Studying grammar

It gives me a headache. I have to learn 180 grammar terms in the Conjugational Endings chapter. I've learned 30 so far forwards and backwards. I will stop there and test myself tomorrow. I will do chapter 2 of the Essentials book. Tomorrow I will revise the 30 terms I learned today and learn 30 more. So it will take a week to learn the Conjugational chapter. After I do the conjugational chapter, I will memorize the Nouns chapter in the same way, and after that the Particles chapter. The conjugations chapter is the hardest chapter so that's why I am tackling it first. I am starting to get a handle on it. I should really practice using some of these forms in a sentence! Well, there are sample sentences. I would like to get recordings made of them and I want to shadow them. That's what I would like to do! 

I think if I do that, I will be good at employing these forms including many rare ones. There are common forms as well so I need to be good at saying them in speech. I think the drills are worthwhile. Just repeating over and over again and of course doing revision. So after I do the testing and the revising, I will do the shadowing. So I have to get recordings of these sentences. I think eventually I will have to know them. And of course I will do revisions of the shadowing until it's committed to memory and I can say these phrases automatically.

This is really exciting. This will be high level shadowing!

And of course I will continue with the reading practice. Accumulate more words and read a lot. I think I should do review of reading - read the same material and of course review words - new vocabulary. And do translations - a lot. This is full-time study! So I will get there eventually. Tons to do. I want to be so that I can use the rarer forms of grammar naturally in speech. I want to be fully conversant with how to use these grammar terms and use them a lot in speech and in the appropriate context. 

This will surprise people who wouldn't be expecting this!

So I won't just be practicing the simple phrases that everyone knows when they learn Korean, I will practice the less common more complex phrases.

What a trip! It's working out! 

Practicing the less common grammatical forms

I wonder how I am going to practice the less common forms. I really need practice in saying them. The only way I can think of is with the book, International Learners. I have to shadow the sentences, I guess. I can also do translations. I need to be familiar with the less common forms. I have to be spontaneous in using the forms in speech. I have to know how to use these forms in speech. So I need to spend a lot of time studying them. 

I need to do shadowing - with revision of course.

I need to test myself on the sentences I've shadowed.

I need to write down the sentences, so I need to do translation.

I need to test my knowledge of these grammar terms - forwards and backwards - repeatedly. Doing lots of revision.

So I have to spend a lot of time. I need recordings of these sentences as well. I really need to know how to translate from English to Korean with speaking and writing. Got to be very natural and automatic in saying these sentences. This will help me with my speaking, my vocabulary and with my reading. I will recognize less used forms. I will be able to use less used forms. I might be using them incorrectly so need someone to correct me. I really need to practice and get good at it. I think a year is plenty of time to learn to be fluent in Korean! Just need to practice these phrases and then actually use them in real life.

So lots of interaction with Koreans and lots of reading. At first, easy translated material and then harder translated material and then easy non-translated material, and then harder non-translated material.

So have to conquer these rarer grammatical forms. Got to be pretty familiar saying these sentences.

Got to be fluent in speaking. I will be fluent like the migrants and be able to read fluently and write fluently unlike them. My writing will be excellent. My reading aloud will be great. My pronunciation and intonation will be perfect. My conversation will be impeccable. I will know backwards and forwards about 20,000 words. I can translate 20,000 English words into Korean. I can easily speak in Korean complex ideas. I can write an essay on a political issue in Korean. I can write in English in an excellent way. I can write very very well. I can write and speak fluently. Better than the Misuda women. I can really speak and write excellently. I can express myself very very well. I translate back and forth in the reading. 

STUDYING READING

Translate into KOREAN when doing the reading. Translate into Korean the English sentence blind. Keep doing so until you are perfect in grammar and spelling and vocabulary. Practice a lot so that you are writing many many of these sentences. So this is how you practice your Korean writing. With doing this, you are also practicing your reading of Korean.

So keep doing this. Keep practicing your Korean writing and your reading will be fine. Practice your speaking and your listening will be fine.

So when you have the newspaper in front of you, translate looking back and forth. Then practice the vocabulary, thinking of mnemonics. Then when you've done a section, practice writing it out in Korean blind. Keep doing this until you've done the whole article.

So try this out and see how you go.

When you've done about 100 of these articles, your writing and reading of Korean should be excellent and you would have acquired many more words of Korean, especially high-level words. As a crowning thing, you should get somebody to read aloud the passage, and you should shadow it. Then you should practice reading the passage on your own, with the correct intonation and pronunciation and everything.

So there is tons of work to do. I really want to shadow the FSI thing, the KGU thing and the migrant book, the WOW comics, the teenage book and the St Marie book. You should then practice shadowing those things. You should look up all the words you can't figure out and test backwards, from English to Korean and always do revision! Make sure you revise everything at least once, before you learn new material. You should do tons of reviision.

So reading is covered. Reading involves translating from English to Korean, actually writing this down. Anyway, practice it and see how you go. This way you start thinking in Korean and expressing yourself in Korean. This will be an excellent way to be fluent in speaking, writing, and reading.

So these are the skills you need. You really need to practice and practice. It's not impossible. The advantage you will have over other learners including people who have studied Korean for a few years and are fluent is that you will be fluent in speaking and your skills in writing will be great. You will be able to read anything you see in a newspaper.

So you will be really fluent and talented in Korean. You can read apartment notices and things like that.

 

It's getting very hard

The grammar part is really hard. I am memorizing the grammar terms in Conjugational Endings and testing myself and it's very very complicated. I keep forgetting all these terms because there are many that sound and read almost exactly the same. 

It's very very difficult. But if I master this, then it's very much worth it!

So first of all I am going from Korean to English. After this I will go from English to Korean.

Wow, I don't know if I can finish Conjugational Endings tonight but I hope to. This is instead of doing shadowing of Chapter Two of Essential Korean (Everyday). I don't want to fall behind but ...

So there is SO much study to do. There is the FSI stuff. Before I study that I have to print off the FSI guide and that's going to take up a lot of paper. I will have to buy some more A4 paper for that. And then after that, I have to practice each chapter and there are 18 chapters. I think this is good practice for me. So I will attempt to it. I might even do the advanced stuff at some stage.

So I really want to get on top of the grammar. St Marie is a little hard to read but ...

After Conjugational Endings, I will do Nouns and then Particles. After that, I will stop. Oh, there is quotations which is very hard. I don't know how I am going to study that ....

I suppose shadowing is the best way to go actually.

So ...

So I am determined to get on top of the grammar. It will help with speaking, writing and especially for READING.

As for reading, I have been reading "Ugly Duckling" which I really love and St Marie. The language in St Marie is really difficult but so long as I go from English to Korean I don't get really overwhelmed. I wonder what the utility of studying this book will be. I think I should do more than look at the English and the Korean at the same time. I wonder if I should scan the pages or something ... and then put the pages side by side. 

I feel like I should be doing something, like making a vocabulary list. I don't know. I am not sure what the best utility of studying that book is. If I go through it too fast, not much sticks.

What I can do is write the English and then write the Korean next to it ... I suppose so ... I can then test myself by looking at the English and writing the Korean next to it. I suppose I can do that.

I will just grab a notebook and do that. I might pick up some useful phrases perhaps. Some of the translations are not very accurate - I might just skip those ones.

I suppose I can make vocab lists as well.

I think it's very difficult. Too difficult perhaps. The WOW one is easier for me. I just have to make vocab lists I suppose and spend time learning the vocabulary at some stage ... It always comes down to memorizing vocabulary!

What I can do is go from English to Korean in the vocabulary lists. So look at the English and try and think of the Korean word that means all of that.

That might work. So these texts are good exercises in reading and are good for acquiring vocabulary.

So make those vocab lists and learn them. Before you read more another day, time for REVISION! Must do the revision before you move on.

Must do a lot of revision.

 

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.