My Search for the Most Effective Way to Memorize Vocabulary

I love to learn grammar. I could sit and study grammar all day long. On the other hand, I find it hard to memorize vocabulary. For the longest while I was trying to find a way to memorize vocabulary that I could stand. Of course there are:

• classic flashcards and spaced repetition systems
• Mnemonics- I love doing this. My latest one that I find hilarious  산소에 사는 사람들이 산소가 필요 없어요. ( People who live in tombs don't need oxygen)
• Creating crazy stories around a particular word
• Memory palaces- which I never tried because I figure it would be too time consuming

There was an article I found called "Vocabulary Myths: Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching" by Keith Folse which aims to debunk the following ideas people have concerning vocabulary:

• In learning another language, vocabulary is not as important as grammar or other areas.
• Using word lists to learn L2 vocabulary is unproductive.
• Presenting new vocabulary in semantic sets facilitates learning.
• The use of translations to learn new vocabulary should be discouraged.
• Guessing words from context is an excellent strategy for learning L2 vocabulary.
• The best vocabulary learners make use of one or two really specific vocabulary learning strategies.
• The best dictionary for L2 learners is a monolingual dictionary.
• Teachers, textbooks, and curricula cover L2 vocabulary adequately.

These are three things that Folse discussed that I found interesting:

a) Making vocabulary lists by grouping words in to "scenes/events"(thematic sets) is better than making a list simply based on similarity(semantic sets).
Example: Making a vocab list including the things related to a birthday party vs making a list of colours.

b) Word lists may seem not useful but they are. However, too much information should not be used. A study done showed better retention using a single word or a word in a single sentence(minimal context) versus words in text context or elaborate text context.
I also learned about word lists for English learners like the Dolch list, the University Word list and the Academic Word list.

c) Guessing from context for native speakers of a language can be difficult and so therefore it is more difficult for a foreign language learner. The possibility of inferring the meaning of a word incorrectly is high. Folse therefore recommends "reading with explicit, planned vocabulary work."


Every time I think about memorization, I always think about my lovely childhood memories of memorizing times tables. I can't count how many times a week we had to stand in class and recite the times tables. We went over them countless times and now (even though some of them still always seem to escape me) they are practically engraved in my brain. Not to mention that we need to recall them often in our daily lives. If this method has been proven effective to memorize times tables, why not do the same for language? These days people are always crying down rote memorization. As a science student I can see how this type of 'learning' is not the best. In science you need to understand most concepts and not just simply memorize them. In the case of language, particularly vocabulary, there is no need to understand anything in that manner. All you need to do is remember. I was reading an  article by Ask a Korean in which he talked about his English language learning journey and how rote memorization played an important role. One of the things that he said which remained with me was this

"But there are certain things about contemporary America drives the Korean crazy, and this is one of them: the idea that the process of learning is somehow supposed to be fun. Just drop it. Forget it. What is fun is the result of learning – the infinite amount of fun when you finally put the finished product to use."

These days everyone says that the learning process should be fun. I thought (think?) like this as well. I am beginning to think that this is not necessarily so. Discipline is key.

I decided to heed the Korean's words to just 'suck it up' and get to studying. After taking a look at the shared decks on Anki, I found a Korean deck that is called 'Grand sentence mine'. This was just filled with sentences. I tried using the deck for a while. Before, when I used flashcards I just used single word flashcards. This was extremely boring and seemingly not very effective. Somehow, using the sentences, though not necessarily fun, was much more enjoyable. In addition to reading the flashcards, I say them out loud. Instead of just repeating a single, solitary word, I feel like I am actually using the language because it is an actual sentence. This also provides context for the word being studied. Not only do you learn vocabulary words, but sometimes you also end up learning grammar as well.

The only thing is that these sentences may not be related to my own personal interests. I always wanted to have the ability to save sentences like I could words into my Naver wordbook. I would therefore have to start creating my own decks but.......truthfully I am too lazy to do that.

For the past three months or so I have been using this method. I started off using sentences in a phrasebook in preparation for my trip to Korea. Now I have moved on to using the sentences on Learning Korean with Oliver. I downloaded all the flashcards from the intermediate to very advanced and started going over them. I am enjoying it and actually feel that I am making some sort of progress. I really think this sentence mining thing is the way to go.

Getting to be a Viki Subtitler

If you are learning Korean and don't know about Viki, then you must be learning Korean because you like Kpop and not Kdrama. Viki is one of the main places that international fans go to watch not only Korean TV shows but other shows from around the world. On Viki all of the subtitles are written by volunteers. One day I was so bored that I decided to watch Ji Sung's Entertainer even though there were no English subtitles written on the site yet. Surprisingly, I was able to understand quite a bit. I then came up with the oh so bright idea that I should try to become a subtitler for the drama.

In order to be a part of the team, I had to audition by submitting two one-liners to the sub team leader. The first one was taken from a scene from My Love Another Star and the other from some other drama. The line in MLFAS was relatively easy to understand but I don't think I did a great job translating it to English. The second was quite difficult. It was the audio from a news report and had all kinds of words I had never heard in my life. I sent in both of my attempts and the kind-hearted lady let me be a part of the team. I was sooo excited. I got to work right after that. For my first episode I wrote over 100 subtitles. I was so proud of myself. After the subs were done, I watched the part that I subtitled over and over smiling like an idiot.

Fortunately for me, there is a very hardworking volunteer who adds Korean subtitles as soon as the drama is segmented. For the segments I can't fully understand from just listening, I can attempt to translate by reading. I just have to try my best and hope to last until the final episode without being kicked off the team because of poor quality work.

My lovely subtitle

My Korean Subtitles Badge . ONLY 1000 more?? ㅋㅋㅋ

What I Have Learned/Confirmed From Adding Subtitles
1. I can understand a lot more than I thought

2. My vocabulary is very limited

Even though I can understand quite a bit, there is even more that I can't understand. I read somewhere that during the intermediate stage of studying a language, one should focus a lot on vocabulary. I think that is true. I know a fair set of grammar patterns but they become fairly useless if I don't know the vocabulary to go along with them.

3. Many words can be guessed from context

4. Context is key for pronouns

Korean allows for the regular omission of pronouns in sentences. Due to this, 먹었어 could be I/You/He/She/They ate. If you don't pay attention to what is going on in a scene, you could use the wrong pronoun. Unfortunately I fell victim to this once but never again.
 
4. Subbers donate a lot of their time

5. A lot of Korean does not translate very well into English

6. Translation is an art 

On the subbing manager's page she had this posted

"In evaluating a translation from Korean into English, certain general rules can be set out although perhaps not everyone will agree with all of them:

1. Grammatically correct Korean is to be translated by grammatically correct English.
2. Plain Korean sentences should be represented by plain English sentences.
3. Complex Korean sentences are to be translated by complex English sentences.
4. Ordinary, everyday Korean vocabulary is to be translated by ordinary, everyday English vocabulary; abstruse or high-level abstract vocabulary by terms of a similar level
5. Natural-feeling modern Korean prose should be translated into natural-feeling English prose. Excentricity of style should be indicated by excentricity of style. One Korean paragraph should usually be represented by one English paragraph
6. A lively narrative style must be translated by a lively narrative style. A plodding style demands a plodding style.
7. Every word found in the original should be respected and be represented in some way in the translation, although the great difference between the languages means that there can be no such thing as a ‘word-for-word’ translation.

--Brother Anthony of Taize . Translating Korean fiction into English: theory and practice

I think that these rules are great but they require a lot of practice to follow them and always be able to produce natural sounding sentences. 

7. A lot of the subtitles on Viki must not be completely accurate if they let somebody like me on a subbing team. LOL

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.

End of Chinese Course

So the Chinese course I was doing is done. What next? We really did learn a lot. As normal after exposure to any language, I feel the need to learn it. My drama watching at the moment is predominantly Taiwanese. I'm sorry that I put my Kdramas to the side but the Mandarin hype has not worn off yet. I even find now that when I think in Korean I throw in some "wo"s and "ni"s. ZENMEBAN???? Should I add Mandarin to my list. Right now I need to get back my flow of learning French and Korean and plus I doubt there will be enough TIME to manage all three when school starts back. I need to do some serious thinking.

Krench??? Forean???

Is it just me or do other people find the Korean and French accents slightly similar?
I have regular conversations with myself. No. I am not crazy. I find it very helpful to make up situations and then practice speaking out loud in whatever target language.
The other day I was having one of these conversations and decided to do a sudden switch from Korean to French. It hit me right then and there. The two are quite similar. I did not really need to change to general positioning of my mouth and it sounded similar.
Before when I was learning Spanish and I tried to switch from French to Spanish, the Spanish came out sounding French and then I would have to pause and get into the Spanish mode.
I wonder if the reason I like Korean is because of this. Hmmmm...