I have made progress

When I feel discouraged I have got to realize that I have made solid progress. Reading and grammar I am starting to get a better handle of. If I know nearly all the vocabulary one needs to know to read say a newspaper, then I can just concentrate on grammar when reading. It's because I don't know vocabulary and I don't know grammar that well that reading a newspaper article, for example, gets very hard.

I DO want to master reading. 

I think I have to make the learning I do applicable to my needs. For example those small business owners paid interest to the Korean words that they needed for their business so they were motivated to learn these words. 

I have to do something similar. Learn the vocab that's applicable to my business/personal needs. Then I will pick things up fast. Once I have a core of vocabulary, picking up new words becomes much easier. You already have good listening comprehension so you can guess the meaning of new words by the context they are in .... 

So an environment rich in CONTEXT is what I need. So newspaper articles are good. They have pictures and they have topics pertaining to  current affairs.

I will learn from mangas as I am interested in certain mangas. 

I will organize myself and set up some time to read and learn vocabulary and study a little grammar. I don't feel ready to tackle the Grammar for International Learners yet and the Using Korean is kind of very comprehensive. I only find it useful if I just glean general principles from it. I don't have a hope of remembering all the examples in it. 

I think I will have to be patient. This is an experiment to see whether this immersion helps not only with SPEAKING and LISTENING but also with READING and WRITING and understanding GRAMMAR. 

I just have to persist with it. I really do. 

I just am not good at multi-tasking and it looks like that's what I will have to do ........

How did the first day go?

I met a Mrs Lim. I like her cheerfulness but she speaks in English too much. I think she spent 75% of the time speaking in English. I think she's out to get English from me. The only good point is that she tries to be entertaining and lighthearted. I think I will continue but I will have to keep reminding her to speak in Korean. I will also not talk in English. She also tried to teach me reading which wasn't that successful. I think it's OK but we should discuss things in Korean, not in English.

The main point is that she spoke in Korean too much. I think this isn't going to work out because most of the people do not treat it professionally as much. I don't want it to be too casual. 

I met another person and she could not speak any English at all. It was good. This was real immersion. I think I picked up a lot of Korean with her. This is the sort of thing I need. I can meet her twice a week. 

I have to meet someone tonight. 

It's getting confusing meeting all these people. So many people have rung up. 

I really do not think I have much in common with these people. 

I will just keep quiet and when I talk, only speak in Korean. I will keep it up a little bit longer and try out the people. 

I don't understand why these people rang me up. I was very clear in my ad. I don't like people ringing me up out of curiosity. 

I think I will contact Zeal. 

I might cut it down to twice a week for each person. I think twice a week is good. I am getting confused because some people can only come in the evening. I don't want to wait all day to do it in the evening. I like to get it over and done with in the morning. 

I should get over my skepticism. Just persist with it a bit longer. Don't give up too early. Think about the endgoal. 

Consistency is the key. It's going to be confusing at first because you are not used to a person speaking to you in Korean for an hour. Just pay careful attention and enjoy the process. 

You might try volunteering at the library in Hagye dong. 

I think you should make an effort there. 

I think you should also meet with Bbensi's cousin at 11 in Hongdae and see how that goes. 

You will be really busy. 

Try it and also join Zeal's English Cafe for a Korean conversation teacher. You can try that too. Try and be flexible with your time. It's on Skype so that's good. You have access to Skype easily so that's good. 

I don't think those tablets are really useful. They are overpriced for what they can do. You are restricted in the things you can do. You can't even get the webpages you want. If they were exactly like computers but much smaller with less storage space then they would be OK. But instead of a tablet, I would buy an 11 inch MacBook Air. But I can't afford one at the moment. I have the 13 inch MacBook Air so I can carry that around with me though it is kind of heavy ... 

I need a calendar setup to fit everyone in and know who I am going to meet every day. I am meeting so many different people it's getting confusing! I will also have to set up a budget for this.

Honestly, blue collar people are better for this sort of thing ..... The ones who are already teachers and so on are not as good, I have found. 

And the ones who speak NO English are the best. I am getting IMMERSION from these people. The scouting lady I met just now spoke very very little English. I understood a lot of what she said. I have to study vocabulary a lot more so that I can recognize words that are spoken a lot more and I also need to practise listening on my own. 

I know my grammar in writing is OK for my level. I don't think I need a teacher for writing as yet. Actually, when Mrs Lim taught me reading, it was kind of interesting. 

I will ask for her help in getting the Saint Marie comics and so on. 

She is entertaining so even though I know she is trying to pick up English from me, I will keep going with her a bit longer. At least, I get to read different stuff from fairytales. I like reading the news, especially news about Korea. 

I will just keep trying and I will borrow the Saint Marie book and use that as a topic. I will get someone to help me translate it. 

I will do that tonight. So with the immersion and with self-study I am getting there eventually. 

I noticed some people looked askance at a book I was carrying around with me. It is a vocab book with exercises. On the cover, it says it's for Chodeung Hakkyo children (elementary age children) learning English. They were surprised I am studying from that. What do they expect? I don't have a problem studying from this kind of book because I am at that level and that's what I need. All language learners are the same and have the same needs no matter whether they are adults or children. I haven't been able to find a vocab book with exercises like they have in this book in the Korean language learning section for English-speaking adults. And this book is quite advanced - not many Korean children would understand this book or study it. Without studying vocabulary, how are you going to learn a language? 

I don't want to learn conversation from books. I want to learn vocabulary and grammar from books. I want to learn conversation from listening to people speak in real life and in movies (and from mp3 files of dialogs). 

I just hope my speaking really improves quickly like those foreigners who come to Korea and pick up the language really fast. Those foreigners have an advantage in that their workplace puts them in an immersion environment. I do not have that kind of environment naturally so I have to create it myself. 

Unless I open a small business myself or something. I could do that, I suppose. 

I have to think about that. There are so many things I have to do. I can't waste time. I think I will go out of the house and study. These days I can't study at home .......

Fairytales are too hard
Mood:  down

I feel the fairytales are too hard. I don't know why they didn't seem hard before. I feel kind of depressed about learning Korean. It's a hard slog studying by yourself. It's quite lonely. I don't know about this ad for teaching me Korean conversation. I don't know if it will work out. I think the major problem is finding something interesting to talk about. The people I've interviewed are kind of not that interesting really. I will just persist and try and learn basic Korean. I think the first lady was OK. She was sweet. She went to Hanguk School of Foreign Languages and learned Indonesian and Malay. She is also an accomplished pianist and attended the music conservatory. She was talkative which was good. I like her. The second lady was a bit hesitant. I have a feeling she won't last. I don't know why she answered the ad. Then there was the science teacher. She was OK. I had to push her a bit to talk but once we started talking, she was OK. Then there was the math teacher. She smiled a lot but didn't really speak that much Korean. I think it's obvious she wants to pick up English from me.

Still I will give all these people a tryout. I should stop being too picky and demanding and expecting a lot for 10.000 won. Maybe I should pay more? I don't know. I think I should really pick someone off the street who REALLY needs the money ....  

I think all of these people had ulterior motives, I really do. 

But anyway I spent all evening interviewing so I have to make the best of the situation and just try and do it, and not be too pessimistic. I think it's good to meet a variety of people. I can see how things are from the perspective of students so can see what is effective for teaching and how to relate to students better. 

I really do not understand how those foreigners became so fluent. Not all of them had Korean partners, surely? I am sure some of them learned from interacting with people at work. I am just so amazed at how much they pick up. I don't think I can pick up as much. In one month if all goes smoothly then I will have listened to 20 hours of Korean personally spoken to me. I think my plan is to be a passive listener. When I speak in English they tend to go quiet and let me talk. By the time I've finished it's already 10 minutes later. I think it's their strategy to let me talk. 

I need to remind them constantly to speak Korean. A couple of them get it; a few others don't. 

I think we will meet outside sometimes. Being inside the apartment feels claustrophobic. I will buy them coffee from the convenience store and sit in the playground on a bench or somewhere like that. I like to be outdoors. 

I will ask questions about themselves. I think the main problem is getting them to lower their speaking level a little bit. It's hard for them though because they are not used to talking to beginners. 

I will just listen and not talk that much. I will only talk when I feel confident speaking. I will try and not talk in English. Actually, I shouldn't chastise them for speaking fast. They forget and my constantly reminding them doesn't help. Pity the man who I spoke to first didn't want to do this work. He was the best. I could understand what he said and he talked of interesting subjects. Why did he answer the ad if he wasn't interested? I think when I said that commitment was important he backed off. He prefers to play tennis in that time. 

So I feel discouraged a little. The math teacher is a little manipulative. She stays silent at strategic times. I might have to push her to speak Korean. I really do not want to do this as language exchange. I need a lot of exposure to the Korean language and I do not get as much exposure as I need in language exchange. 

Perhaps I will offer more money next time - twice the amount. I can afford then to have lessons three to four times a week. Not that much but still better than nothing. I can supplement that by watching dramas and listening to mp3 files. 

I have to start listening to mp3 files again. I have been mostly doing vocab-reading-vocab-reading .... 

I need to do some listening and I should also brush up on my pronunciation. 

It's best if I mix things up a bit. 

I put the ad up

Just like I thought, many people are ringing me to try and get language exchange from me even though I clearly state in my ad that I will not teach English.

I have to keep it professional as possible, treat it like a business which it is, because I really need to learn Korean conversation. It is not a hobby as it is for some Korean people, it is more than that. 

So I have had to turn away a few people.  Typically, the ones I knew wouldn't work out are the ones who already know much English. One of them was an English teacher. I said specifically in the ad that I need someone who doesn't speak much English. She spoke 100% of the time in English on the phone. When I asked her to speak in Korean to try her out she couldn't. So that kind of person isn't going to be of much use to me. 

This is what I have found from doing language exchange. The ones who were interested spoke a lot of English and they didn't want to speak in Korean to me so it was lopsided the deal that was happening there. 

Because I am paying (not much admittedly), I have to demand what I need from the conversation teacher. I have to choose well because I can't afford to put up the ads again. They cost 30.000 won. This is the price of three lessons. If the person lasts three days and either stops coming or I have to fire them because they aren't doing the job then I have to pay for another ad. 

If this happens, I will contact Zeal and ask her to arrange something through her cafe. I realize she has to make a profit so I will ask for fewer hours than 5 x a week. I think something like 4x a week for one hour is reasonable. I can pay 13.000 won per class or something like that. That will be 52.000 won per week or around 210.000 won per month. She makes a little profit and she can more easily find a suitable person than I can. 

So I will see how it goes. 

It's just annoying when I put down clearly what I want in my ad and the wrong people answer. Clearly, they are out to learn English from this situation. I will have to be firm about that. If I find that it's turning into an English lesson and not a Korean lesson, I will terminate that person. I don't PAY someone for them to learn English from me. 

I can't really afford more than this. I might have to find people on my own, poor people who are really desperate for the money. 

Because this is the sort of person I need. Someone who regards it as a job. I really resent the idea that people see it as an opportunity to learn English. There was one person who rang me and she was already trying to pick up English while I was talking to her on the phone. She hardly spoke any Korean. 

That's why I think this Mr Lee might turn out OK. I am not sure. I think he knows a lot more English than he lets on. For example, he said, "I majored in architecture," in fluent English. But he did speak to me in Korean off the bat and spent most of the time speaking in Korean. I could understand his Korean too. It wasn't too difficult. I think he's more intelligent than some of the callers who didn't understand what I wanted. Still, I wonder why he wants this job. I don't think he needs the money. Probably wants to practice English with a foreigner. I will see how I go. If I am not picking up Korean at a moderately fast speed with immersion then I will let him go and either pick some poor person off the street or ask Zeal to find someone through her cafe. 

I mean the people have to be realistic. It's a job and it's not going to be enjoyable. I hope he doesn't stop coming because he realizes he's not going to learn English from me and picks up very little English from me. 

I think I have to be prepared for that. I think 99% of the people will have ulterior motives when they apply for the job. But I will have to be professional about it. I will test him out and honestly ask him whether he can do it or not. If he realizes it's going to be tough and I will be speaking in Korean and not in English most of the time, he might give up. I will have to stop speaking in English myself. I don't want to turn it into an English lesson. It has to be immersion. I will keep quiet and see whether the person can initiate conversation in Korean. I want to see whether they can dumb it down for me to without my having to remind them to do so. 

I am tired of mucking around. I didn't get anything out of the homestay ad (that turned into a language exchange ad), and I wasted 30.000 won. I got a lot of selfish people who weren't willing to give but were taking only, and not only that they treated it as a frivolous activity, not a real commitment. I am treating it as a matter of survival. I am very determined. I am tired of mucking around. And that's why I am putting the money up. 

If I offer more, I might get a better-quality person so I have to consider that. 

I think I need someone intelligent. I don't want one of these stupid people who don't get what they need to do. 

An hour with someone who is an effective conversation teacher is worth more than three hours with someone who doesn't take their duties seriously and doesn't bother to give me what I want. 

It's a business contract and if they are not willing to do what I ask then they shouldn't take my money - they shouldn't accept the job. 

I don't want to TRY OUT a lot of people either. If I meet everyone who calls, I will be spending all my time meeting people. I will try and weed them out over the phone. At the end, when I have assessed that the person will not make a good conversation teacher, I will politely and firmly tell them that I have already hired someone and ask their permission to keep their number and call them back later if I need their help at a future date. I think this is the best way. 

It's best to be business-like about it. I have to keep in my mind that I have paid a lot of money for these ads. 

I will make a promise not to speak ANY English for the first three lessons and I will mostly LISTEN. If the person isn't a good talker and can't initiate conversation, I will soon find that out. I will ask leading questions in Korean and get the person to talk about themselves. People love talking about themselves so if I keep my mouth shut then the person will keep talking. 

I have to curb my natural tendency to talk a lot and dominate the conversation. 

I will keep the meetings professional as possible and keep the personal stuff out as much as possible. We are not friends, and I have to learn to keep a distance from people in this situation. The same as if I was a student in a hagwon.  I will be wary of people trying to make things too personal. Just stick with conversation surrounding work, travel, hobbies, movies, current affairs, entertainment, history. Also, do not get into politics too much. 

I will have to have my monitor turned on during these lessons so that things remain professional and I derive MAXIMUM benefit from it. I will see whether the person realizes that I am not speaking in English at all. 

Too bad if they get tired of my poor Korean -- that's the nature of the job. If they don't like it they shouldn't have applied for the job. 

I think it's better too if we meet outside the apartment. I feel kind of claustrophobic in the apartment all the time. We can meet at a cheap coffee shop, or buy coffees from a convenience store and sit outside or just sit on a bench outside the apartment. My place isn't really ready for having guests anyway. 

I might ask the person to help me get a driver's license and so on. I won't do this straight away. I will try not to get PRACTICAL help if I can - not for a while at least. 

I don't think I should become FRIENDS with these people. I think some of these people have ulterior motives. 

I will try and turn off a lot of these applicants by talking in Korean all the time. I will also stay quiet and see whether they initiate conversation or not.

 

I like Tripod because it's easy to use but I don't like the lack of stats
I like Tripod because I like the layout and it's no fuss but I don't like the lack of stats. I want my blog to be seen by the public and want to know how many people are looking at it. I also want comments. But with this blog I don't think I can get this sort of information. Wordpress has advantages in that you get the stats but I prefer typing on Tripod for some reason .... I like the formats, the lack of fuss of Tripod. You create a blog and away you go. You don't have to have a Google account and link everything together as you have to do with Google blogs. Also I find the set up of Wordpress a bit confusing. So I want to stick to Tripod for the time being but I wonder if there is any way of finding out the stats for this blog.

Learning in person versus learning over Skype

 

I think it's better to learn in person Korean conversation than learning over Skype? Why? Because communication is better when you can actually see the person you are talking to. Some people do not use a webcam when they use Skype (either they don't have one or they just do not like to use one). So you can miss out on a lot of visual cues. Also, the interaction is more natural in person. You can see the person even when they get up and move around. You can write things to each other on paper. You can pick up objects and talk about them. You can move around the room, look at books, watch TV and even look at the Internet together. So I think learning in person is much better than doing it on Skype.

Language exchange

I don't think language exchange works out for me in Korea. The people I was doing language exchange were much better English speakers than I was a Korean speaker. You have to be at the same level for it to work out. These people weren't that motivated either. I remember saying countless times for them to speak in Korean. They would speak in Korean for a few minutes, forget and switch to English. As a consequence it was 95% English and 5% Korean. None of these people I really found that interesting to talk to so I didn't keep it up with them. Partly, it's because their English was better than mine, partly their motivation to learn English conversation wasn't that high, and partly it was because they didn't understand the concept of language exchange.

I think it's also because they are a bit lazy. They expected me to talk to them in English and listen to their boring conversation in English but they weren't willing to make the same sort of sacrifices on my behalf. I also remember that I was the one initiating topics to talk about. They didn't really try and start a subject. So it fell on my shoulders to find some interesting topic  - one that I thought would be interesting for me and for them. 

So in the end it wasn't worth it for me. In fact I wish I hadn't done it. I was really enthused about it at the start and then was really disappointed by the outcome. 

I don't think I will do this again for a long time. In fact I don't think I should start with the Turkish guy. I spent more time speaking in English than he did speaking in Korean. 

I will only attempt this again perhaps when my Korean is much improved. And then I won't really need language partners. I can just communicate with people around me in Korean. 

I might try some sites on free websites for language exchange for fun but I don't really like communicating with people I don't know online.

I think I really wanted to talk to the guy in the kebab shop about how he learned the language and how long it took him to learn it and that's why I went there. Actually he didn't tell me very much. He said it took him one year and he learned Korean by working as a small business owner. That was about it. He didn't go into much more detail than this. He didn't give me any helpful tips. He said he didn't have many Korean friends but I don't really believe him. He might have had a Korean girlfriend in the past but doesn't want to talk about it so doesn't mention that he learned Korean from her. I am just speculating of course and it might be that he learned 100% on the job running the business. He might have learned Korean by watching his colleagues speak with Koreans but he didn't specifically state this. His replies to how he learned Korean weren't clear. It's still a mystery how he came to be fluent. I know that it can be done under the right circumstances though. One year still though is pretty quick. 

 

More on self-study

I don't really need a Korean person to teach me Korean except for speaking immersion practice because it's easier to learn by myself. Obviously I can't teach myself Korean conversation and watching movies isn't as good as interacting with a live Korean person as nobody in the movie is interacting with me directly. But I wouldn't really call this person a "teacher" as such. It's just someone who can speak Korean speaking in Korean to me - simply at first and slowly. I can learn from taxi drivers if I drove around in taxis all day. The taxi drivers wouldn't know I am learning Korean conversation from them. They would just think I am a passenger trying to converse with them.

And even some of the taxi drivers are not that useful. If they know English words but not be able to string them together in a sentence, it's not that helpful listening to them because they will use English words. For example, they will say "promise" meaning they have an appointment to meet someone, and I will say "yasok? appointment?" and they will say yes, "appointment".  Instead of saying "yasok" they will say "appointment" because they know the word for appointment. So even those with very poor English aren't as useful to learn from as those with hardly ANY English at all. 

So I REALLY need someone with almost virtually zero English skills because it's too tempting for them to use the English words they know instead of the Korean words when communicating with a foreigner. Then I will be teaching THEM a foreign language instead of the other way around. If they understand a bit of English it's OK so long as they don't USE English. So long as they don't SPEAK English, I mean.

I really need 100% Korean immersion practice. That's how I learned English fast as a kid. No one in school spoke a word of Korean. My sisters started to speak in English at home when I was still clinging to Korean but they didn't actually formally TEACH me English. I just absorbed the English I heard from them at home. 

I think it's possible for ANYONE to learn to speak a foreign language fluently this way -- if they receive enough immersion. Just people talking to them in the target language and NEVER lapsing into the foreigner's language like they do all the time in Korea. Because English is a universal language I suppose it's expected that most people in Korea know some English even if it's just some single words (and can't speak sentences). It's the nature of the beast. If I could not speak English well, my Korean would probably be better than it is now, even without making an effort to learn Korean. That's why the Turkish guy had an edge in learning Korean - his English wasn't that great. But it might pose a difficulty when it comes to learning reading though. How many Turkish language books are there for teaching Korean? How many Korean books have Turkish translations? Compared to those that have English translations? 

So to repeat, I really do not need a 'teacher' as such. I need lots of interactions with Korean speakers who are going to speak KOREAN with me (and not lapse into English even if it's single words they are using). The rest I can learn myself. I can study all the books and learn reading comprehension myself. I can read translations of Korean by myself. Occasionally I might need a teacher to explain a point or two in grammar I don't understand myself but that's about it. 

I think teachers can get in the way actually. They can stress you out and stress is bad for learning a foreign language. I know I don't like to be corrected. And some people who teach you think it's their job to correct you all the time. They correct you so much that you can't get past one word for like five minutes. They insist you say the word/phrase perfectly correctly before they allow you to move on. I don't mind if a teacher repeats words just for the sake of repetition as repetition is good but I don't like it when a teacher repeats a word because they think you aren't pronouncing it well enough for them. Geeze, what do they expect? They are haranguing you and they even get upset with you - their voice rises in irritation with you. You do not know what you are doing wrong and yet they keep telling you that your pronunciation/intonation is off.  They are just a LITTLE BIT  too anal I think. And they speak to you in English all this time so you are hearing mostly English and not Korean. 

These people aren't good teachers at all. In fact they might have personal problems and are taking their frustrations out on you. You shouldn't take that kind of treatment. I mean, who has perfect pronunciation, intonation and rhythm from the get-go? 

I think so long as we are able to communicate that's enough. We can move on at that stage. We shouldn't stay stuck on the one phrase just because my pronunciation, intonation or rhythm isn't perfect ....  The person who was teaching me like this actually had a strong Korean accent coming through when speaking English to me at times so what a hypocrite! And he made some mistakes in English like dropping articles though he had been living in western countries since he was a teenager, for the past 30 years actually. So it seems like he was expecting perfection when he wasn't perfect himself. LOL!!! 

I don't think I could last long with someone like that. Actually, he wasn't my teacher really. He was my relative and he was just testing me out. I showed him my Korean level and he got kind of angry with me because my intonation (stress on individual syllables) wasn't good enough for him. If I had to pay someone to teach me, I wouldn't accept this treatment and would get rid of this person if they started behaving like that. 

In other words, I am not a passive learner. I instruct the conversation teacher on how they should teach me. If they ignore my instructions and start to teach me in a different way then I will get rid of them.  I do not leave the teaching method up to them.

This is why paying someone is very important. It puts you in a position of control. They know this or should know this and will follow your instructions if they want to keep the job. If you don't pay them even if it's like bartering - doing language exchange so in a sense you ARE paying them by giving them English conversation practise in exchange  - it doesn't work half as well. The person is not obligated to obey your instructions.  The only thing you can do is just drop them. Because it becomes an unequal exchange situation. There is no point threatening them or warning them. They aren't your employees or your hirees. If they don't get it, then it's not worth keeping up with them. They obviously don't understand the basis for language exchange. Even if you remind them, they will forget and will just do what they did before. Obviously they are bad at reciprocating. And you shouldn't make allowances for them and continue because you build up resentment inside yourself. And this will eventually come out which will make you feel bad. So it's best just to discontinue the exercise. Unless that person is very entertaining and likeable and you want to keep them as a friend. If a person is that stupid or forgetful they can't remember to dumb down the level for you or don't pick up that you are a beginner then it's not worth keeping up with these people. They lose out eventually but don't realize that this will happen in which case it's not really beneficial to continue the relationship with these people.

And I don't want to talk for hours with a boring Korean person. I am lonely but I still don't want to talk with someone who doesn't interest me for very long. I have better things to do with my time. In fact that's why I gave up on the last person. She was trying to squeeze out as much English practice from me as possible. She spent the exact time speaking in Korean as planned which was half an hour but when it came to speaking in English, I ended up speaking to her for an hour, an hour and a half, I can't remember exactly. She never paused and said, "I think we need to switch to Korean as it's not fair for you." She was perfectly aware that I was spending a lot more time speaking in English to her and she liked it. I only stopped when I realized that I could have spent the past hour or half an hour doing something more productive with my time. It felt too much like 'work' for which I wasn't being paid for for my liking. I realized she was sneaky kind of controlling the situation by not picking up the phone or answering my text messages when it didn't suit her, and then by letting the English part go much overtime without feeling much guilt about it, and expecting me to just let it slide. I pretended to let it slide and I didn't say anything about it to her but I thought to myself, wow, that was an unequal language exchange! She didn't really make an effort to dumb it down for me either. I think I reminded her several times to dumb it down. She didn't take the hint and I got nothing really out of the Korean speaking part. I think I decided then that it wasn't really worth continuing with her. I don't like it when someone doesn't pick up the phone even though they are at home - it was in the morning on the weekend - just because they don't agree with the message. I felt like I was wasting my time. I didn't say so directly to her all of this. In fact I gave the impression that nothing was wrong and I said that in the future I can't keep to a schedule (which was true) and that we can just try contacting each other on Skype when we can see the other person is available and we have time to do language exchange. That way things can be more flexible and we might fit in more language exchange. I thought she wouldn't like this and she didn't. She never contacted me since.

I am OK with that. I didn't really like her sneaky attitude and her not giving as much as she was taking. I am not that assertive a person and I am easygoing. If I don't like someone's behavior but I am not their employer or something, I am not going to take them to task or even criticize them. I just kind of dissociate myself from them. Besides I reminded her gently and obliquely many times that she needed to dumb it down for me and she refused to do so. Whether it's because she is a really hopeless teacher (which is hard to believe as she was an English teacher for children) and did not know how to dumb it down or just didn't care enough to try and talked Korean at a level that was comfortable for her but was really hard for me to follow,  wasn't important. I don't think I could continue with her. She would get satisfaction with each session and I would get none. She wasn't that communicative either and ignored a Skype text message to her that I had written earlier. I needed someone a bit less cool and more friendly than her.  

Reading Korean
Mood:  sad

When I read Hangeul, I don't recognize the whole word yet. I have to read it out phonetically still. I haven't reached the stage where I can pick up whole words with the one glance. Maybe I haven't read enough to do this. I shy away from reading Hangeul. My eye gets drawn to Latin characters and away from Hangeul. I do not like reading Hangeul. When I do, I force myself. I do it with a frown on my face as if facing an unpleasant chore. I do not read units of characters very well. For example, I still get ã…ˆ and ㄱ mixed up. A word like ì „ì̀ ê±° (bicycle I think) confuses me when reading it. I have to read it very slowly. Oops I got it wrong - it's ì̀ ì „ê±°. This proves my point - I still can't say the Korean word for bicycle properly because there are too many js and ks for my liking. Also I get mixed up with oh sound and the eu sound. I get the oh and o sound mixed up as well. I also get o and oo mixed up. I read very slowly. I think once I become faster in reading Hangeul, a breakthrough will be made. Then I can picture the word in my mind as a word written in Hangeul, not as a word that has been translated into Romanization and which appears like that in my mind's eye.

I just need to get faster reading Hangeul, I guess.  I can do that by reading lots.

At the moment, I don't recognize many whole words on sight. If they show a Hangeul sentence on TV, I am reading the first couple of words by the time they take it off the screen. This is how slow I am in reading Hangeul. I am getting better though. I read signs in the subway system and other public places now kind of involuntarily and the Hangeul doesn't turn me off too much. I think because these signs only have a short phrase. Paragraphs of Hangeul turn me off. Also certain types of font turn me off. I don't like Hangeul that is written in small size. Hangeul is definitely harder than Latin characters to read because the characters are squashed together in a smaller space and you have to read in all directions - horizontally then vertically - it varies with each word. In English you just read horizontally. Probably Koreans do not read like Hangeul like that. Their brains probably take in the unit of characters at a glance. But for someone like me beginning to read Hangeul, my brain doesn't do that. I do prefer Latin characters. I think they are easier for the human brain to process. Hangeul might utilize space better but it still adds a degree of difficulty to reading. Hangeul is just not as clear as Latin characters. If you see a sign in Korean above a sign in English, you will know what I mean. The eye is naturally drawn to the English sign as it looks clean and easy to decipher. The eye is repelled by the Hangeul. Far away they look a bit like Chinese characters. I do not like the modern Romanization either. I used to think it was better than the older style but I no longer think so. The new Romanization takes more letters to write. Also the use of two characters to write a sound is not good. It's better to have a character per sound as they used to. Even if they just add diacritical marks to a character. Because this way it's easier to read. 

Or if they don't want to add diacritical marks, they can make up a new character to represent the phonetic sound. For example, they can write and inverted v for the "eo" sound etc. The brain pauses when it sees eo. Is it a diphthong or is it a single phonetic sound? 

I was embarrassed by the Turkish guy who could speak Korean so well. He has been in Korea for less time than I have but he's fluent in Korean whereas I am not. But I can't feel too down on myself. We had different circumstances. I think if I had been thrust into the same circumstances that he faced, I would be a fluent Korean speaker now. I am not THAT bad with languages. I know I am more of a book learner than someone who picks up language by mixing with native speakers but still ...... 

I DID pick up English fairly quickly (and forgot my Korean just as quickly). I remember in kindergarten understanding a lot of what my teacher said and what the other kids said and that was only after a year or a year and a half of being in Australia. 

I picked up English reading fairly quickly as I have written about before. I struggled reading the Little Golden books when I was in kindergarten but soon after mastering one book, I was reading these kinds of children's books by myself, using a dictionary for words I didn't know. Nobody in my family taught me to read except for one time my sister tried to teach me to read Cinderella. I had to teach myself. It was hard at first but I was driven to read because I wanted to catch up with my older sisters.  I didn't understand a lot of the dictionary obviously of course but it somehow helped. I even started to read the dictionary from A to Z like a book. I started writing my own stories a couple of years later. I remember doing this in 2nd and 3rd grade. I think my speaking was OK too though I was really shy back then and didn't mix with many people. Then I started to study grammar and spelling and vocabulary on my own. Then I started reading classics like Jane Eyre on my own in elementary school. I even read Charles Dickens which I didn't like. If I hadn't taught myself English I wouldn't be able to spell properly or write sentences grammatically well. The Australian education system is very bad and I see it in the writing of many Australians. I was never taught grammar and spelling in school. It wasn't fashionable to teach those things back then. I think things are a bit better but not by much. Those who are good at writing are usually people who did their own self-study or went to good private schools. 

 

The perfect language learning system

I wish I could study Korean full-time. I know that I can achieve my goal of being fluent in speaking and writing Korean if I could study Korean full time. Unfortunately, I can't but I am just going to fantasize about doing that. I would spend all my WAKING HOURS learning Korean. When I am really into something, I go overboard. I can really spend 14 hours studying Korean if I had the chance. It would not be boring. I would mix different activities around. I would memorize vocabulary - at a cafe (I find studying at a cafe fun as there are other people around so you don't feel so bored and lonely). Then I would have the conversation teacher speak to me in Korean for an hour. I don't think learning from a conversation teacher for more than an hour is productive. It stresses the Korean teacher out too much because I can imagine they run out of things to talk about if they have to talk for more than an hour. I think I would persuade the teacher to do fun activities with me like teach me how to make kimchi, watch dramas together and discuss them and so on. These activities would give us a focal point around which we could base our conversation.

Then I would do some easy reading. I would read manwhas and just try to understand them myself looking at the English translations to check my understanding or if the reading is too hard. Perhaps I could read the manwhas with the Korean teacher and the Korean teacher could try and explain the parts I don't understand in Korean simple language. 

I would also study from the grammar book. I would listen to the mp3 files. I would watch some dramas and watch them twice, first without English subtitles then with, or the other way around. I would watch a bit of KBS World but only when they had interesting programs on. I like the real life programs where they show the lives of common people. Some of the stories are really touching. 

I would just immerse myself in Korean. I would have the TV on all day. I would take out interesting manwha from the manwha borrowing store. I would also take out interesting dvds and watch with the English subtitles and then with the Korean subtitles. 

I would also chat online with Korean friends using English but occasionally using Korean words. 

I would try and read some websites about my favorite ë°°ìš°s and struggle with that. I would try and read some news in Korean too (but would probably soon give up). 

I then would try even triangulation (in French) for fun. I would have forgotten a lot of French of course, not that I ever reached the advanced stage anyway (I took 3 units instead of 4 units of French in school so there was no need to really study to the advanced level). 

I think if I did this for 6 months every day, I would have spent 14 hours (8 hours for sleeping and 2 hours for eating, getting dressed, cleaning the house and shopping) every day for 130 days. This equals 1620 hours if the arithmetic I did in my head is correct. I think 1620 hours is enough to be fluent in speaking and writing. I think I could pass the test they have for foreigners learning Korean. I could cope in university where courses are taught in Korean (just). I will have to learn about 10,000 words of vocabulary at least. If I study about 60 words every day, that will be 7800 words in 6 months -- actually that's not enough - I will have to learn ?80 words a day -- that's about 10,000 words in six months. I would have to read A LOT to pick up that volume of vocabulary. I would be reading newspapers and nonfiction books and constantly looking up the dictionary. I would be searching for difficult material all the time. I would read classics because they contain a lot of difficult advanced vocabulary. I would pick up many technical terms and jargon in a wide variety of subjects. 

So if I just go full-blast I think the goal can be achieved. It would be a lot of study but I could do different things so that it doesn't become boring. Say after ramming vocabulary into my brain I would do some fun reading or drama-watching. After studying grammar and doing the exercises I would do some listening practice. 

So I think this would be my perfect language learning system IF I had the time.