Learning Target Language #1 in Native language vs. Learning Target Language #1 in (Target Language #1 or # 2)

I understand the title is a bit long and confusing, but I’ll explain what I mean by this.

I’m learning four languages mainly and I’ll rank them in order from what I study the most to least: Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish.

I’ve started studying all of them to the point where they are around the same level but this is just an example. My native language is English and I’ve learned Spanish from my family members and from school, hence why I study it the least. I’ve done it a few times in the past, but I’ve recently started to study my foreign languages in either the language that I’m learning or one of the other languages that I’m learning. For example, I have many textbooks that are geared towards foreigners (which speak/know English) and are written in English. I get bored after a while (attention span of a squirrel) and forget about them. I recently picked up on learning Japanese again and decided to find some materials on learning Korean in Japanese and vice versa. This is a win-win because usually when I don’t know vocabulary or grammar in one language, I usually know it in the other. This also helps since Japanese, Chinese, and Korean have either very similar grammar points or very similar sounding vocabulary words. I also recently started to listen to videos and read books which they teach you grammar and vocabulary in the language that you’re learning (similar to how we learn English grammar and vocabulary in English). It trains my brain to listen harder and it’s a very exciting feeling when you realize that you actually understand what’s being explained. Baby steps 🙂

Anki/Language update: March

I’ve been slowly gathering momentum in my language learning journey. I didn’t completely stop during February-March, but I did slow down a lot because I had an exam to study for. Now we’re back on track. During my downtime I have been fixing, and fixing, and just a ton of fixing on my anki decks. A lot of random nonsense like combining decks, changing fields, changing formatting, removing tags, and making it look prettier.  Now I’m really satisfied except that I have a lot of editing to due in terms of duplicate words but I’m fine with that. I also added audio to all my decks which include Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. I also gave myself some realistic goals of how many words I want to learn a day. I say realistic because I get really (REALLY) enthusiastic about languages and set goals like “learn 3,000 words by tomorrow”. This time I set the new word count to 40 (instead of 20) to see how it goes, since I usually learn more than twice that daily anyways. I plan to stick to it this time instead, and even when I miss a day (which happens) I hope I make up for it the next day. I have a habit of feeling bad and then missing another day because of that…logic. I also created another profile, there is one that is kind of random in terms of how the cards are organized and then the 2nd profile is more organized by certain categories e.g HSK, JLPT, Joyou, Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.  At first the 2nd profile had so (toooo) many decks because I didn’t want to combine the different levels until I found out that you can custom study through tags. However there is a pro and con to finally combing the categories; Pro: Looks cleaner plus sometimes you get words from N5 and the next one will be N2…..Cons: sometimes you get words from N5 and the next one will be N2…….One second you’re looking at the word [one] which only has one stroke and then BAM [wisteria] which has 18, and I didn’t even know what that word meant in English. Regardless of that fact I hope this helps me progress faster and help me make up for all those lazy days plus this is actually fun to me which is very important.

Learning Method #2

I recently watched a TED-Talk on “How to learn any language in 6 months”

One of the things that were mentioned was that we learn more from comprehensible input than let’s say trying to memorize grammar from a textbook.

I think to some extent I already knew this to be true. I would find myself “learning” tons of grammar in a week and then by the next week (or hour) I would have forgotten everything. However I find myself remembering words and phrases that I just so happened to hear on a tv show or in a song that I wasn’t even trying to learn.

So starting today, January 19th, I’m going to solely “study” through only media (tv shows, drama, music).

We’ll see how it goes~

Breathtaking….literally…Learning Method #1

Who knew reading in another language can be so exhausting. I’m not sure if I have a medical problem but I know I run out breath quickly in some circumstances. However I think this should not be one of them (smh).

I decided to improve how well I read in Korean aloud so I choose a random “news” article and record myself reading it. It was probably only like 10 sentences but I was out of breath. I think it’s because I focus so much on trying to pronounce the word correctly that I forget to breathe (oh dear). I don’t know how many audio recordings I’ll keep because obviously this is going to take up some space on my computer, but I do want to be able to compare and contrast when I’m at a further point in my journey.

About My Language Journey

It’s sad to see posts from two/ three years ago and I feel/know that I haven’t done a lot to improve my Korean. I am starting again and I’ll try to blog/log what I have been  doing. I’m going to be a university student in September with a major in English education. I plan to teach English overseas. I moved to New York a little over a month ago. Since I’m outdoors a lot more than when I used to live in Florida, I come in contact with many different languages. My ear picks up certain languages more than others because I’ve had a little more exposure to them (I.e Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean). There has been a few times where someone would be speaking Korean and it was super fast. When I went to see Lucy the bad guy was Korean and would speak Korean throughout the movie. I was surprised and happy the I could understand what he was saying. There is a sign on the subway that has Korean and I can break down certain parts the I know. I have challenged myself to complete 11 of my textbooks in 3 months. It seems like a lot but I think it will be fine because most of the books go over the same grammar points. I will leave a list of the books that I’ll be using.

Let the games begin!  하자!