Shadowing - does it help with reading?
I wonder how much doing the shadowing is helping with reading? It is helping somewhat, but how much?
I can't think of any other way to improve my reading skills except learning a lot of vocabulary, really.
And that's a lot of grunt work unfortunately. The sort of vocabulary I learn from the phrase books is useful for everyday use but not for newspapers. Well, it helps a little but not enough, is more precise to say.
I really don't know how to sort this out. I can't even read simple things without difficulty.
There are two types of language - the informal colloquial one and the formal one found in newspapers.
I need to do a little translation. I will come across some of the same vocabulary at times in both the shadowing and the newspaper translations so that should help.
Also, take time to do the mnemonics. Mnemonics really help to put stuff in the long term memory.
Make sure you are thorough in learning new vocabulary. Go over it again and again until it's in your long term memory.
It's very useful to know several languages.
After learning Korean, you can learn Turkish and German. Turkish is an agglutinating language like Korean. You can also learn Japanese but not the writing.
The writing system is too complicated, really.
Chinese is too difficult to learn. I really need a tutor, I think.
Korean really is difficult but people have managed to become fluent so I can too. I can become fluent in a short time too because I have certain tricks and shortcuts I can use in my learning.
The shortcuts are the separate tracks I've made for each sentence. It's like having a teacher in the room. I can listen to the track as many times as I want.
The other shortcut is that I have an excellent dictionary now.
The other shortcut is that I have good resources. I can get someone to read anything I want and I can record them and create my own shadowing resources. I'm not restricted to the recorded material out there.
Also, I have found a few translated resources.
The problem with some of them is that the translations aren't that good, not accurate. The WOW books are like that. The translations aren't reliable.
I don't know about The Korea Herald articles. I think they're OK. The "Korean at a Glance" book has accurate translations.
I can also translate back and forth with the articles that I have. I think that's very useful to do. It will improve my writing if not my fluency.
I think the "International Learners" book is good for shadowing as the translations are accurate. I can also write the exact translation in English underneath. Also, remember to translate from English to Korean for ALL the sentences.
"Using Korean" is OK for shadowing but it's more for later as some of the sentences are very long. The language is difficult in that book.
So the resources that I have are:
* Essential Korean series - especially the Everyday book
* Korean Grammar in Use
* Phrase book for Migrant Workers
* Korean at a Glance
* Korean Grammar for International Learners
* Teenage book - this is a bit offy - language is a bit hard
* Using Korean
There are the children's books for teaching English but I think the sentences are too easy. I will think about it when I reach that stage of looking at other books.
I think these are enough books, really. I don't think I want to do anymore.
The ones highlighted are really useful for learning Korean to become fluent in speaking.
Even when I become fluent in speaking, I should not forget my goal of expanding my vocabulary as much as possible. I need to keep up with reading.
Maybe I should try easier stuff, but I can't find easy sources actually. I need to scour the newspapers or look at The Korea Herald with the translated articles.
The translated articles are REALLY helpful for understanding Korean and for reading. I need to study them thoroughly. So collect them, one a day. That's a really useful thing to do. So keep reading as much as possible. The WOW comics are fun to read and at my level. I should do occasional reading of these articles.
Also translate the easier articles in the online news source.
That's the way to go.
I just have to do my best.
And when I do the translations try and get the sound of the word in your brain as well as the visual representation of the word. When you are familiar with the sound, it's very very helpful. It's not enough to have sight-recognition, you need to have sound-recognition as well. And I think sound-recognition is more important than sight-recognition.
So you are getting on the way to learning the 20,000 words you need to know. You are learning the easy phrases and picking up a lot of vocabulary that way.
I think this way, it accelerates my learning for later, it helps speed up my learning of reading and acquiring vocabulary.
Remember, once you get over a certain milestone, your reading skills will improve very quickly. Suddenly, it will be easy to learn. You will just soak it up. You won't even have to use the dictionary as much - I mean you should - but you can guess a lot of the meaning without doing that. But you should check the word in the dictionary just in case and as reinforcement.
So you have to try and reach that point where reading is easy.
The problem is that some of the Korean sentences go on for so long.
The shorter sentences aren't too bad. It's the long sentences that are difficult. It's hard to make head or tail of them. The main problem is the lack of vocabulary knowledge. If I had better knowledge of vocabulary I could work out the meaning of the sentence better. So it's a matter of knowing a certain amount of vocabulary. After I acquire this vocabulary, things will get much easier.
So I am getting the hang of it. I think what I am doing - translating and shadowing are all useful activities. I think I get it. I think my progress will be fast in the next six months or so.
I think I am getting much much better.
I still have to do the grammar study but I will leave it for later. The shadowing builds up my confidence and so I will do that first or do a lot of it before I do the further grammar study.
I am certainly getting the hang of it. Translating into Korean isn't as painful as I thought it was.
Full-time, I could finish the shadowing of the Essential Everyday book in two days. But I would forget a lot of it as it would all become a blur somewhat ...
But I think it's possible to become fluent in three months easily by studying Korean full-time for three months. In three months, you could finish shadowing Essential Korean Everyday, Korean Grammar in Use, Migrants phrase book, Korean at a Glance and International Learners book.
You wouldn't be able to read newspapers too well, but you would be fluent in speaking and could cope in most social situations.
This is with FULL-TIME shadowing. After the three months, you could devote the time to refining your grammar and picking up vocabulary from newspaper study. Three months of reading practice - you could translate maybe about two articles a day - and learn maybe about 150 words a day. That will be about 4500 words a month. Then after three months, that would be 12,000 words approximately. I think you would be close to knowing the 20,000 words you need to know to read newspapers.
And also, the 'over the hump' factor kicks in. After a certain point, learning becomes much easier and faster. After you become fluent in reading, things will be much easier.
The trick is to get to the point where reading is done at a certain speed. You have to become "fluent" in reading in other words.
Don't know how that will happen or when. I really am reading slowly and struggling with the reading. I should find easy books to read and go on from there. The fairy tales and the fables books might be the way to go. Always remember to go from English to Korean though. My problem was that I went from Korean to English too much when studying the book.
So ... I might try the new approach. I don't think the vocabulary is that great, but I need to be patient. Go from easy to hard. The newspapers are definitely hard. The fairy tale books are boring though.
I don't know. The teenage book is too hard and colloquial as I've said. I should leave that for later. I think I do need to tackle it eventually though.
I wish there were easy short articles to read. I might look at some newspapers I can buy in the shops. There are also the free newspapers. I should try and get the easier articles.
Also, I enjoy translating the lifestyle articles. The tea one was enjoyable though it was harder than I thought it would be.
I should have done mnemonics for that one ... I can't remember whether I did or not.
Oh yeah, I have to do scanning and OCR stuff for the articles! I forgot all about that. I also have to get Parallels on the old MacBook Air.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 7:10 PM EST
