I think in about six months I will be quite fluent in it. This shadowing is fantastic. It's such a useful technique. I should listen to each phrase a million times though! I am getting the rhythm of the language and the pronunciation of the language. It's such a different language to English. It's not too bad - it's just the different speech levels that get to me at times. I will just persist with it. I have made quite a lot of progress.

Speaking: I am a beginner but getting onto early intermediate. 

Reading: beginner to early intermediate

Writing: beginner to early intermediate

So overall I am a beginner to early intermediate. I still haven't reached the breakthrough stage yet when learning ACCELERATES, but I think I am getting close to it. 

I am learning tons of useful phrases and just repeating them is great. I can translate back into Korean which is good. I don't really care what the individual words mean so much as what the whole phrase means. 

So I think that's the way to learn. I won't obsess about pronunciation so much. I think that will come with a lot of live practice with Koreans. I think just getting the words out, getting my meaning across is important. 

I am starting to get it. I will leave reading for the time being. Actually doing the shadowing is helping me with reading and with grammar overall. It really is. The translating into Korean is GREAT! I really am enthused about this method. It's just a matter of getting the recordings of Korean that's important! 

I really love studying because it's a challenge and doable at the same time. I enjoy translating into Korean. It's not as hard as I thought and when I get the sentence right, it's very fulfilling. 

I think full-time, I can shadow about two or three of these chapters which would be about 260 phrases. If I had the time, I would be shadowing phrases all day every month for six months. In six months, I would have learned about 260x6x30=46,800 phrases. Actually, a lot of them would be repeats of each other or just a word change with the same sentence pattern. In six months, I would be FLUENT I would say, even if I wasn't able to understand much of what I read. Actually, I would be able to understand a lot of what I read, just not really hard vocabulary stuff. 

But local newspapers I would probably understand. 

I wonder what it would be like to shadow actual text? Like out of a newspaper or something? I think that might be instructive. I would have to parse it exactly though. Just one paragraph might do. 

I really wish there was a Korean speaker who could read things to me for free. That would really help. Where can I get Korean read? It's ideal if there is Korean and then Korean text. I can translate the Korean so that's not that big a problem. 

So I can imagine my progress ... reading phrase books and then moving on from them. I have to eventually move from phrase books I think. I can't spend all my time on phrase books. I mean I need to know the phrases in these books backwards and forwards but I need to shadow other stuff as well. 

I think the online articles are the best. There are clues as to what the sentences are about. But because the English version isn't a direct word for word translation, it doesn't spoonfeed you. And you really get a good workout in the new language. And often words are repeated in the articles. Or there is a theme. 

I wonder if I do all this massive shadowing and translating whether I will be much better in a few months. 

I really admire those people who are fluent in a few months. I really would like to be like them. I guess doing the shadowing is a kind of immersion. 

I really love the Essentials book, the Everyday one, I mean. It's such a gem of a book. I love it. I like how it has the romanization but the romanization reflects the pronunciation more than the spelling. 

I like how the English is directly given underneath it, word for word. It saves me having to look up the dictionary! 

It's such a great book. I think I can learn to be fluent by shadowing that book and translating it. Wow, I should have done this from the beginning. If I had started doing that back then, I might be fluent or close to fluent by now. That's how those migrants do it. They just repeat what they hear. They hear the same thing said to them over and over again. They need to communicate too so they pick up the words they need and they don't forget them after they use those words a few times. So if they learn about twenty phrases a day, by the end of six months, they will have learned about 6x30x20=3600 phrases. That's all you need to be fluent. And so it's easy when you are in an immersion environment like the migrants are. Never mind, just concentrate on the phrases you have before you. 

And don't abandon the chunks idea. I might have to modify it to fit certain situations/scenarios - in other words - make them more like the phrases you see in phrase books. 

The key is to translate from English to the TL. Once you've achieved that, you can master the language. 

The phrases should come AUTOMATICALLY to you. That's the thing. Because I'm not in an immersion environment, I've got to listen to the same phrase about a zillion times. In effect, I am simulating an immersion environment. 

I think I have to work more on mnemonics. They're fun besides. They really help me to remember words. I have to make GOOD ones. Think long and hard and always go by the SOUND. That's very important. 

So am getting there. I think after I've shadowed the International Learners book, I will have mastered a lot of difficult type of sentences. 

After I've finished shadowing, then it's onto READING and mastering that. I think that will be made a lot easier by having done shadowing. I will be fluent in the language, I think, or semi-fluent. I will understand a lot of the grammar innately. 

I will have to find a difficult book AND STICK TO IT. The rewards will be great when I have finished translating a difficult book ... 

Or maybe read a lot of EASY material. Yep, go through the WOW comics until you understand them very well, then move onto harder things. Simple prose books. Got to find them. Where you don't have to look up every second word. Perhaps children's books? Look up a dictionary for words you don't know and try and become FLUENT in reading. That's the KEY. I think once you master basic to intermediate level grammar, reading will be much easier and will be done at a moderate speed. 

I want to be FLUENT in reading if there is such a thing - don't know. I am really impressed with foreigners who can read Korean. There is a guy whose blog I was reading who taught himself Korean and he is very impressive. VERY impressive. He must be a super-intelligent guy. The thing is that I can't use his methods. I don't like "Talk to me in Korean" and resources like that. I didn't really like "Using Korean" in the end. 

I will just have to see how I go. I think I will experiment and shadow the IL book and see what happens. I will shadow a few pages and see whether my Korean speaking skills improve, whether I get more fluent in speaking or not. 

There are many useful sentences in that book, but many sentences are not useful. 

Anyhow, I will experiment. I can't lose by experimenting. If it's not good, I will leave it. Just use it as a grammar book. 

I think it's still usefull to do the categorizations of Korean grammar terms and do memorization tests. 

Saves me from looking up words later on. 

I think the shadowing IS helpful. I will eventually have to become familiar with all these grammatical terms, even the less commonly used ones. 

So ... there is a lot of work ahead of me. I think I will leave the translating for the time being. 

Posted by honeybearsmom at 4:15 AM EST

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Tripod was down. I couldn't make any posts to the blog. Anyhow, a lot of work ahead of me. I am wondering whether the US army thing for learning Korean is good for me. It seems a lot like shadowing. There was also something else that I was thinking of shadowing but it escapes me. Oh yes, there were some tapes, old tapes that I have ... Teach Yourself Korean ... but I may have thrown them out ... I know I threw the book out ... it was falling apart. I can turn them into mp3s and shadow them ... but the Korean wasn't good. There was a lot of misspellings in the Romanization. If I ignore the Romanization, it should be OK though. There were some other materials to shadow that I thought of as I was half-sleeping but I've forgotten now 

I can't wait until I shadow the Migrant book and the Korean at a Glance book. I think I will do them before KGU ... not sure. Have to pay someone to read them to me.  

Posted by honeybearsmom at 4:15 PM EST

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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