St Marie

I tried St Marie and it really is better going from English to Korean. It's not as impossible as I thought. This might be good material for shadowing. I wish I could get the English translations though! There are two books with English translations so that might be enough. So those b  ooks are really good. Anything with English translations are great. 

I am very happy with all the material that I have. I think I will go to the library and study there.

I have to stick to my diet.

I don't have to buy Abbyy Fine Reader or the Iris OCR thing - well, not for the time being anyway.

That's great. I can save money. So I have everything I need except the connector to the TV. I had better make sure I can use the TV as a monitor!  

   

Wow I got

some copies of translated articles off the net. That's great. I don't like the sort of articles that are there. It's mostly propaganda and controlled mainstream media news but I don't have much choice. I only like the articles about Korea and a few about Japan. I am not interested in Europe, America or Africa or non-Asian news in general. 

But anyway as a learning exercise, it's great. I can go from the English to the Korean. it's so terrific. I can use this as a teaching tool as well.

So that's a good discovery. I wonder if there are other translated resources on the internet. Slightly easier stuff. I already have the children's books I suppose. I don't really like them that much. But I should go through them because they're easy and make sure I am familiar with the easy stuff.

TEACHING

The WOW comics are great. I can teach beginners that book. It's easy for them. They can listen to the CD as well.

I will teach beginners from the Essential book. What I will do is photocopy several pages and teach a lesson based on those pages. So lots of modeling for them to shadow. I will get them to repeat in the lesson.

I will give them tests as well. I can scan the pages and blank out the English and give the sheet to them to write down or say the sentence in Korean. This material will be enough for lots of lessons. So beginners - the material in Essential Korean is good. I will start off with the food chapter and progress from there.

That book is fantastic actually.

I think the Business English book isn't very good however.

What about other books?

Well, there are the Korean Grammar for International Learners and the Using Korean book.

I think the proverbs section might be OK. Some selected sentences are OK. I am not sure.

I think for intermediate level students, the YBM conversation book is OK.

And for the higher level students the Korea Herald articles are good.

Learning

I will use the Herald articles to study vocabulary and expressions in Korean. This is fantastic. If I do about a hundred of these articles, my Korean reading will be great. I will build up a good vocabulary. I need to just read one article a day.

I don't have to look up the words as much.

I need to study grammar though.

I still need to do the categories of grammar and go from English to Korean and Korean to English. Then I will forget about grammar. I won't do the workbook. The workbook was a waste of time. I had to spend so much time looking up words, it wasn't worth it.

So just forget about that.

So reading skills

1. Learning vocabulary and phrases from the reading - always go from English to Korean

2. Learning grammar 

3. Practice reading aloud. 

Materials for reading skills study 

1. Essentials book

2. Korea Herald articles

3. WOW comics

4. Fairy tales and fables books

5. Teenage book

6. Children's books, dictionaries

7. St Marie comics

8. Making out in Korean

9. Using Korean

10. International Students

11. Surviving Korean

12. Uri Nara

SPEAKING

1. Essentials

2. KGU

3. Business Essentials

4. Videos with English subtitles (dramas)

5. Mp3 files from language books

6. Talk to Me in Korean, LingQ stuff

7. Recordings made of

(i. Using Korean)

(ii. Korean Grammar for International Students)

iii. WOW comics

iv. Kid's dictionary

v. Teenage book

vi. Making out in Korean

(vii. St Marie)

viii. Migrants' phrase book

ix. Tintin books

x. Uri Nara book 

xi. Movie script books

xii. Extracting Korean movie Korean subtitles and English subtitles 

Korean videos 

I would like to study Korean videos. Now that I have Parallels, it's easier to do things like extracting subtitles.

So what I need are dramas that have both the Korean and the English subtitles.

I extract the Korean subtitle and make it a srt file. Alternatively, I can just hard burn it onto the movie. I also need the Korean subtitles. What I can do is get both the Korean and English srt files and juxtapose them together. And then I can play the video on slow play and follow the dialog looking at the srt file. 

I shouldn't really do it for sageuks as they're not good for learning Korean.

What about DVDs? I can do the same I suppose.

And I can also get the movie scripts from the book store although I don't like the movies they show.

I prefer to do this with Korean movies and dramas.  

Always DO REVISION

This is the golden rule. Always do revision. You can even do revision twice. Just make sure that everything is straightened in your head. 

Also, learn grammar.

So the pattern should be:

@ Read the English for the meaning and repeat the phrase and learn it, memorize it.

@ Revise the next day and learn something new.

Say it so many times until it becomes second nature.

When you shadow the other books do the same thing. Always revise. Test on the same day and then test later on the next day. Always revise no matter what, and always go from English to Korean.

Going very well. Everyone comments that you have improved a lot. Just in about eight months, you have learned a lot. Now all you have to do is go through more phrases and pick up more vocabulary from reading difficult stuff, and also read easy stuff for fun. Read a lot and your Korean will improve. Now, you are getting pronunciation.

This is very good. Just a little study every day and you are doing very well. The other thing you have to do is do a bit of reading and translating. Look at the Korean Herald articles. They are useful. Go from English to Korean. You can even do some writing exercises as well. These Korean Herald articles are good teaching materials actually for everyone. I should really try and scan them and do OCR for them. OCR is URGENT actually. I can get many good phrases from them.

I wonder if I can get those articles for free from the Internet?  

I should learn from English to Korean but the students can learn from Korean to English. I can get them to use these phrases after learning them off by heart. If they learn about ten of these every lesson, after about 20 lessons they will have learned about 200 of these. That's about in a month. After six months they will have learned about 1200 of these. That's a lot. I can do the same as well. If I learn about 20 new words a day and about ten new phrases a day from the newspaper then after six months, I will know 1200 expressions and 2400 new vocabulary. That will be great. I really need to learn vocabulary and start reading easy translated Korean. I wonder where the translated easy readers are like the WOW comics. I love the WOW comics. So I will data mine these books for useful chunks.

I should just build up a library of useful chunks.

It's really helpful to learn all these useful phrases. I am progressing quite well. I think I should study the WOW comics more. I should also study the newspapers a lot.  

Am progressing IN SPEAKING is going well
Not so much progress in reading though. I still need to learn the 20,000 words. But I gain a lot of confidence by being able to read. I really need to read A LOT. I don't know how to do this ....

Review

Review is SO important. 

I had the opportunity to use the language I learned today. I was reviewing Chapter 4 which was about transportation. Later on, I asked a boy where the nearest station was.

It's great using the language. It really reinforces your learning.

Review is SO important. I should have reviewed the other stuff. I think I will always do review. Maybe if I had done review of the International Learners, it would have been better. I don't know what to do after International Learners. I think I will finish off KGU but do review and go from English to Korean. And of course, test myself all the time.

I am worried about the translating of newspapers. I forgot to buy the Korea Herald today ...

I downloaded some good articles yesterday. They weren't too long. I think I had better do some translations.

The Essentials book is so fantastic. I really thank the authors for this great little book - it's a gem.

I am learning so much from studying that book. I am getting so much better at expressing myself in Korean.

Shadowing has brought so many benefits. I will continue to do it. It's great. I will review International Learners. I will have to eventually shadow that book. I was going too fast and I wasn't really absorbing it. So I will go slower and do revision. Revision is SO important.  

There are emerging two methods

One of them is Glossika's method and the other is a freestyle method advocated by people like John Fotheringham and James Devereux. Glossika's method is quite highly structured and systematic. The other method is ad hoc. 

Both seem to be effective in that the advocates of the methods have become fluent in the target languages.

My personal preference is to use Glossika's method. It appeals to my predilection for "method and order" as Christie would put it when writing about Poirot.

Looking at disparate sources frankly gives me a headache and it makes me anxious. I don't understand how other people cope using this method of study although some of them obviously thrive using it.

There are too many of these resources on the Internet. They look disorganized. For instance, LingQ has some stuff thrown there on the website. I don't know where to start or how to use the stuff. Easy stuff is mixed with hard stuff. There doesn't seem to be enough material in the easy stuff category. Some stuff lacks audio; others lack translations. So forget it. I really don't like this sort of learning. I would rather talk with natives if I am to practice Korean using unstructured methods.

So I think I will forget about LingQ and Talk to Me in Korean.  I really do not like these sites. I know they have helped some people but it's just not for me. 

Anyhow, I think I've made a lot of progress in the last ten days. I need to do review though or at least try it out and see how it goes.

I really do like the Essential Korean book but the subject matter is a little boring for me. I don't like touristy type topics. I want to do some reading of interesting articles, lifestyle articles or the articles that you find in onlime newspapers like Korea Times, Korean Herald, Chosun Ilbo. I also need to find short sentences.

I think the key is to always translate from English to the TL. That is the failure of 99% of the language-teaching materials and courses out there. They go from TL to English.

One should not try and COMPREHEND a foreign language. One should try and EXPRESS oneself in a foreign language. That is why learning grammar comes naturally when you go from NL to TL. You already know ahead of time what the TL sentence means and you are shown how the sentiment is expressed in the TL. You don't have to DECIPHER the TL sentence. So parsing is bad. Parsing just makes you study ABOUT the language but doesn't actually teach you to USE it.

So do not get bogged down by the grammar and avoid going from TL to NL.

Always go from NL to TL whenever you can. It's absolutely imperative that you do this. You MUST avoid trying to translate from TL to NL. There is no practical use anyway unless you are trying to become an interpreter or translater. 

You are not trying to learn ENGLISH, you are trying to learn KOREAN. TL --> NL helps you to learn ENGLISH, not Korean.

By translating into the NL, you are practicing thinking in the NL. By translating into the TL, you are practicing thinking in the TL.

So as a basic rule, whatever activity makes you translate from TL to NL gives you practice in thinking in the NL, and the other way helps you practice thinking in TL.

So try and think in the TL whenever you can.

You can only think in the TL when you practice translating into the TL. 

I think I've hit on a very fundamental rule. Always think in the TL.  

I have to do review

Unfortunately I have to do review because the attrition rate is too high without review. Groan. So the first thing I do is review the previous day's lesson. I hate review but there's no getting around it. Just quickly go through it. Maybe focus on the hard sentences and look at the mnemonics. 

So yep, have decided to do review. What about all the chapters where I didn't do review? I suppose I could look at them twice on different days, so it's like studying again .. groan ... as I said, I HATE review. 

Anyway I will see how I go. 

I went to John Fotheringham's website, and really liked his videos. I agree with most of what he says. I do think the traditional methods of teaching languages are not very good.

I really need to spend time listening and repeating. Use the Audacity to break things up into tracks.

And DO REVIEW. But then if I do review, it seems like boring classroom work. It's too much like STUDY. I hate review. But I need to do it. I like studying grammar but it wasn't helping me become fluent. Though I knew that when I was studying it. I was studying it because I couldn't understand what I was reading. I think grammar-study did help me with reading but not by much. 

So there are the two sets of goals that are (slightly) in conflict with each other. There is speaking and there is reading.

I wonder about the chunk method. The chunk method is Glossika's method but streamlined. It is like spoonfeeding.

The ideal resource would have 10,000 sentences and audios for each of those sentences. There would be romanization for languages that require it and there is exact translation and colloquial translation. 

I think if you learned from this sort of resource, you could become fluent in six months.  

More about Glossika

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAdyAa4oHDA 

I absolutely agree with Mike Campbell here in this video. This method is the best one for learning to speak a foreign language fluently.  

I wonder if musically talented people have an advantage in learning languages? I think they might. Mike Campbell is a concert pianist so obviously has a good ear.

I am not sure about myself. I thought I wasn't an aural person but when I do listening, I don't too badly.

And I really enjoy the listening method of learning. I need repetition though. Lots of repetition.  

I really can't wait until I am fluent. I can't wait until I can read fluently too.

I should not try to learn too quickly.

And some vocabulary I stumble over, even the words I have done mnemonics for. I should spend more time memorizing the mnemonics.

I can't wait until I reach the point of accelerated learning. I really need to hear every word I learn I think. I need RECORDINGS.

Geez.

Where am I going to get the recordings of the books I want to learn from.

Mike Campbell does do review. I really dislike review.

Anyhow I will see how far my learning takes me. I think my progress is going OK.  

I wonder how his Korean is. It seems OK.

I feel like I would love to become fluent. I think in six months, I will look back and see that I've progressed a lot. I think repetition, review and practice will get me there.

So try and listen more. And do repetition. Translate. Test yourself. Keep listening.  

 

This method really helps me with my grammar.

The reason why "shadowing" didn't work in the past was that I wasn't repeating individual sentences. I was playing a whole block of sentences and repeating them block by block, not the individual sentences. It's the only way I can learn - repeating individual sentences. Once I've learned it aurally, I've learned it permanently. I had better do some visualizations and affirmations related to language-learning. 

It's working well. It's not such a pain doing blocks of four or five sentences. Before I was doing blocks of ten sentences and I was racing through it all.

But I can only do this sort of thing at home or at a cafe. I cannot do this at the bus stop or on the train or waiting at the bank etc. I need to find some activity to do at these places. I don't like being idle when waiting and when I do study I actually enjoy waiting. What activity should I do? I don't want to carry a lot of items. It must be helpful activity. I don't like flash cards so don't want to use that method. Maybe read a book? I got sick of studying International Learners book so I don't want to study that book. Perhaps studying Surviving in Korean? I am not that big a fan of that book. I really don't know. Nothing that involves writing. I think a vocabulary book or something would be suitable. I might get some easy vocabulary book ... I really want to do something during these times as it makes the time go much faster. I think maybe taking the Essential Korean for Business and studying that? Or I might just take one of the comic books ... Or maybe the Uri Nara book, but that book is really heavy. I really don't know ... I think just taking one of the WOW books ... or the dictionary though that's heavy. Or just take the Korean Grammar for International Learners and review that - but I am thoroughly sick of that book! 

Am going really well, I think. I really enjoy shadowing. I have finished for today. It really takes a long time to shadow just one chapter. It really does. I really like the audio in the Essentials book. I'm glad I slowed it down. I am getting gradually better. Just lacking a lot of vocabulary but it's improving. I am so glad I shadowed this book. It's better than KGU for shadowing. After this book, I will shadow KGU as I've already started that book and it has audio. 

I will see if the shadowing is better after I do just listening a few times and also do translations.

So slowly I'm getting there. What I find helpful is using Korean with Korean people. It really reinforces what I've learned.

So getting slowly better. My plan was a bit ambitious but I am so glad I am making progress.

I wonder if my reading is better too. Reading the WOW comics is certainly better than before. But newspapers are still very difficult.

Just do a lot of listening. I admire those people who have become fluent in Korean but there is nothing special about them. You can become fluent too. I think this is great. I am starting to get near that hump, which if I overcome I will find learning Korea a lot easier. 

I just need to slowly build up my vocabulary and syntax knowledge and repeat and repeat. I am improving in my intonation as well as I am doing so much careful listening.

I am very enthused about this method of learning. It's fun. It really is. 

I enjoy this very much. I enjoy finding strategies that make my studying more efficient and thinking about techniques and methodologies of learning a language.  

Good method of learning
Once you find a good method of learning, you can learn Korean very quickly. So the research you did has been worthwhile. As I have said, I find listening and shadowing fun. Trying to catch the sounds is very enjoyable. I will gradually start speaking with the right intonation and accent and pronunciation. But I need the sentences to be spoken slowly and I also need the sentences to be short. Right now I am working on slowing down the audio I extracted from a video, a historical drama. I want to use it as a shadowing material for an exercise. I doubt I will seriously use this for shadowing though as the language is too old-fashioned.