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):
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.
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.
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!
I picked up a children’s book at the my school library. My translated title: The Crayon that Went into the Woods [숲으로 간 크레파스] I expected to understand a large portion of it, because well, I was able to read the title, AND it’s a children’s book!
I have some work to do. I first went through once and wrote down all the words I didn’t know. I’m too lazy to count how many but it looks like about 100 words. That’s okay. I’m actually relieved. It looks like it’s just vocabulary that I am not familiar with. The sentence structures and verb endings look like ones I’ve learned in the last two months from the beginner and intermediate lessons at Korean Class 101. Recognizing these things and their associated meaning is pretty hard right now. I have vague ideas and rough translations in my head of what they mean. At this point I really want to get a firmer grasp on the grammar that I’ve amassed. New vocab using the same grammar is really what I want right now, so I think this book will be great. Actually, I hope the next few books could be like this one.
If I can get a copy of the video I will post it up here. For now I just a have a few shots from my first dance performance….ever. I and the other male teachers from my elementary school performed two dances based on the two K-pop music hit videos (Abracadabra and Sorry Sorry Sorry), for the Christmas festival. It was fun. I would do it again but I would practice some more. I know I made some transition errors, but I was nicely hidden in the back to cover them up…I think. I won the best dancer title anyhow. I accepted it but I still wonder what the criteria was. Most colorful necktie while dancing?
