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.