“What? Learn Japanese?”, the Koreans say. Yes, Japanese. Well, only for a week. Last month I made a short visit to Japan. I didn’t have the time to learn how to read, and really I didn’t have a major interest in learning Japanese, so I only concerned myself with learning how so say 20 or so short phrases and words.

How did I study? Using SRS of course. 15 minutes a day for about a week, I practiced until I left for Japan. I registered for a free one week trial on Japanesepod101, skipped the podcasts,  and took advantage of the audio dictionary for the Survival Japanese. For the SRS cards, this time I put English text on the question side and the audio and phonetic spelling (side note: Hangul works very well for this) on the answer side.  When I got on the plane to the Tokyo a week later I tested it out with the flight attendant. I got a genuine smile for just saying thank you.

I want to comment on using SRS in this way. I’ve read on a few websites that going from L1 to L2 is wrong. I will happily disagree with that (for now at least). It worked just fine for my week of Japanese.

I believe the argument I read is that there is more than one way to translate going from L1 to L2 and babies don’t translate so why should we. What’s wrong with saying it a different way than what’s on the answer side of the card?  It’s even possible to write different possibilities so you can feel you’re “right” if you answer one of them. Or how about creating a deeper context to narrow the range of possible answers? “Hello [said to a close friend]” , for example. Babies don’t translate so why should we. I dunno. As an adult (and maybe as a baby) I think I have to. I have no facts or proof to back this up. I’m just going with my gut here. (See Steven Colbert)  It’s when I read more in Korean that I start to feel less like I’m translating. The easier stuff I just know, but the harder stuff i have to think about it, mix stuff around in my head in English and then finally understand. So if I’m translating anyway, going from L2 to L1, and it’s okay to have multiple answers, why would it be bad if I went from L1 to L2?

I get the (gut) feeling that going from L1 to L2 is really like outputting. The question side of the card in English presents the context and the idea to convey, and I must come up with the output in Korean. I’m totally for Virtual Outputting if its fun. Check out this on the spot truthiness.

Input

• Koreans: 1)Korean –> 2)understanding
• English speaking peeps learning Korean: 1)Korean –> 2)English –> 3)understanding
  Then after lots o’ repetition, English speaking peeps learning Korean, input more  like Koreans. The English becomes unnecessary.

Output

• Koreans: [input to respond to]  –> 1)idea formulated –> 2)Korean
• English speaking peeps learning Korean:
  [input to respond to]  –> 1)idea  formulated –> 2)English –> 3)Korean
  Then after lots o’ repetition, English speaking peeps learning Korean, output  more  like Koreans. The English becomes unnecessary.

Virtual Output

• Me, an English speaking peep learning Korean:
  [English input]  –> 1) idea  formulated–> 2)English –> 3)Korean
  Then after lots o’ repetition I output more  like Koreans. Stage 2 translation becomes unnecessary.

Now I have another project, The Virtual Output Experiment.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in the staff  office checking my email when my co-teacher opened a package. She pulled out three books. One was a English classroom activities book, a TOIC (Test Of English for International Communication) study guide, and then this one, Classroom English Expression Dictionary. I looked at all three, but this one stood out. I skimmed through it and knew i had to have it. My co-teacher said I could borrow if  i wanted to. So I did. Then a couple days later she said, “It’s yours Matt”. A gift. Cool!

The content found in this book is great for SRS sentences. On one side of the page are Korean expressions and on the other are English expressions. I can pick and choose the expressions I like or maybe add a whole section of expressions about reviewing tests, passing out homework, or finding the last place we left off.  There are more than 7000 expressions divided up into five sections. Classroom Management, Teaching English Skills, Teaching Activities, Communication and Interaction, and an appendix that has classroom English for students and useful time based expressions. It’s all in there or just about all in there.

Looking at the English, everything that I can remember the teacher or students saying in the classroom is in this book. And, I verified with my Korean co-teacher, the Korean in this book is genuine classroom talk as well.

This book is perfect timing for me. I’ve  gone through two beginner seasons and an intermediate season of Korean Class 101, and the grammar used in those lessons is also found in this book. There are some new bits but for the most part this is a great book to pull sentences from at this time.

If you are a English teacher in Korea and learning Korean, I highly recommend this. I love it. There are MANY examples using the same words in different ways. It’s real classroom Korean, and I will also note, it’s more than classroom Korean. There’s stuff to be used outside the classroom. ie. “It’s too cold in here!” or “I didn’t catch that.”

This will be a nice source for sentences for a while. Skimming through it, I can see myself adding 90% or more of its content to Anki.

I borrowed a children’s book from the library today. I should say two books really. The title on the front cover is  Good! Very good! and on the back cover it’s Don’t do that! As you might imagine the book is about good and bad behavior. It’s written and illustrated by two Koreans.  It’s a cute look into Korean culture.

I made a discovery this last month. Surrounded by a sea of  ballads and teen-pop, I found this tiny tiny island of K-rock. On it, was  Delispice, the band above,  and a few other ones. I’m still searching for some more.

The progress report on my Korean Language Study Experiments:

Listening: There was definite progress with the first audio blog lesson. Now, when I listen, I understand about 60% percent. It’s better than the 10% when I began.
Reading: Faster, and fast enough to read out loud in a melodic fashion. Yes, I sang. It felt pretty cool, for the first time, to be able to keep up with a couple rock songs in the singing room.
Writing: Not much improvement with the free writing. My writing is only in the form of short messages on the cell phone.
Speaking: See Reading.
Typing: Copying one thousand Korean sentences does wonders for typing speed and now I can type without looking at the keyboard. It’s still really difficult to check for accuracy after I’ve copied something. Misspellings don’t scream out as they do in English. It’s more like a whisper or nothing at all.

Last month I decided that I needed to work on the listening skilz. I took an advanced audio blog from Korean Class 101, chopped it up and added the clips to a new deck. I used it for over a week, noticed some progress, then I gave up on it. It was too much too soon. I haven’t opened that deck for about two weeks. I should go through the deck and delete the offensive content. For the moment though I don’t even want to open it up.

The reviews of the main sentence deck suffered a bit because of the above problem. I reviewed everyday but I got behind. It took me about a week to recover. I started deleting the longer sentences, and sentences that i was just sick of seeing. This really helped me come back and in this final week I began adding new fun sentences, and pulled a nice average of 40 new ones a day.

In the last progress report I wrote that I wanted to learn 5000 sentences in 6 months, but it’s looking like it will probably be around 4000. This is really okay because I will still secretly shoot for 5000 anyway.

I no longer question the effectiveness of SRS. It works and works really well for language learning. The question is now, where else can I use this software?

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.