Shadowing the International Learners book
is going terrifically well. I can handle five pages at the one session, which is about 50 sentences. It's really fun to do, and I am just amazed at the complex sentences I am able to translate into Korean. I even am getting the grammar. Krashen is entirely correct about picking up the grammar innately when learning through "immersion" or in my case through shadowing. Just parrotting sentences is very helpful. It's a breakthrough! I feel great. So this is how people learn ... I understand now how children learn languages.
It's amazing really how difficult the sentences I am shadowing are. I am really talking in Korean! I am no longer just struggling with saying the simplest things. I can communicate quite complicated concepts. Wow! Shadowing is the way to go! I am all for it. Get translated text, get the pronunciation rules under one's belt, and away you go!
It is self-reinforcing this process. Because of the sense of achievement in being able to translate a sentence into the TL that one receives, one is motivated to keep shadowing and translating more sentences.
And I'm actually able to use it in real life. When the Woori Bank woman rang me I had to speak in Korean to her because she couldn't speak any English. Even Mum who overheard me through Skype said I spoke Korean well. So just in a week, I have achieved so much! Imagine what I can achieve in 26 weeks of shadowing!
This is great. I can really advance far with this shadowing business. I really want to shadow the Using Korean book. I will shadow selected chapters. I will skip the confusing chapters like the Honorifics chapter. I will mark the chapters I'll shadow and just go for them. Wow, it's totally working out ... Wonderful. Great. Magnificent. Terrific.
I really like learning Korean now. It's just so great. I have discovered a great learning process.
I wish I had done this earlier. I would probably be fluent by now!
Anyway, it's not too late to start. I am shadowing well. I've got to listen to the audios though so my pronunciation doesn't go off the reservation.
I really enjoy this method. I even watch TV or a video while I shadow. Shadowing is not at all hard work. And I am understanding so much. It's really great. I can't wait until I finish the book. Should I revise it? I will probably some of it, but I think I can recall the stuff I've forgotten if I do revision. It's just so great. I think I can become fluent in one year of doing this. This is how those people become fluent. By doing shadowing, well at least, a form of shadowing. They do it through immersion activities. Immersion and shadowing are similar activities. Shadowing has advantages and disadvantages compared to immersion.
It's very interesting, I must say. I really enjoy doing this. Got to conquer this language.
And I can use the same method with other languages. Just got to find a book with thousands of good sentences and great translations. That's the way to go. Preferably a grammar book like the International Learners book, and a phrase book, and away you go.
Rinse and repeat with other languages. And then you are a polyglot before you know it. You don't really need to know the writing systems in order to be fluent in the languages though knowing it helps. I think the romanization is poor or missing in a lot of the language material for Korean that I would have to learn the writing system.
I want to learn German, Turkish and Japanese. Japanese because the pronunciation is easy. German because I like the sound of the language. Turkish because I have particular affection for that country.
Just a few hours a day of studying and in six months you will be fluent in a language. Say you study four hours a day everyday for six months doing shadowing, that will be 4x6x30=720 hours. So it takes 720 hours to be fluent. In four hours, you can shadow 150 sentences. That will be 150x180=27,000 sentences shadowed. That's more than enough to be fluent in a language. Maybe you can learn a language in three months!
If you study full-time, it will be even quicker to learn a language. Say you study 14 hours a day, you can shadow 450 sentences. In a month, you will have shadowed 450x30=13,500 sentences. That's enough to be fluent. So if you are determined, you can learn a language in a month!
But you would have to have all the learning materials decided ahead of time so you don't waste time hunting around for them and collecting them.
Ideally, for Korean, I would have at hand from the outset, the KGU book, the Essentials Everyday book, the Essentials Business book, the International Learners book, the Using Korean grammar book, the WOW comics, the teenage book, the migrant book. And I would be in business after that.
I think I can do it! I really love shadowing and learning Korean.
Back to study. I wish I could do it full-time!
I've hit a hard patch. It uses indirect speech and "daero". The sentences are like this: "I did everything you asked me to do so why are you complaining?"
If you are really determined and are organized with all the material you need you could learn a language in a month. In twelve months, you will have learned twelve languages! But as I have said, you would have to have all the learning materials available to you and organized in such a way that all you have to do is go through it. I think a lot of the time spent "studying" is devoted to organizing the materials for study. For example, it took me days to make separate tracks of the audio files of the Essentials Everyday book.
That's why working out the best system of study is very important. It reduces a lot of the time wasted.
I think I get it now. I think the studying will be rapid. I am picking up a lot of things. I do think I will have to revise a lot of the stuff. Also, this sort of study is not designed for acquiring skills in reading, it is for becoming fluent.
Gaining the ability to read newspapers requires a different set of skills though being fluent really helps a lot.
You need to build up your vocabulary in order to read newspapers. I think that's the most important thing. You also need to understand grammar otherwise the article you are reading becomes a jumble of words. This is especially so in Korean where you can write many of the words in various orders and still mean the same thing.
But once again, this skill I think can be acquired in a relatively short time. How? By becoming fluent in speaking first (you get an innate understanding of grammar), and by just plunging ahead and doing the reading and looking up words and translating from the TL to the NL.
I don't think you need to read easier stuff because you would have covered easier sentences during shadowing. The trick is to know all the words and understand how they relate to each other. Once you've done that, you can read that sentence. I suspect that as you practice more, the easier it gets. Then you reach the point where you are reading fluently and the only thing you are doing in the way of studying is looking up the occasional word you don't know.
Reading comprehension is quite hard. Now I think it's harder than speaking actually. I really struggle with reading.
Newspaper reading is for advanced learners of Korean. Maybe I am being premature in trying to understand newspaper articles? Am not sure. I do find the easier stuff boring to read. I prefer more adult-oriented reading material.
There should be some transitional material .. Or I should just try and find easier articles or get the Korean Herald translated articles ... I should also look back at past reading materials to see whether they are easier to read or not. This will help me to check my progress. I seem to be progressing so slowly in reading ... it's discouraging ... Maybe that's because I am tackling really difficult material ...
Don't worry about reading too much. Concentrate on speaking. You can translate a short article every now and then.
You just have to reach a certain proficiency in reading by mastering easier material and then you can tackle the harder stuff. Like when you were learning English. You learned easy material first - children's books and the like. Then you read tons of these books. Then you ran out of stuff to read and started to read older children's books and then the newspaper. Then you started on harder material like 18th/19th century literature novels. When I read those novels, most of the time was spent looking up vocabulary; the grammar I mostly understood although for long sentences, the grammar was difficult to understand.
But I mostly concentrated on vocabulary.
So I think you need to follow the same method with Korean. Read easy-intermediate stuff and then progress to harder stuff.
I think I will stick to easier articles like the ones found in "Metro". Short interesting lifestyle articles. Translate them and learn the vocabulary and then move on. You will come across the same vocabulary in the future, and that will help reinforce your knowledge of vocabulary. So just do this. Try and find easier articles to read on subjects that interest you.
I prefer just three paragraphs or something like that. I think by reading a lot - reading a lot of easy stuff initially - your reading skills will improve.
So just read a lot of easy material. In time, you will have to look up the dictionary less and less for these easier articles and your reading speed will improve.
Then when you are ready, choose harder material. So just practice with lots of easier material. Scan newspapers for easier material. I am back to the OCR problem again! I really wish I could do OCR for newspapers. When I can afford it, I will buy Abbyy or the other OCR software that's about the same price.
Then I can just scan the article and then manipulate it like an online article.
I can do many of these. About one or two a day. In about a month, I would have done about 40??? That would be a lot of reading practice. I would learn about 20 words per short article. So after a month, I would have learned about 800 words. That's OK. I am learning vocabulary through shadowing as well. So maybe I would be learning about 1500 words in a month. After six months, that would be 9000 words. I already know a few thousand words, so I will be very near my goal of 20,000 words. So it's steady studying. Don't overtax yourself. Just go for the easy stuff at first and work on progressively harder stuff as time goes on, and then later on when you've read many articles, don't be afraid to try the much harder stuff.
Posted by honeybearsmom
at 6:35 PM EST
Updated: Friday, 2 March 2012 8:02 PM EST
