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Monday, 27 February 2012
The OCR thing
is important to get. I can translate better if I have that. It widens the scope of things I can translate. I'm not confined to translating online articles. I think I can get that. I think I need Parallels urgently. So I'm very very busy today.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 8:13 PM EST
Shadowing - does it help with reading?
I wonder how much doing the shadowing is helping with reading? It is helping somewhat, but how much? I can't think of any other way to improve my reading skills except learning a lot of vocabulary, really. And that's a lot of grunt work unfortunately. The sort of vocabulary I learn from the phrase books is useful for everyday use but not for newspapers. Well, it helps a little but not enough, is more precise to say. I really don't know how to sort this out. I can't even read simple things without difficulty. There are two types of language - the informal colloquial one and the formal one found in newspapers. I need to do a little translation. I will come across some of the same vocabulary at times in both the shadowing and the newspaper translations so that should help. Also, take time to do the mnemonics. Mnemonics really help to put stuff in the long term memory. Make sure you are thorough in learning new vocabulary. Go over it again and again until it's in your long term memory. It's very useful to know several languages. After learning Korean, you can learn Turkish and German. Turkish is an agglutinating language like Korean. You can also learn Japanese but not the writing. The writing system is too complicated, really. Chinese is too difficult to learn. I really need a tutor, I think. Korean really is difficult but people have managed to become fluent so I can too. I can become fluent in a short time too because I have certain tricks and shortcuts I can use in my learning. The shortcuts are the separate tracks I've made for each sentence. It's like having a teacher in the room. I can listen to the track as many times as I want. The other shortcut is that I have an excellent dictionary now. The other shortcut is that I have good resources. I can get someone to read anything I want and I can record them and create my own shadowing resources. I'm not restricted to the recorded material out there. Also, I have found a few translated resources. The problem with some of them is that the translations aren't that good, not accurate. The WOW books are like that. The translations aren't reliable. I don't know about The Korea Herald articles. I think they're OK. The "Korean at a Glance" book has accurate translations. I can also translate back and forth with the articles that I have. I think that's very useful to do. It will improve my writing if not my fluency. I think the "International Learners" book is good for shadowing as the translations are accurate. I can also write the exact translation in English underneath. Also, remember to translate from English to Korean for ALL the sentences. "Using Korean" is OK for shadowing but it's more for later as some of the sentences are very long. The language is difficult in that book. So the resources that I have are: * Essential Korean series - especially the Everyday book * Korean Grammar in Use * Phrase book for Migrant Workers * Korean at a Glance * Korean Grammar for International Learners * Teenage book - this is a bit offy - language is a bit hard * Using Korean There are the children's books for teaching English but I think the sentences are too easy. I will think about it when I reach that stage of looking at other books. I think these are enough books, really. I don't think I want to do anymore. The ones highlighted are really useful for learning Korean to become fluent in speaking. Even when I become fluent in speaking, I should not forget my goal of expanding my vocabulary as much as possible. I need to keep up with reading. Maybe I should try easier stuff, but I can't find easy sources actually. I need to scour the newspapers or look at The Korea Herald with the translated articles. The translated articles are REALLY helpful for understanding Korean and for reading. I need to study them thoroughly. So collect them, one a day. That's a really useful thing to do. So keep reading as much as possible. The WOW comics are fun to read and at my level. I should do occasional reading of these articles. Also translate the easier articles in the online news source. That's the way to go. I just have to do my best. And when I do the translations try and get the sound of the word in your brain as well as the visual representation of the word. When you are familiar with the sound, it's very very helpful. It's not enough to have sight-recognition, you need to have sound-recognition as well. And I think sound-recognition is more important than sight-recognition. So you are getting on the way to learning the 20,000 words you need to know. You are learning the easy phrases and picking up a lot of vocabulary that way. I think this way, it accelerates my learning for later, it helps speed up my learning of reading and acquiring vocabulary. Remember, once you get over a certain milestone, your reading skills will improve very quickly. Suddenly, it will be easy to learn. You will just soak it up. You won't even have to use the dictionary as much - I mean you should - but you can guess a lot of the meaning without doing that. But you should check the word in the dictionary just in case and as reinforcement. So you have to try and reach that point where reading is easy. The problem is that some of the Korean sentences go on for so long. The shorter sentences aren't too bad. It's the long sentences that are difficult. It's hard to make head or tail of them. The main problem is the lack of vocabulary knowledge. If I had better knowledge of vocabulary I could work out the meaning of the sentence better. So it's a matter of knowing a certain amount of vocabulary. After I acquire this vocabulary, things will get much easier. So I am getting the hang of it. I think what I am doing - translating and shadowing are all useful activities. I think I get it. I think my progress will be fast in the next six months or so. I think I am getting much much better. I still have to do the grammar study but I will leave it for later. The shadowing builds up my confidence and so I will do that first or do a lot of it before I do the further grammar study. I am certainly getting the hang of it. Translating into Korean isn't as painful as I thought it was. Full-time, I could finish the shadowing of the Essential Everyday book in two days. But I would forget a lot of it as it would all become a blur somewhat ... But I think it's possible to become fluent in three months easily by studying Korean full-time for three months. In three months, you could finish shadowing Essential Korean Everyday, Korean Grammar in Use, Migrants phrase book, Korean at a Glance and International Learners book. You wouldn't be able to read newspapers too well, but you would be fluent in speaking and could cope in most social situations. This is with FULL-TIME shadowing. After the three months, you could devote the time to refining your grammar and picking up vocabulary from newspaper study. Three months of reading practice - you could translate maybe about two articles a day - and learn maybe about 150 words a day. That will be about 4500 words a month. Then after three months, that would be 12,000 words approximately. I think you would be close to knowing the 20,000 words you need to know to read newspapers. And also, the 'over the hump' factor kicks in. After a certain point, learning becomes much easier and faster. After you become fluent in reading, things will be much easier. The trick is to get to the point where reading is done at a certain speed. You have to become "fluent" in reading in other words. Don't know how that will happen or when. I really am reading slowly and struggling with the reading. I should find easy books to read and go on from there. The fairy tales and the fables books might be the way to go. Always remember to go from English to Korean though. My problem was that I went from Korean to English too much when studying the book. So ... I might try the new approach. I don't think the vocabulary is that great, but I need to be patient. Go from easy to hard. The newspapers are definitely hard. The fairy tale books are boring though. I don't know. The teenage book is too hard and colloquial as I've said. I should leave that for later. I think I do need to tackle it eventually though. I wish there were easy short articles to read. I might look at some newspapers I can buy in the shops. There are also the free newspapers. I should try and get the easier articles. Also, I enjoy translating the lifestyle articles. The tea one was enjoyable though it was harder than I thought it would be. I should have done mnemonics for that one ... I can't remember whether I did or not. Oh yeah, I have to do scanning and OCR stuff for the articles! I forgot all about that. I also have to get Parallels on the old MacBook Air.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 7:10 PM EST
Shadowing
Shadowing is very very useful. I think anyone can learn a language in six months by doing lots of shadowing. I am going to shadow a lot in the next six months. If you do YEARS of this, of course you would become very good at a language. That's why those people who've been studying Korean for years are good at the language. There is a high attrition rate, especially as I don't get a chance to use the language. I learned the phrase for "Turn right" and I couldn't recall it properly. The taxi driver helped me though. He knew what I was trying to say. I just quickly went through the teenage book. It's a bit too hard. I had studied hairstyles in Essential Korean so I was familiar with a few of the words. However, the teenage book is very colloquial. Also the translations don't match exactly. I had better study Essential Korean thoroughly before moving onto the harder stuff. The teenage book is for later. Besides I need the recordings. The recordings will help. But definitely that's for later. Try and master the easy sentences and the easy vocabulary before moving onto harder stuff. That's the way to do it. The phrase books are easy and straightforward and not too colloquial. So keep going like that. You've wasted a lot of time not shadowing the phrase books. I knew the first syllable. Actually it helps when you know the first syllable. I might concentrate on that. I need to "overlearn" the chunks so that spitting out the phrase becomes automatic. Also, I need to remember the English chunk too. Sometimes there are several ways to say the same thing. I have to sort this out. So it's a matter of learning thoroughly the first time. I don't know how I'll do revision. I haven't decided yet. I will just try my best. The key is repetition. Mnemonics really helps the process. I have to think of really good mnemonics. It's become fun to learn Korean. I think I am progressing reasonably well. There is a lot though I don't understand. For example, I don't understand most of the words in the teenage book. I don't know how I am going to study it. Don't study too many different things at the same time. Just go from easy to harder. Don't think too far ahead. Your task is to learn the phrase book and learn it well. After that, learn the Migrant phrase book and finish of KGU. Always practice translating back to Korean. This is very important. Really learn every chunk well. Just concentrate on learning as many chunks as possible. After the three books, you will probably know about three thousand chunks. You need to know probably about ten thousand phrases to speak the language fluently. Then after all the easy stuff has been done, go onto the harder stuff. So always go from easy to hard, and keep shadowing and repeating and translating and testing. Do it until you can say it in your sleep. That's how to do it. Just shadow and shadow. You can find good sources here and there. Don't worry about the translations too much. You are picking up useful vocabulary by doing this. Just try and get recordings as well. But that's for later. Try and get recordings that are good quality. Make tracks and organize into folders. The method of learning the first syllable helps a lot. I will continue doing that. Mnemonics help as well. So I am progressing a lot, I think. I will get there, maybe in six months. I achieved a lot in a week of shadowing. Imagine what I will achieve in 26 weeks of shadowing. I think I will have to find good sources of shadowing. Not too colloquial. With accurate translations. I might have to do the Essentials Business book because it has accurate translations. I will leave that for later because the language is very hard. Got to pick up more and more vocabulary. Need to be able to read newspapers! Why is reading Korean so hard! Even basic stuff is hard to read!
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 12:20 AM EST
Updated: Monday, 27 February 2012 10:25 AM EST
Progressing well. Shadowing is so good.
I enjoy shadowing. Actually, the part I like the best is translating from English to Korean. I have to do it many times until I get everything right and I translate reasonably fast. I am getting better at understanding grammar through this. The Essential Korean book is really excellent. I am almost halfway through it. I am translating a lot. It's not that hard to learn. I really want to spend a lot of time translating. After this book, I will do KGU because that has audio. Anything with audio is helpful. I think the Business book is too hard though to shadow. What else do I have audio for? I just have audios that I bought online. I have the learning Korean dvd that I brought from Australia. There are some CDs with some Korean language books. Am getting better. Really fast. Am improving a lot. At the same time, I realize how much Korean and English are different. You can't really do straight translations. The best way to learn is by doing what I'm doing, translating from English to Korean. I think I can finish the book in a week. Then a week for KGU. Then maybe two weeks for the Migrant phrase book. Then I'm on the hunt for my next material. It has to be CLOSELY translated. I think the teenage book qualifies. The WOW books are not bad. Some of the language books are OK. And that's about it. The other stuff is not closely translated. Oh-there are two phrase books. They might have good sentences. There is Barron's "Korean at a Glance". And I can alwys get the International Learners bool translated. So there is a lot to do. I don't think I will run out of material. Just memorize the Essentials Everyday book and the Migrant phrase book. Those two are really important books to know the phrases from by heart. You might want to revise as well. The KGU book is OK, but not that useful. It doesn't have that great sentences that you will say. Anyhow, practice that. BUt the best book is Essential Korean. I still find reading really hard though. I can't make head or tail of Korean prose. I don't know what to do. Imagine if I studied full time everyday. I would learn 200 chunks everyday. After 365 days, I would have about 70,000 chunks. That's how those migrants learn fast. They hear the same chunks over and over again. They might learn about ten chunks a day. After a year they have 3500 chunks. That's a lot of chunks. So I can do the same. I can learn tons of phrases. And I am going to keep translating from English to Korean.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 12:04 AM EST
Thursday, 23 February 2012
Have to do a lot of shadowing the next few months
I think if I do shadowing of the three books, I will be really good. I am into phrase books, good ones. I will see if there are any more good phrase books. I will have to get people to read the ones that have Korean mp3s. Shadowing is really great. I enjoy it. I am going to leave Korean grammar for a little bit and just do translations and shadowing. Actually I will pick up Korean grammar in a little while. Korean is really hard though. Pronunciation is very difficult.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 10:04 PM EST
Translation of online news article
It went well. I translated an article about a Swedish man who had been in a snow-covered vehicle for two months at least. It was impossible to believe this story. There were about twenty-five vocabulary I had to learn. The article was not too long which was great. There were some grammar constructions I couldn't remember the meaning of and I wished I had the grammar text book with me to look up. The mnemonics WORKS GREAT. I am going to continue using the mnemonics system and also doing the English to Korean testing of vocab. I think shadowing helps me to read. It helps me with grammar. So I am going to do a lot of shadowing and things like that.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 9:43 PM EST
The translations didn't go too well.
I will try an online one and see how it goes. The L interview one is really hard. It is so long. I don't know when I will finish it. Translations are so difficult. I think I need to shadow more of that Essentials book, perhaps, before I get better at it.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 7:17 PM EST
Tuesday, 21 February 2012
How long will it take to shadow and translate one book?
It will take about a month I think. Doing just one section of a chapter took a while though that section was really long - about 26 sentences in that section. I can do about three sections a day. More than this and I will get burn-out. It will be too much at once. My brain wouldn't be able to take it. So about what ...? How many sections are there in one chapter? There are about 8 sections in every chapter. There are about 10 sentences in every section, and there are 15 chapters. So 80x15=1200 sentences. That's a lot. So if I do about forty sentences a day, that will be 30 days or a month to finish shadowing and translating that book. That's quite good. It will take about three months to finish all the shadowing and translating of the three books. I think I will leave the IL book. I am not sure the sentences are useful for me. I have to think about which sentences are useful to me to shadow as I can't shadow everything I come across. This is great. I have to get someone with a good voice read the migrant's phrase book. And I will get recordings of it. I will label the recordings and put them in iTunes. It's going very well the plan. I learned a lot today. I think because I did the grammar study, my learning is going to take off. I've prepared the groundwork well I think. I am happy about these discoveries.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 10:50 PM EST
I tried the shadowing of the Essentials Everyday
and it was very helpful. I learned a lot from that. I even learned grammar from it (it reinforced grammar patterns I had already studied but not quite incorporated into speech). So I will do shadowing simultaneously with studying grammar and doing vocab work. I really enjoy this. It was hard work. I had to remember the phrases. Some of them I didn't get, like "It's tedious". I had to use mnemonics, "jikyodaeyo" or something like that. I can't get that expression. I got it wrong again. It's "jikyowoyo". But I learned some really neat phrases like "I've grown to like you so now that it's time to depart, I will be sad". I can say it, slowly with pauses but still ... It is a fast way to learn to become FLUENT. That's how they do it. I have the tapes. It's great that I set them on separate tracks for shadowing. I have to listen to them like eight times sometimes before I catch the pronunciation and enunciation of the syllables. But I am getting it. There are like hundreds of these to do. I do think I need to write down the translations. I had to practice three times before I got them all right. I think I did about 26 of them. So I can show off to my friends! I can practice these phrases now with people. It's wonderful. It's really a matter of hearing a phrase over and over again until it sticks in your head. That's what it's about. Over and over again. Maybe some of them you need to hear twenty times before you get it. It's better to overdo it than under do it. I think Essentials Everyday is more USEFUL than the KGU ... But I've already started the KGU one so I had better finish it. I am sort of halfway there. I don't think I will do the romanization anymore. I really don't need it. Now for the translating. Doing mnemonics is very very helpful. There is a system of mnemonics creation I should adhere to. The mnemonics system consists of using the sound of the Korean word ONLY. Don't go by the meaning of the Korean word or Korean syllable at all. Just go by the sound of the Korean word or the syllables. That way you don't get confused. You got yourself confused when studying the voca training books by using different systems. So I've sorted that out. The other thing that really helps me out is to SOUND OUT the vocabulary. Read the word many times. So mnemonics and sounding out the vocabulary. I also test myself. So all these things reinforce the vocabulary. I think I can do two or three short articles a day. So in a month, if I study really hard, I can do a hundred of these articles. The vocabulary is REALLY useful. I am being exposed to all kinds of vocab. And the good thing is that because I've studied grammar, I feel I can tackle ANYTHING really though a few sentences stumped me grammar-wise. It would be great if I had OCR for Korean. Then I could translate the newspaper articles with ease. I would just scan them, saving them in pdf form and then use the application to convert them to a computer document. Wow. So the shadowing is really really useful. I've had a taste of what shadowing and translating full-time will be like. I will be getting good at receptive and productive activities doing both. It wasn't bad doing both. I will use the newspapers that I have. It will take a long time to go through them all although the sports paper isn't that interesting for me. I think translating them is much better than translating Tintin or the fairy tales or what not. The Essentials stuff is GREAT for translating from NL to TL. I really approached it from the NL to TL direction and I think it really paid off for me. I learned a lot in a short space of time. I can perfect the pronunciation and intonation later. Wow, some phrases are ringing in my head now. I can say them fluently without even thinking. Six more months of this and I can be FLUENT! If I hadn't studied grammar though, it would be very puzzling to me. That book though doesn't use high level grammar I have noticed though. So the reading of difficult material and the shadowing of easy stuff, phrases I need to know, will help me. I think the migrant's phrase book will be great for shadowing and for translating. With all these books, I will be getting a lot of practice translating from NL to TL. Even with the translation of the articles, I practiced translating from NL to TL. I translated the words in English in the definition list to Korean. I think it's best if I do it on computer because it's a lot neater. And it's faster. I can copy and paste and highlight and stuff. So things are getting better. I am progressing OK. I think I can make it in six months. I'll have the 20,000 words I need and the phrases I've shadowed under my belt. I will have shadowed I think about 3000 phrases all told. That's great. And I really want to acquire that 20,000 vocabulary. I really do. I really need to learn many many more words. I think the translations are really helpful. So today the test run went very very well. I am pleased with everything. It's intensive study though. But now I know what to do. STUDY PLAN * Shadow KGU and translate the sentences * Shadow Essential Everyday and translate the sentences * Make the grammar categories * Test your knowledge of the grammar terms * Shadow the migrant phrase book and translate the sentences * Translate newspaper articles and test your definition knowledge going from NL to TL. Choose short articles. That's all there is to it. I've gotten over the worst of it and I feel really confident now. I really do. The approach of going from NL to TL is so helpful. It's wonderful. I think I've found the key. I've got to stop thinking TL to NL. That's the thing.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 10:15 PM EST
OCR
Am interested in this. It looks like if I want a free one, I have to use Parallels. I don't like Parallels because it takes up too much hard space. I will have to test it out I think. Anyhow ... Have to got to test the shadowing of Essentials. Got to learn MORE Korean. The translation of the newspaper article was quite interesting. I'm not ready to translate it to TL. I think I will just leave it for the time being. I think I will use this work to improve my vocabulary and learn some collocations. It might help me a little with writing, but a lot more with reading. If I come across the same phrases again, I will recognize them. So the newspaper translating is helpful. I just wish there was a quick, free and easy way of doing OCR of Korean.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 7:29 PM EST
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