Language and
Life
aren’t
separate.

SRS. Besides learning how to read and listen to Korean, another great use for this tool, is to inspire and guide. I give great credit to AJATT for this. I gather quotes, I like, from AJATT’s twitter feed,  good pieces of advice, cool quotes,  or stuff I’ve discovered about Korean, and stick them in the PD (Personal Development) deck of my SRS. Whenever I feel even a  little dread about anything to do with learning Korean I open up the PD deck and I’m reminded that I may need to change something with my study habits or even life in general. The quote cards that I feel I haven’t followed through with or have forgotten about, I fail those. The ones that are clear in my mind or the ones that I follow more or less, I give a better grade. It has worked out pretty well for me. After reading through about 30 cards I open up a Korean sentence deck and start crazy-deleting bad sentences (’cause it feels good),  or I open up a Korean book I forgot about and begin reading, or I just do whatever…in Korean.

It’s a new year and that means there are many school teachers and staff changing schools in Korea. That’s how I had a chance to re-meet a colleague from a school that I used to work at over a year ago. I remember at the time,  I was impressed with her English skills. She was above average for any of the teachers that spoke English. I was talking with her today and the topic of movies came up, and at one point she asked me if I had ever seen the movie Ratatouille. I said yes and just happened to love the stew too! ( kimchi jjigae and ratatouille are a close match for me) Then she admitted that she watched/listened to that movie a hundred times. She realized her modesty and then said the number was probably closer to 150 times. WOW! I don’t know exactly why her English skills are more advanced than the average,  but I would guess that watching a movie 150 times had something to do with it.  I asked her if she had memorized the whole movie. She said no but I think she could have recited it entirely with a little prompt.

I obtained the the video footage from the 2009 End of the Year Festival. Here’s the dance video cut. I’m the one with the dark hair. Enjoy. For closeups of these mind blowing moves, check out the photos in the earlier post.

What happened this month with the Korean Study Method Experiment(s):

1. Changed the way I grade my answers in Anki.
2. Reviewed more than 2000 words and sentences in Anki.
3. Changed my speaking practice dialogue method to a listen, speak, and understand method using Anki and audio clips from Korean Class 101.
4. Felt small progress in reading, writing, speaking, and listening compared to last month. But still having fun, everyday, and not burned out.

The details:

Number 1: I no longer consider speed or accuracy of reading Korean when i grade my answers in Anki, unless i feel its extremely bad. I ended up with way to much to review. 300 cards a day of just reviews was getting to be a bit too much. I could remember the cards just fine. Besides, in these past three months, my reading speed has increased just by reading and really it should not be a factor in the grading of my answers.

Number 2: I’m happy to have reached 2000.  I’m greedy though and I want to learn more, faster. I’m hoping to reach 5000 in three more months. If I used the same sentence structures with the different words i think it may be possible.

Number 3: I’ve had excellent success using Anki to improve my reading skills. I thought perhaps i could get the same rate of progress if I did listening in the same way. Actually, I’ve thought about doing this for a while now, but always feared the work involved to chop up the audio, import the audio, and write/imput the translations, would be too time and effort and not enough fun.  But, I think I found a fairly painless and fast enough way to do it.  Here’s what i did for a Korean Class Advanced Audio blog lesson.

• Import the lesson into Audacity (1 min)
• Reduce the tempo 85%. Note: changing the tempo rather than speed keeps the tone of the audio like the original. (1 min)
• Played back the 10 minute audio and paused at the end of a sentence or a natural break in a long one and then placed a blank label there. I did this until I reached the end of the audio file. That left me with around 120 labels. (45 minutes)
• Exported the audio by label. (1 minute)
• Created a new deck in Anki for audio only. (1 minute)
• Created 120 new cards in sequence putting a number only for the question side of the card. (This part can be skipped but it was just a way for me to be sure I imported everything and didn’t accidentally skip audio files when importing.) (15 min)
• In browse mode, going in sequence, from 1 to 120, imported the audio into the question side. (45 min-60min??)

Number 4: There has been noticeable improvement in my listening skills.  My friend said she has to be careful when she talks to her girlfriends around me.  The truth is I hear maybe 10-20% of words in certain kinds of conversations. I’m able to get the main idea with the help of context. On the other hand, there are many times where I understand nothing.  I’ve been trying for over a year now, to get a made to order haircut. I got the closest this month. It took a lot of repetition and patience. Next time I think I can get it exactly right.

새해 복 많이 받으세요. Said something like [Saaaay-bong mani pah-deu-sehh-yo] as I heard from a Korean friend. It’s not just a new year though it’s a new decade, sort of….not technically, but close enough I’d say. (My weeks start on Monday.)

This New Years I hiked with friend Melodie.  There was a temple somewhere on the mountain but we had a late start so we decided to skip the temple and simply go to the picturesque bridge in the Lonely Planet travel guide.

How do you want your cephalopod?  A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to eat moving squid tentacles. The texture was the same as immobile ones. -Slightly rubbery and easily broken down with a few chews. Squid doesn’t seem to have much flavor when eaten fresh so anything that is added dominates the flavor. These had sesame oil and a little seaweed on them so that’s what I tasted.  Here are my co-teachers chomping down on some dancing legs.

This experiment was sparked by a Christmas weekend where I spent much of it lost in Korean conversation. I was lost and I wasn’t even participating. It was very clear to me as I sat there, that my listening skills really really sucked.

I’ve reached the end of Intermediate Series of the Season Two Korean Class Lessons,  and have advanced to the audio blog Korean Class 101 Lessons. The whole lesson is in Korean. I’ve already listened to the first lesson and I’d say I missed 90% of it. It was way too fast.  Looking at the transcript though, it didn’t seem as bad.  The main problem is the speed. There’s bit of grammar and vocabulary that I’m not familiar with, but the speed of the speakers is the biggest challenge. So, here’s the listening experiment.

1. Go through the transcript, highlighting words and grammar I don’t know.
2. Look up those words and grammar in Naver, or Using Korean, and add all the sample sentences to Anki
3. Reading the transcript, listening at the same time.
4. Repeat #3 daily, 20-30 mintues at a time, until i can understand at least 85-90% of the audio blog just by listening.

How long it will take me to get to go from 10% to 90% listening comprehension with the first audio blog? One week? Two weeks? Three weeks? 몰라!