New Goal
June 21st, 2010This time it’s 3000 sentences in ~6 months. The deadline is January 7, 2011.
This time it’s 3000 sentences in ~6 months. The deadline is January 7, 2011.
Korean study continues! I’m still reviewing my anki deck (sort of) but i haven’t added anything for several weeks. At the moment I have a backup of around 900 cards. Honestly, I just lost interest after I did six months of anki. I reached my goal didn’t bother making another.
As I said, Korean study continues but these days I’m doing other stuff. My latest project is memorizing and reciting things that are said to me or asked of me over and over and over to me by Koreans I’ve never met or just met. It’s all true. The list is not complete and not in any particular order.
This is the month of maintaining , retaining and no gaining. I can’t seem to keep the anki deck down. I haven’t added new stuff in over three weeks. I review everyday but never down to zero.
Two times this month I tried to speak only in Korean. It was difficult but I did manage to express my thoughts in broken Korean and have them understood. In addition to the regular anki deck I’ve started another, this time going from English to Korean. So far, so good. I have about 20 sentences committed to memory. The content is sometimes not so useful for me but the form is helpful. For example I can say, ” I have been thinking getting plastic surgery”. No I really haven’t wanted rhinoplasty, but yes I have done some thinking.
I have nothing more to report except that I am disappointed. This is the end of a six month experiment. I made progress but the not progress I had dreamed of. Oh well, I’ll keep going.
All this language learning, SRS talk and no how’s Matt and what’s he REALLY doing?
Japan!
Really, I should say I did a tiny fraction of Tokyo and and a bit of Kyoto and a bullet train in between. It was one week of an almost completely tourist adventure. I should emphasize that one unit of measurement, the week. It didn’t feel like seven days. Days and nights were one. Every hour was different but the whole week was the same. Ramen meals were perhaps the only consistent ingredient in action packed nonstop attempt to experience a bunch ‘o stuff. I’ll run through it here as I did in Japan —> Arrive Toyko, find Ueno district, find crew and the hotel, eat at best ramen joint ever, wander Higashi-Ueno market, see Sensoji Temple, see Five Storied Pagoda, eat sushi, wander Asakusa Market , visit Asahi brewery (no more), ascend Tokyo Tower…eat best ramen ever… cross the Shibuya crossing, all-nighting in Roppongi, eat best handcrafted mochi ice cream ever, check out Akihabara cosplay, sleep in a capsule, visit Kappabashi kitchen town, visit Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum, watch bustle of Tsukiji Fish Market… eat best ramen ever… tour Ueno Park and temples, ride bullet train, check out International Manga Museum, view Silver Pavilion, visit Samurai shops and manga store, play video games, bike Kyoto, tour Imperial Palace… eat best ramen ever…train ride back to Tokyo. And that’s maybe 1/3 of the trip, the highlights. The highlight of the highlights for me, was the Imperial Palace in Kyoto with those sweet nightingale floors and awemazing murals. Impressive. I don’t have any interior pictures though. They wouldn’t let me take ‘em.
What about the stories in all that stuff? -Like how Cezar and I played human frogger at Shibuya crossing and lost Melodie in the mass of people and how she wasn’t so happy, and how and why my image of ramen is no longer Top-Ramen, and how dangerous it is to first look left when crossing street, and what happens with you share beers with carnies? That’s for another time.
녹차
라테
We talked over lattes in in the town of Kimje . I told her I wasted my time for the first year of studying Korean. I spent all that time struggling, trying to retain what I had learned and trying to output using grammar rules. But she said, “No. You have what you have now because of that waste of time”. “Okay”, I said. “You’re right.” Failing horribly forced me do find a better way.
Now, five months later…I’m moving right along with Korean. I’ve stopped with Korean Class 101 lessons last month. I got to the point where I learned enough sentence patterns to set me free from their lessons and dive into other material. Lately its been expression dictionaries. I occasionally run into strange grammar but most of the time now the new stuff I’m learning is vocabulary. I’ll probably go back to KC101 lessons in the future but for now I’m having fun without it.
Learning song lyrics is another thing I’m doing for fun. MC Snyper, Delispice, and Zitten are some of the Korean artists I find interesting. MC Snyper is way too fast to keep up with but still fun to listen too.
And the other day I found myself watching a Japanese film that had Korean subtitles. I had to pause it often in order to read the subtitles, but I was happy I could even understand a little.
I have around 3500 cards in the Anki deck with 2700 in rotation, and another 1000 or so waiting to be added. I kinda wish I had more but I definitely have a limit to the amount I can learn in a day.
This final and upcoming month I will continue as I have done for the past five and perhaps do the Virtual Output Experiment.