bit like the US government FSI? program. This is mainly listening and repeating. The key is to edit the mp3 files so that there is a separate track for each sentence. And shadow easy stuff to hard stuff. So start off the KGU and end up shadowing IL. Advanced shadowing is shadowing of movie scripts.

• IL book, KGU book, Using Korean, Essentials Everyday, Tintin, WOW comics, movie script, my own chunks, slang, idioms.

• Spend more time on KGU, Essentials 

CHUNKS

• Mine sources for good chunks

• Make your own situations

• Keep a journal - about learning languages

• Concentrate on collecting the material in English, the Korean translations are secondary. Good quality chunks is what's important. 

• You should aim for 3000 chunks

• Separate the commercial chunks from the personal chunks

VOCABULARY

• Follow an order. Do the newspaper articles first as a priority. Don't try to translate everything. Just focus on these. Don't do Tintin yet. Do the mnemonics at the same time. Make your own sentences. Look at collocations.

• Do the vocabulary from the IL book. This is a good source of collocations.

• For later, you can do shadowing on the articles and the sentences you've made up. 

GRAMMAR

• Finish the list of grammar terms

• Finish the testing of grammar terms

• Finish the grammar workbook

STOP THE GRAMMAR STUDY AT THIS POINT (YOU CAN DO REVISION LATER BUT DON'T SPEND TOO LONG ON GRAMMAR). 

It's hard to do everything at once. I think you should just follow a flow-chart or work-flow chart. 

If I'm able to do all these things, you will become very fluent in Korean and you'll be able to read newspapers and be able to express yourself in writing. 

GOALS

• Be able to read newspapers with ease

• Be able to hold conversations with Koreans with ease, and be able to look after yourself. 

• Be able to write and chat online with Koreans. 

Posted by honeybearsmom at 5:29 AM EST

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I looked up Korean slang on the Internet and found some good sites. I made a list. I want to get a book. You really need to understand Korean slang or else you cannot understand what people are saying when they talk casually. I think half of what they say is slang! I mean in casual conversation. I know that I had trouble understanding manga because of the amount of slang that was in it.

There is a site called Lang8 which I think is a free forum, and people correct what you write. 

I think this is just what I need. It's like having a teacher! 

I really need to get the chunks list out there. 

I need to get the most common expressions. 

And mix it up with English slang, Korean slang and idioms. 

I wonder if there is a book of Korean idioms. That would be cool if there was. 

I learned a lot of idioms from studying the IL book. But I am wondering if that's not somewhat old-fashioned. 

The dictionary on the Player is great for idioms. I should really try and find them. 

Yes, so I have to think of useful CHUNKS! 

Chunks in English. 

That's the theme, and get EVERY chunk translated. I will be good at Korean and really will be able to express myself. 

I've got to think of situations. 

Like buying a cell phone. 

Like getting the toilet fixed. 

Getting a leak fixed. 

Getting a burst water pipe fixed. 

Getting air con installed. 

Getting a parcel sent to your home. 

Ordering a sofa bed online.

There are many situations where you need to speak Korean well. 

Posted by honeybearsmom at 5:21 AM EST

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This is a unique and exciting idea. Most stuff that teaches you a language you have to translate other people's ideas and thoughts. They may not be the same thoughts as yours and you might not usually express yourself that way. The authors might lead a very different life to yours and have different personalities, interests and opinions to yours.

So there may be a very bad fit. And this is true for me in a lot of cases: IL, KGU, Essentials. 

Even after studying for six months, I still do not have the language to communicate MY wants, needs and opinions. 

So how about working on translating your own stuff? 

I think "chunks" go someways towards that, but sometimes I want to write a narrative or a dialog/conversation. I want to talk in my own voice. 

And the chunks are limiting in a way. They have to be general. 

Even the migrant's book which has many useful bits and pieces is far removed from my needs. I can't imagine having to say some of the things in that book. 

If things don't have personal relevance for me, I am likely to forget it. 

Soooo ... I have to make it personally relevant for me. What about translating what I write in the blog? 

Or write a diary? That's what that Korean guy who lived in America suggested I do. I scoffed at his idea because I really didn't want to write a diary for learning purposes, especially if someone else was going to read it, and if I DID, then it would be a very bland one, and so would be very boring to write. Also, I did not feel my Korean was good enough. 

But wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to express myself, like I have here, in Korean? 

It would be liberating. But it will be difficult. Because some expressions don't travel well. 

For example, "It would be liberating." How could I say that in Korean? 

Maybe something like "I am would feel freer." or "I would have much freedom." 

I think a lot would be gained by translating my own words. I should write unaffectedly at first though in English because if I am conscious that I am going to have to translate something, the writing becomes very stilted. The words don't flow. 

I suppose really I should read a lot. And then I would get an idea of how Koreans express themselves. The thing is that Koreans express themselves very differently to English-speakers. 

Real 180 degree way. Although there are the same grammar elements for the most part. 

It will be hard to do. But there will be real benefits. Because you are likely to use the same language in the future.

Why not create short scenarios or dialogs? Write them up in English. Translate by looking up the dictionary and getting someone to correct them? Like that thing you wrote and that bbensi corrected. 

Yes, that's very valuable. And you can write more specific stuff too. 

I wish I knew Korean slang. 

Posted by honeybearsmom at 12:37 AM EST

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And it went OK. I had to stop because my pencils have a very hard tip and it was difficult writing on the smooth paper. I need to get a very black pencil like a 2B pencil. I think I am picking up a lot this way though I suspect I am going too fast. I am going through each sentence about six times and it's very very helpful. The intonation is getting better though not native-like and I have trouble with some words like "kollyoyo" or "keollyeoyo".

I really need to go through the book several times before the chunks stick in my head. I think I have to pay more attention to the English phrase to see what the meaning of the Korean sentence is. There is a lot of useful stuff there, though not really colloquial, mainly school stuff, language school in particular. 

I think if I go through the tracks that I (laboriously) made about three times in total, I would really have absorbed most of it, and will be fairly good at speaking. 

Plus there is the other stuff, I mean the Essentials book. The Essentials book will be pretty good too. I don't know whether I should do the romanization. I think I should as it helps me remember vocabulary. For example, I remember "kollyoyo" now. I am using the older style romanization to see whether it suits me better and it's quite OK actually. I am not getting too mixed up with "eo" and "o". A little bit but not very much. For example, "today" is "onul" and "yesterday" is "eoje". 

I should try and remember the romanized spelling. That will help me remember chunks. 

Now when I do the actual shadowing, I should concentrate not only on the pronunciation but also on memorizing the whole sentence itself. 

And try and implant it in your aural memory as well as your visual memory. 

I don't have a problem with vocabulary in KGU, thank goodness, because I went through the IL book which has a lot harder vocabulary and more of it. So that's a good thing about going through the IL book. I don't remember a lot of the IL vocabulary but a lot of the easier and common words that appear in IL also appear in KGU and I do KNOW those words.

So, get used to remembering chunks. I think the only way to do this is to do lots of repetition until you're sick of it. 

I think I am getting better really. 

I am probably going too fast. 

When I go through the book more times in the future, more phrases will stick in my head. 

I also have to get the chunks from that book. 

That book is really good. It's at the right pace too. I am glad I made those separate tracks for sentences. It makes shadowing much much better. 

I am really shadowing like I should, and I've noticed my pronunciation is better. 

I wonder how long it will take me before I'm very good. 

I think studying vocabulary from newspapers is a good idea. 

I should mix up my study a bit so that things don't get boring. 

So the different tasks are: 

# Shadowing (at the moment it's shadowing KGU. I have to shadow it about a total of three times. But after I do the shadowing this time around, I'll shadow Essentials). 

# Grammar study: make the grammar testing list. Make the grammar categories for conjugational verbs. Do the workbook. Look up the vocab at the same time as you do the workbook. 

# Vocabulary and translating study. Go through newspaper articles that have rough English versions. Translate and look up words. Look up word collocations. Also make vocabulary list for the IL book. Write collocations. Make up your own sentences. 

# Chunks - mine stuff for chunks. That means mining KGU, Essentials, resources on the Internet, news articles, migrant worker book, WOW comics, Tintin books, Japanese language books, GTO manga books, Korean language books, "Using Korean", movie script books

* Find Korean slang/colloquialisms/idioms and collocations. 

Now videos ....

I don't think I will study them right now. They are good for later when I am better at listening and I can use them for listening practice. I think they take up too much work to study intensively, for example, looking up words for, and studying the different subtitles. 

I think videos are definitely good for listening, but I am doing a lot of listening with the mp3 tracks that I use for shadowing. 

Videos are good for later when I am more advanced and fluent. 

So I've started attacking things on different fronts. When I am in America, I think I will just do translations of online articles. I enjoy that a lot. 

So I will do more intensive stuff later on. It's hard studying because I need the computer and I need to repeat stuff out aloud. I can't really do this in public. 

Anyhow ... I think I've learned a lot in the last six months. I have really gotten good at grammar. I've picked up a whole lot of words. I can read and understand better. I can actually translate newspaper articles - WOOHOO! But I take very long to do that, having to look up every second word, but ... at least I am translating! Before when I tried to translate the news articles, it was IMPOSSIBLE. So studying grammar has really paid off and helped with my reading. 

I have to keep revising grammar though. 

Anyhow, my weak points are: 

# Lack of high-level vocabulary - the stuff you find in serious news and serious stuff on the web. 

# Lack of fluency when I talk. Don't know enough chunks. 

# Poor pronunciation when I talk

# Very slow at reading Korean. I find Hangeul still hard to read. 

But I've made progress. When I read the WOW comics, I can go through them relatively fast. I don't find them easy still but I feel more comfortable reading them and don't feel so confused about the grammar.

I think learning some grammar really boosted me. 

So I think I have to mix up my study to make it interesting. 

I think when I start improving my Korean, I can start chatting with Korean people - not just text chat but speaking-chat - and when I do that and do it a lot, my Korean will really get better at an exponential rate. 

So got to keep going and don't give up. I feel that I've gotten over a slump. Or a hump? Anyway, I've made a massive gain. Mainly from studying that IL book. It really helped improve my vocabulary and grammar understanding, though it didn't do anything for my pronunciation and fluency. 

And that dictionary is really indispensable. 

You could tell Mrs L was surprised at and impressed with my writing. There weren't many mistakes in it, and I could express my thoughts. I think my writing level is high for my general level. 

I am not good at speaking though, but i haven't really done shadowing and I haven't done the chunk work. 

I think I will keep at it. 

So remember FOUR things: 

1. Shadowing

2. Grammar study

3. Vocabulary study

4. Chunks 

Now, with the vocabulary study, I am thinking about whether I should write stuff in notebooks or write them on the computer or what ...? 

I think a notebook is better. I had better get a fat notebook for IL. I think for Tintin, notebooks are better too. A medium size notebook for each book of Tintin. 

Now, what about other vocab? Online news should be on the computer I think ... And what about other things I will get vocab for? There are newspapers as well. I think I can do them online as well. 

Actually, it's best to get everything online if at all possible because you can manipulate things online and your handwriting can get messy and stuff. Yes, I had better start putting things ON THE COMPUTER. I think that's the best thing to do.  You can print off lists as well. I think I had better start soon.

The other thing is you had better start LEARNING the vocab as you go when you make the lists. That's the thing. You're not really learning the vocab. And then you forget and it pops up again! 

So get into the habit of making mnemonics STRAIGHTAWAY when you are studying vocabulary. Don't move onto the next word until you've made a mnemonic. 

Now that your study is more focused, you can now do this better. I don't think you should study from dramas. 

If you have subtitles for a drama, that's good for mining chunks. 

I think you should concentrate on getting your chunk list together. 

Because you have to really think about what you'll say in the future. 

Now when you mine chunks from sources that have Korean translations, should you write down the Korean down? 

I think that's too much work. I'm not good at typing Korean ... 

But it might be worth it, not sure ... 

I think it's quickest to mark things with a pencil. Get 2B or 4B pencils and use them. 

I wonder how long it will take me to get all the chunks I need and will use in the future ... 

I have to think about things ... 

Anyhow, the Korean study is going very well. 

If I could do things again, I would have started on the IL book earlier, I would have gotten a better dictionary from the beginning, maybe bought a phone dictionary, or used the one with my phone, or a really good electronic dictionary, maybe even one with talking(!). 

I would not have bought so many books, and I would not have done vocab study from the Voca Training books or from the other books, mainly phrase books. 

I think the Magic book was good. So I think Magic, KGU and IL textbook and workbook. If I had done that, I would have finished all the grammar by now. I would have finished it all in three months I think, and I would be doing vocab and shadowing work. 

I am glad I made the separate tracks, as I've said, because that's a big leap forward in my study. 

Now I feel I can shadow anything because I have the tools to make separate tracks. 

I am starting to feel tired though because my body clock is still attuned to a different time zone. 

Anyhow, I think the tracks thing and the chunks thing are all big leaps forward in my learning. 

The other stuff is just straight-out learning. 

So things that make a big difference in my learning: 

# A good dictionary

# Chunks

# Separate tracks for sentences - one track per sentence

# Good grammar book - International Learners

An idea came to me .. instead of translating things that other people have written, what about translating stuff YOU want to write. 

That's like the chunk idea kind of. 

I'll write another post on just this topic. This is an important idea. 

Posted by honeybearsmom at 11:19 PM EST

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