Korean at a Glance

I think I will forget about this one. It's a little too old-fashioned. Many of the phrases are not useful. I think I will just go with the Essentials and Migrant books. They are more up-to-date.

I will just completely forget about the Barron's book. 

Okay ... I also need to start on Using Korean eventually. I don't like some of the grammar explanations in that book. Just use it for the shadowing of the sentences. It's more up-to-date, with a lot of useful tips about current colloquial speech, so just approach it from that point of view, and don't forget to focus from English to Korean. 

I think I will shadow it concurrently with the other books. It's boring shadowing just the one book. I will skip some chapters though. 

Some of the chapters are not good for shadowing and are confusing. I might go back to them later though. I will go straight to the chapters which will be useful to me. 

So the plan is to do the Everyday Essential Korean book, the Migrant book, the Essential Business book (these three will provide me enough phrasebook type of sentences), and simultaneously shadow the International Learners book, the Using Korean book, and the teenage book. 

For fun, I will shadow the WOW comics if I have time ... 

So I am going to be REALLY busy for the next three months shadowing. I hope I become fluent after all of this shadowing. 

I think I am getting better. Certainly. I pick up more words when people speak in Korean. 

And this way of studying is FUN. 

I learned the value of this method from watching a Youtube video by a polyglot who specialized in learning Taiwanese dialects. He did shadowing as his main learning activity. He just got phrase books (or books with good phrases) and shadowed them. 

I think that's the best way of becoming fluent, just mimicking native speakers. Just absorbing the sentences in Korean as they are and not worrying too much about the grammar, accepting that that's how they express certain meanings. 

So it's going great. I feel I am no longer wasting my time. I am just shadowing! 

International Learners

There are about 400 pages of International Learners to shadow and translate. How long will it take me? I think if I do about ten pages a day I can complete this in a month. Is that too fast? I will be doing the Essential Korean Everyday and KGU simultaneously for the audios. I find the mp3s tremendously helpful for pronunciation and intonation, and the improvement in these things carries over when I "shadow" the IL book. 

Maybe if I do five pages a day, it will be better? I don't find the book very difficult at all. I've done four pages already in about an hour or less. 

I think I can do about 8-10 pages ... I think it will take me about a month to do the book or about two months. 

That's great. I can finish the Essential Korean book and IL book in a month. I might also do the Business book as well. Oh, I forgot, I have to finish the KGU book. 

I don't really like the speaking in that book. I don't like the young-sounding woman. She sounds childish and silly. They also tend to speak quite fast. I much prefer the Essentials Everyday speakers. 

I think I will leave the Korean at a Glance and the Migrant book for a while. I already have done a lot of phrase book shadowing and translating with the Essentials Everyday book. 

I will do the Migrant book definitely but I will leave it for a bit. I think I will do the Korean at a Glance book, but I will see how I go. The romanization in that book is really good. I will see whether I need it or not. I am learning a lot from the International Learners book. I will see how far that book takes me. 

Then "Using Korean" after I've become better at speaking and reading. Also, at some point I will have to do the WOW comics. I think I will wait until I get recordings for those. 

It's coming together. I think the teenage book is important to do too. I will write the Korean underneath the English. That book has many colloquial expressions. So that book is good for shadowing and translating. 

I think I will try and do 8 pages of IL a day. That will be 8x30=240 pages a month. In about 1.5 months, I should have finished the book. 

I think this is the best way to study it. I think I will just do five pages. It's a bit tedious and I don't want it all to become a blur. 

Wow, I am learning a lot. I never thought I could translate into Korean, but it's not as hard as I thought. 

It's quite cool actually. Picking up a lot of useful vocabulary this way. Also, picking up some useful phrases too. 

It's all coming together. Just have to persist with it.

I think five pages is enough. Am learning SO MUCH this way. It's all coming together. It might even be better than the Essential Korean, not sure. 

I went skimmed through "Using Korean"

and found that the book is VERY GOOD. The explanations are sometimes hard to read and understand (for example, I got thoroughly confused by the explanations in the Honorifics chapter), but the sentences are very good. I have to think English to Korean. When I think like that, I don't get intimidated by the Korean sentences.

I actually look forward to learning the Korean sentence. I don't care too much about the grammar. I just want to say the sentence and say it well. 

The book is difficult and there are many sentences, but so long as I don't lose sight of the fact that I am going from English to Korean, I should be OK. 

Korean at a Glance is kind of similar to the Migrants book and to the Essential Korean book. 

There aren't that many colloquial Korean sentences in that one. 

Maybe I am being too ambitious tackling Using Korean at this stage. I don't know. Maybe I should tackle it after I've studied the International Learners book. 

The International Learners book explains things very clearly for the most part. I find that book quite OK. 

I tried shadowing and translating the IL book - well, not really shadowing as I don't have a recording - and it went well!

Really great. Doing the listening to the Essentials Everyday mp3s has really helped me with my pronunciation. I can read aloud semi-fluently after a few tries. I can even translate back into Korean which is a terrific feeling! 

I am not so fussed about the grammar either. I just concentrate on English -> Korean. That really really helps. It gives me a new perspective to learning. 

I am really learning fast I think. 

It is very very helpful. I can say quite complicated sentences. I can guess the meaning of the words because the translations are given. 

I think I will "shadow" and translate these sentences. Afterwards I will shadow Using Korean. But the IL sentences are good because they follow a grammar point so the translation is "easy". 

It's really really helpful. When I get sick of the Everyday Essentials book, I can shadow the IL book. By concentrating on English to TL, I feel I can translate ANYTHING. 

It really is fun studying the IL book. 

I think I've made good progress.

I really do. Just do your daily study everyday and everything should be all right.

Just go with the flow when studying. When you find that it's easy, that means the study method is right. I think I have found the right method. I think my listening is also getting better. 

I am really happy that I am on the right track with learning now. 

I can learn one chapter of the Essentials Everyday a day. I have seven more chapters to go. So in a week I will be finished with this. I am itching to shadow "Using Korean" but I don't have the recording. I might be pronouncing it all wrong and saying things with the wrong intonation. 

Should I finish the KGU book? I am halfway through it. I didn't do the translations. I will do the translations from now on. I will do translations for everything I shadow. 

I think I might try "Using Korean". I have renewed enthusiasm for this book because it has colloquial speech, the stuff that Koreans use everyday in normal casual conversation with people they know well. I don't want to know just phrase book sentences. I want to branch out. 

I think I will go for it. Oh-oh, I don't have the recordings ... I can just sound it out the best way I think it is said. Later on, when I have money or I get a kind Korean person willing to help me, I will get the recordings. I am eager to start shadowing this book! 

I only have the recordings for KGU. Actually, I have the Essentials Business book but it's too difficult right now and I will be sick of the Essential series after I finish the current book so ... 

Don't know what to do. The KGU book is OK, just not that many useful phrases. 

I think the Using Korean book will be more useful. 

Got to think about it. 

It's getting hard

By the time I get to the eightieth sentence, it gets hard. I start getting fidgety, wanting to have a break. This morning I have been studying for 4 hours. I've had enough. Want a break!

Need to take frequent breaks because I get fatigued. Always remember to go from English to the TL. 

It's really going well. After the shadowing, I will do reading comprehension. 

I just tried reading the WOW Ugly Duckling comic and it's great! It's at my current reading level. It's colloquially translated. Sometimes the translation is far-off but I can understand the literal meaning because my reading skills have improved. Also, because I am reading from English to Korean, I am not too fussed about the grammar. I think it's really worth shadowing and translating those books. At least, just shadowing. 

I don't have to look up the dictionary very much because the translations are there. 

The WOW comics are good for shadowing and studying. They are fun to read as well. I will get someone to read the comics and make separate tracks. I will repeat and I will learn a few new vocabulary. This will be fun. The comics are in colloquial Korean which is very helpful. 

I remember when I was learning English (reading and writing) as a child, I read many books. I found reading hard at first and then I got better and better. I looked up many words in the dictionary. I started off with the children's books in the library. I read them ALL, and then moved onto the books for older children - the books without illustrations. I read them without too much difficulty. 

So when learning Korean reading comprehension, I should perhaps do the same. I have the WOW comics, the fairytales, the fables to read. Then I can read all the easy children's books teaching English that are on my shelves. Then I can read short stories for children. These do not have really long sentences. Then I can read progressively more difficult stuff culminating in the newspaper articles and online articles. 

I think I should build up in this way. I am getting better I think. The WOW comics are really fun to read. My reading skills have improved a lot just with a little shadowing. I am not so obsessed with the grammar. 

I wonder when I should fit the shadowing of the comic books in ... The Using Korean and International Learners books are priorities though. The Using Korean book will be a great source of chunks. Very good colloquial language. So am getting there eventually. 

Getting there. This year I will be fluent in Korean! I will be speaking and reading Korean fluently. Only simple stuff I will be fluent however. But with a little extra work, I will be able to read well and write well too. 

So it doesn't really take that long to learn a language. Once you hit on the right technique, it's actually quite fast to learn. There you have it. The key is to read from English to Korean. 

When I read the Ugly Duckling the other day, I found it a bit hard. It was because I was going from Korean to English. Today, I went from English to Korean and found it much easier. Quite enjoyable to read. My pronunciation too has improved when I read. I just want a recording. A recording would be great. 

Mnemonics
I find that if I get the first syllable of the word, I can recall the whole word usually. The first syllable is what gets me started. So when I make mnemonics I will concentrate on the first syllable.

I love shadowing

and I really like translating into Korean. This is the fun part when I translate into Korean and I check it and it's right. I get a buzz out of that. I feel as if I've scored. It's my reward when I've translated right. It gets really addictive.

I think this is what readers of my book will also feel. They will feel they score when they translate right. They will feel really encouraged and get a sense of achievement. 

I think that's why some people are addicted to learning languages - they become polyglots. They get a high from being able to say a complete sentence in the target language. 

At the rate that I am learning, I am actually learning 100 sentences a day. That's about 3,000 sentences a month. In three months, that's 9,000 sentences. That's a lot. So in about three months, you can learn a language! 

That's astonishingly quick. 

No wonder those people are fluent after three years, four years. Obviously they are using the right methods to learn a language. Three years is plenty of time to become fluent in a TL. If you study three or four hours everyday, by the end of one year, you will have learned 12x30x60~20,000 phrases. That's enough to be fluent. More than enough. You would then spend the next two years practicing what you know and learning more words, phrases and so on. You might even pick up reading and writing. 

It's a matter of getting those 10,000 chunks down. It's not that hard to do that. 

Maybe about 10% of the book would be TL to NL but 90% would be NL to TL. 

I think that's how the weighting goes. 

Got to keep going

It's heartening to think how much can be achieved in such a short time. The shadowing is just wonderful. I don't come across that many words I don't know while doing the shadowing and if I DO come across any, I just use mnemonics to remember them. Without mnemonics, I don't have a hope remembering those words.

It's progressing well. I just have to remember to learn 60 new sentences a day. That's 60x30=1800 in a month! That's a lot. In a month, I will have progressed a lot. 3 months that's 5400 sentences. In six months, that's 10,000 sentences. I will have run out of sentences to shadow! I hope I can read well by then. 

I have to study the Business Essentials book. I will do that. 

So the books I have to study and shadow are: 

# Essentials Everyday

# Grammar in Use

# Essentials Business

# Migrant phrase book

# Korean at a Glance

# International Learners

# Korean in Use. 

I wish there was a book or series that had about 10,000 phrases to shadow. Each phrase had the English translation (the colloquial one), the TL romanization (if needed) and the literal English translation (word for word). And the mp3. Then I wouldn't have to study other materials or buy any other materials really, except for some grammar books and a dictionary. This sort of book would make you fluent in the language. 

If you wanted to learn reading, you would then study some books and newspapers. You would have a good foundation though already. Studying reading would be easy, I think, after you achieve fluency. You would have a feel for grammar. 

If you studied full time, it would take you 2 months to become fluent in the language (14 hours a day learning about 200 words a day). 

If you studied part time, say 50 sentences a day, it would take you 6 months to become fluent. So just by shadowing the 50 sentences a day from the book you would become fluent. 

For the Korean book, I would add Korean phrases, idioms, sayings and terms like "princess disease".  But this would be clearly set out that these words are special for Korea. Most of the book would have an emphasis on English to Korean translation. 

There would be sentences to learn, dialogs and stuff like that. Mainly sentences, but some dialogs. 

They would cover all the usual situations that phrase books cover but then they would also cover a lot of other situations. 

You could a language in six months. In two years, you could learn four languages. You wouldn't really have to do much memorization. You would just use mnemonics to remember the words. 

So continue with the chunk idea that you have. Think of scenarios and dialogs and so on. Don't worry about the Korean or the TL yet. Just build up the chunks. 

There would be visual material as well. Some interesting pictures and drawings and photos. There would be about three volumes for the person to go through. The whole course should cost $700. That's under-priced I think. In reality, the price would be $2,000 as it saves the person the price of attending language institutes.

If I got a thousand people buying the book, I would make $700,000! If I sold it for $2,000, I would make $2,000,000. But about one-tenth would go toward printing costs and advertising costs, I think and paying people to do the readings and translations. There would have to be lots and lots of CDs for each book. There would have to be a lot of chapters and so on. I think about 300 chapters. Each chapter consists of a scenario. If each chapter has about ten sentences to learn, then each book would have 3,000 sentences to shadow. I would need three volumes (10,000 sentences).

I can also make a separate grammar book for Korean. I am getting better at reading I think. Anyway don't worry about grammar for the time being. Just concentrate on other things. 

Build up your knowledge of phrases and vocabulary. 

It's doable. Just hiring the people to do the translations will be tricky though. 

After the chunks are made, and the scenarios drawn up, the illustrations done, then it's all systems go. 

Just get the translations done, the recordings made and the person can load the recordings onto their computer and away they go. 

They will need to buy the book though. I won't bother making repeats of the same reading, the person can do that themselves using iTunes. I will tell them how to do it. I will recommend that they listen a minimum of twenty times. 

I think this will be a big money earner. I think I will have cracked how people can become polyglots. 

Really, six months is plenty of time for people to become fluent in a language. The method is easy to use. All you have to do is repeat like a parrot. 

So the emphasis on English to TL will reap gold. It really works for me. Going from TL to English does not work for me at all. 

Hardly any of the sentences

that are used in Korean can be constructed using the grammar-vocabulary method ...

They can only be "constructed" through repetition/copying. You really need to know the WHOLE expression. That is how people learn languages. Any other method doesn't work. 

So you have to memorize whole sentences/phrases. That's the quick way to becoming fluent. It takes an hour to think of the correct sentence using the grammar-vocabulary method. If you use the other method, it takes a blink of an eye to come up with the right sentence. 

So it's a matter of memorizing thousands of chunks. That's how one becomes fluent in a foreign language. Just learning thousands of chunks. 

The ideal book would be one that has many phrases such as in the phrase books. It would have colloquial phrases as well. There would be MANY dialogs as well. Each Korean sentence would have the romanization and the exact meaning underneath as well as the natural colloquial-sounding translation underneath it as well PLUS a definition key in the side margin. And of course the mp3 supplied. Then you wouldn't really need anything else. You wouldn't even have to look up the dictionary much. After you spend 6 months learning the 5000 odd expressions in the book, you could then move onto reading. THEN you would have to look up the dictionary a lot, and perhaps study grammar. That would be it. After six months of reading study, you would be both good at reading, writing and speaking as well as listening. 

Every day you would shadow a chapter maybe - about sixty sentences. After 3 months, you would have shadowed, 5,400 sentences. After six months, 10,800 sentences. I think that would be the limit of the shadowing. I would imagine you would be SICK of shadowing by then. That's how they learn in the US army - simply by shadowing.

Modern technology helps me in this endeavor as I can shadow making my own tracks for listening. I can repeat the stuff as many times as I want. iTunes is great for this. Really works well.

I really enjoy studying this way. Makes me feel like I am making a lot of progress. 

Doing this - shadowing - is really a brute memorization process. Because you hear the reading multiple times, the process is easier. Without listening to the reading, memorizing these sentences will be a lot harder, not to mention you might be memorizing everything wrong. 

It takes me about 3 hours to shadow a chapter (about 90 sentences). That's about 30 sentences an hour. That's about 2 minutes per sentence, I think. That's not a lot of time. 

If I study full-time, that will be 14 hours a day. That will be about 14x30=420 sentences a day. That will be about 12,000 sentences a month. In 3 months, that would be 36,000 sentences. In about six months, that would be 72,000 sentences. 

I think if you study full-time everyday for about six months, you will be fluent in that language. You might not be able to read newspapers but you will be fluent.

A lot of the time realistically will be getting access to the shadowing material. The above is theoretical, that is, assuming that all the shadowing material is available to one. In the actual case, a lot of the time will be spent securing the shadowing material and preparing it for shadowing, so I think you would be learning in reality half the number of sentences - around 220 sentences a day - still not a paltry amount. 

After 3 months, that will be 220 times 3 times 30 =~ 18,000 sentences. That should be plenty to become fluent. Then you spend six months brushing up on reading and writing skills. You will be able to pronounce everything you read. And you will already know many words, maybe about 10,000. What's left is to increase your vocabulary. 

Things are going well. May have to do revision though. HATE revision. 

Shadowing

I don't know exactly how many phrases I need to know before I am fluent, but I think if I shadow sixty phrases a day for six months that will get me fluent. 60X30X6=10,800. Wow, that's a lot! If I do 3 months on it, I will learn 5,000 phrases. That's also a lot. If I learn at a slower rate - say 30 phrases every day for six months, that will be 5,000 phrases. If I do this for 3 months, that will be 2,500 phrases. That's still a lot. 

I will have lots of expressions under my belt. It will get progressively easier to shadow too. I will start retaining many of the phrases better. 

Then I can concentrate on learning vocabulary and reading really hard stuff. Much of the vocabulary I will have picked up from shadowing. This is great. I will be learning like native speakers learn the language - by learning chunks, whole sentences, phrases - groups of words that have ONE meaning. That is the key. Learning grammar and learning individual words does not cut it. 

I don't think the flashcard method works that well for me. It might work for others but not well for me. 

I tried with the voca training thing and I don't think I retained very much to be honest. I can remember vocabulary more easily when I shadow it. The sound of the vocab is very important for me. It really helps me to learn the word. 

I shouldn't try and learn too many words at the one time because I will get confused. I am not sure my brain has the capacity to learn that much in that span of time! 

But wow, it helps to know how to pronounce words correctly! And my reading of sentences is much much better. I really need to do the listening practice. 

Most children learn their native tongue by LISTENING, not by reading.