Who am I trying to fool?

As you saw in my blog post which supposedly laid out my language study plans for the summer, French was the language to focus on. However, I did not get past three weeks of study. How pathetic an attempt was that! But why was that the case? While studying, I got dragged into doing Korean related activities. Shame on me. I believe that my plan fizzled out because I have no concrete reason to study French. In the case of Korean, I study it because it makes me feel good to watch dramas and be able to understand what the people are saying. Despite the fact that one of my favourite movies of all time is a French film, (Les intouchables) there is not that much French entertainment that I am interested in to keep me wanting to study. I think that this is the main reason. I will no longer deceive myself and will instead do what I feel most inclined to do- study Korean. THE END.

How I Studied Korean So Far

If you are someone interested in language learning, I am sure you have seen a blog post or a video title like this:

"How I learned X Language in Y amount of time"

These titles always annoy me. These kinds of posts always get a ton of comments from fellow annoyed people saying that no one can learn a language in such a short time. I don't think that these people feel that they have learned the language but it still is annoying to see.

My title for this post is therefore "How I Studied Korean So Far" which is much more accurate. I did not even bother to put the word 'learned'. I don't know if all that I studied stayed in my head so studied is a better word. In other posts I may go back to using the word 'learned' but for now I will say 'studied'. And of course you may want to know when I began. I seriously started my studying in 2012.

My first exposure to the Korean language was through *drumroll* Kdrama. After hearing the language I decided to learn it. I liked how it sounded and it was probably attractive to me because it was very different from English.

1. Learning Hangul a Basic Phrases

For this I first used Talk to Me in Korean's Learn to Read and Write Hangul but they didn't finish this series so I just found some random page to learn Hangul. To supplement that, I used Professor Oh's hangul videos and her KWOW episodes to learn some phrases. I was soooo addicted to KWOW back then. 

2. More Basic Words and Phrases

My first Korean Book was Read and Speak Korean for Beginners. I will never forget the day I received this book. At that time Jewel in the Palace was airing on local television. My whole family (after making fun of me for watching Kdramas) used to look forward to watching it every week. I got good grades in my exams so my mother bought it for me. My little cousin came to me with the book tied up in a cloth and gave me a big bow and presented me with the book. It was so cute.

Anyhow, the book itself was pretty good. In my opinion it was a typical beginners book with vocab like pets, family, directions, jobs and that sort of thing. It also came with an audio CD which was a good thing. There were a few mistakes in the book but nothing major. You would not believe how good I felt to actually realize that there were mistakes.

3. Basic Grammar

After this I went on to using Talk To Me In Korean's grammar series. TTMIK provides extremely helpful content, especially for beginners. I used TTMIK for levels 1-3. They really provided a good foundation. 

4. E-Textbooks

I was so fortunate to come across the Korean textbook series by Monash University called My Korean. They are available for free on the university's website. I went through both of these books. I really liked the layout of these two books. There was a comic at the beginning of each chapter on which the lessons would be based. I learned a lot of useful vocabulary and cultural notes and the grammar explanations were extremely clear. There are listening and writing exercises but I never did any. I only did the comprehension exercises from time to time.

5. More Textbooks

There was a time when I used to get up early to study and so I used to listen to Arirang Radio's Catch the Wave with Adrien Lee. TTMIK had a segment where you could send in an audio clip of you speaking Korean to win a prize. I decided to give it a try and I won!!! Lol. I got Magic Korean 1 as a prize. I really liked this book. There were a lot of jokes in it and the drawings were really cute. Grammar wise it was mostly a review for me but I learned a lot of words related to different aspects of Korean culture.

I then moved on to Intermediate College Korean. There is an online version but I bought the physical book. I like studying grammar and so I enjoyed the grammar sections. The explanations were concise but good. At first the content was interesting but for me it became a bit boring further down in the book so I started skipping some dialogues. If you like history then this would be a good book for you. The recordings of the dialogues were good for listening practice.

6. Listening to Podcasts

As a 2016 New Years resolution, I decided to listen to one of TTMIK's Iyagi podcasts everyday during every meal. At first it worked out well but as you know, resolutions are made to be broken (I only got through about 50 episodes). I think that listening to the same thing repeatedly is a good method. At first you may not know some words but you can look them up or simply guess their meaning from context. The second time around anticipate when they will come and pay more attention to them helping you to learn them. I only regret not taking better notes of the new vocabulary I came across. I only stored a few of then in my Wordbook on Naver dictionary.

Other

Besides using these kinds of resources I was constantly watching Kdramas (Viki/Dramafever). I have watched so many it is ridiculous. Watching the dramas, even though I used subtitles, I tried to listen as closely as I could and make a mental note when there was a word or phrase that I recognized. After hearing the word or phrase I would just repeat it once or twice in my mind.

I have also interacted with native speakers using various websites and apps. I met my first Korean friend through a site called HiPenpal. We wrote several letters to each other and still do. I also used Lang-8 for writing correction but I am not really interested in writing so I didn't use it much. I guess Lang-8 would be more helpful for people who are preparing for TOPIK or something. I found my first speaking partner on Italki. She was extremely nice. We spoke at least once a week for about six months. During that period of time my speaking skills really improved. I also use Hello Talk language exchange app for chatting mainly via text.



Even though I have been studying for this long my skills are really not that great. I always watch videos of other Korean learners and their proficiency is much higher than mine after studying for a lot shorter a time period. I know that comparing myself to others is a bad habit, but from doing it I know that I need to put in a lot more time and effort or find better methods. As I go forward I will try to do these two things to improve.

FIA Challenge Week 1

The first week of the challenge was pretty rocky. Perhaps I should have taken another week's break after the end of the semester before starting. The first four days went fine but the last two did not go as planned. I ended up watching part 15 and 16 just once on Saturday. Too many Kdramas to watch. Sigh. However, these are my notes for the week.

Part 14

Grammar/Sentence Structure

Imperfect Tense- Remove ons from nous form and add ais, ais, ait, ions, iez, aient.   NB For ger and cer verbs, the e and ç changes that normally occur in the nous form, occur preceding the endings beginning with 'a'. e.g Je mangeais

Usage:

To give background information (like in Korean)

To talk about things you used to do often

To talk about an action that was interrupted (in my opinion like past continuous was -ing)
Mainly used when using avoir, être, devoir, vouloir, savoir and pouvoir in the past.

Phrases worth noting
C'est le combien?- It is the what?  (When asking the date)
Bons baisers- xoxo at the end of a letter
Je me sauve.- I'm leaving
Elle s'en va.- She leaves.
Ça suffit comme ça. - That's enough.
Qu'est-ce qui se passe?- What is happening?
De quoi sagit-il?- What is it about?
Il sont assis en face l'un de l'autre.- They are seated opposite one another.


Part 15

Grammar/Sentence Structure
Compter faire quelque chose- Plan to do something
Ne..pas que - Not only


Phrases worth noting
Qu'est-ce qu'il a?- What is wrong with him?
Il n'y a pas que ca a Paris.- That's not all there is in Paris.

Part 16 

Grammar/Sentence Structure
Profiter de + noun - Make use of noun
Avoir envie de + verb- Want to do verb
Qu'est-ce que/Que + adjective /Quel(le) + noun - Used in exclamations e.g. Que c'est jolie (How pretty!) Quelle merveilleuse matinee de printemps (What a wonderful spring morning!)

Phrases worth noting
Je ne vois vraiment pas le rapport entre A et B.- I don't see what A has to do with B.
Il n'y a aucun rapport.- That has nothing to do with it.

Tenir- To have (on you/in hand)

Summer 2016 Plans - French In Action Challenge

If you take a look at the archives of this blog you will see that there are posts from 2013 and only from 2013. When I first started this blog I have no idea what the real purpose was. I guess that is why my motivation to post things fizzled so quickly.

This summer, however, I plan to give 'Bajan Language Lover' a fresh new start. I created a cheesy new banner and put down my plans for the blog on paper. Well not really on paper - in the About section. People say that when you write down your plans and let other people know about them, you are a lot more likely to stick to them and so that is what I did. We will see how well this works out. I aim to put up a blog post at least once every two weeks. I won't make any unrealistic plans.

Also, I plan to give my French studying a new start as well. Over the semester I was not able to study any languages so this summer I plan to get my fill. I was contemplating for a long time which language I should study. I knew I wasn't going to study Korean because I give most of my time to Korean. Even if I am not deliberately studying it, there is no doubt about it that I will watch some sort of Korean TV show. It was therefore a toss up then between Chinese and French. I felt that I neglected French for too long and so French it is.

I plan to take on what I call the "French In Action Challenge"(FIA). French in Action is a 52 part series created by Pierre Capretz which is mainly used at Yale University. Initially it was an audio program but it was also turned into a video series which can be found online. I started the series before but only made it to part 13 or so. I always had it in mind to finish the series, so I plan to use it to study this summer. I had to think for a while about what the challenge should entail because I didn't want to simply watch the videos. This is what I came up with.

The FIA Challenge Details

Since each part is around 30 minutes long,  each week I will cover three parts. My week will go like this :

Monday- Part 1
Tuesday-  Part 2
Wednesday-  Part 3
Thursday-  Part 1
Friday-  Part 2
Saturday - Part 3

Simple right? Each day I will watch the video twice in the morning , listening only, and twice again at night, this time trying to repeat what the actors say. In addition to watching the videos, during the day I plan to do related grammar exercises from this textbook that I own. From the looks of it, I would spend around 3 hours a day. Each week I also will (try to) post a short update on what I learned in the previous week.

By the end of the summer I should complete at least 33 of the parts.

I think that this is enough of a challenge. I think that it is going to be more of a determination and motivation challenge than an actual learning challenge.