My New Plan for Language Study

          In my previous post, I talked about my struggles as someone who wasn’t exactly intermediate but definitely NOT a beginner. This month has seen my language studies stutter and kind of stop. They definitely stopped for Chinese and they sort of stuttered for Korean mostly because I have an awesome native Korean language teacher who at least is trying to drum some stuff into my brain. So today (Monday, June 29) I sat down to really look at what is going on with me. Why did I stop my Chinese studies and why is my Korean suffering and it is not JUST about the beginner/intermediate struggle. I found some points which I can take action on. Let me start with Chinese, because this one was easy. 

CHINESE:

I realized I had no specific goal that I am working towards. I don’t know what I am doing or where I am going so I set a goal for myself. This month (to be re-assess at the end of the month) I will be focusing on Pinyin and learning it to the best of my ability. The point is that I can read Pinyin so I can go on to HSK 1 books. I might throw in some character writing but Pinyin is my goal.

To this end, I went on Udemy and bought some courses that focus on that. I am also going to look at YouTube videos.

KOREAN: 

1. I like Talk to Me in Korean books so I am keeping those as-is. So for the next month, I will focus on Level 3 as well as reading Easy Korean Reading. There is also a book that I am slowly working through which is about patterns in Korean grammar.

2. I asked my teacher to give me homework. I told him I wanted a paragraph that I could look at on my own figure out what the meanings of the words were and what the sentences mean then answer questions about in Korean. In case anyone is wondering my teacher is the best, check him out on Instagram. He is just the beat and most patient teacher. 

3. I’m going to watch the Drama 날 녹여주오 (Melting Me Softly). I am currently watching it with subtitles on Vik.com. Then I am going to use their teaching mode which they have on most dramas and just focus on the phrases and the words I don’t know. 

4. Now let me talk about what didn’t work. Ehwa Korean is a great book from a great institute but...like Sogang University books just don’t work for me. So I’ve decided to put them away for now. 

5. I am substituting Korean From Zero books instead of the Ehwa Korean books. If those don’t hold my interest I will try a different set of books, God knows I have tons of them from different Universities 😬. 

This is my plan to revive my language studies. My hope is that sharing my struggles can help others with theirs.

Intermediate Language Studies - My Current Struggles

          Today I want to talk about something that I am currently struggling with where my Korean studies are concerned. I am not exactly a beginner but I'm not intermediate either...at least not exactly. I have enough grammar to be at level 3 in Talk To Me in Korean. I can make long sentences on my own if I think about them beforehand but I can't do it on the spot, although sometimes if it is everyday vocabulary I can. I can watch Superman Returns (a Korean reality show where celebrity men look after their babies) and understand everything because the dads are talking to their children so their vocabulary is geared towards their age. I have tried to watch Korean dramas and tried to understand what is going on before putting on the subtitles but I ended up understanding like 20 to 30 percent of what they are saying. So I was thinking about how to improve my vocabulary skills, my listening skills, and my on the spot answering skills.

This is what I am going to do based on my research and asking my Korean teacher. 

1. What dramas with Korean subtitles before watching it with English subtitles and see how much I can pick up with reading and listening.

2. Listen to Korean only podcasts and Youtube channels even if I don't understand anything at first to get more used to hearing the language and discerning words.

3. Read Korean books. I bought a bunch of beginner and intermediate reading books which I am going to start reading. 

4. Besides Kpop also listen to Ballads as they tend to be slower and use more common words than Kpop.

Hopefully, these things will help me advance a little more in my studies.

Kpop News: Miscellaneous

          I'm going to start by bragging a little. I've always loved Lee Sunhee's songs, but then I found out that she herself sought out Chanyeol for a Collaboration, and my respect for her increased. She was able to see just how awesomely talented Chanyeol is and went for it. The result is stunning! Their voices compliment each other so well, I am so proud of our Chanyeol. Please check out this masterpiece!

And the lyrics for the song.

          Next, I want to brag about Sehun, our baby. He has been quite busy! Season 3 of Busted is confirmed for release sometime this November 2020. He is also now confirmed to be in Pirates 2 alongside Kang Ha Neul and Lee Kwang Soo. 

        Now both he and Chanyeol are also preparing for their comeback as EXO-SC sometime in July! I can’t wait!!!

        One of my favorite groups is TVXQ, I’m a Cassiopeian on top of being an EXO-L and proud of it. I was so happy to hear the news that Changmin was getting married in September.

I’m so proud of my fellow Cassiopeians in the way they handled the news. They were pretty mature about it and I’m glad for Changmin. And extremely happy for him.

I also found it a little ironic that the same Knetizens who are calling for Chen to exit EXO despite the wishes of the EXO members themselves are the same ones that are congratulating Changmin on his upcoming nuptials. Cognitive dissonance much??!! 

          I could have sworn that I talked about Lay’s new Album Lit but apparently, I have not so let me talk about it here. Just like its name the album is awesome in every way. I love the fusion he did between Chinese music and western music without either one losing its flavor. 

The album has 6 songs. The songs are:

1. Lit

2. Jade

3. Eagle

4. H2O

5. Fly

6. Soul

Also, this is only part one of the album apparently but we still don't know much about the second half. All the songs are fire and depending on my mood my favorite will change so I’m just going to leave you with the MV.

This is the MV for Lit.

While this is not an MV, it is still an amazing song and picture from Lay. This is Jade.

Kpop Album Review: Max’s Chocolate

          I’ve had this album for a long while now but I wanted to listen to the songs enough to really pick a favorite. So now it is time to show them off. 

          This is Changmin’s, of TVXQ fame, first solo mini album. The album is called Chocolate and it has 6 songs. Let us look at the albums first then we can discuss the songs. 

          There are two versions of the album: Orange and Gold. And they were released on April 6.

I also got the posters that came with the albums. I can’t tell you for sure which poster came with which album because they were both put in a tube together. But based on the color scheme:

This one came with Orange, 

And this one came with Gold.

Each album came with a postcard picture in an envelope, a photocard, and a photobook. Everything looks really sleek and high quality but the box they each came in the s not my favorite as it kind of is already showing some wear and tear just from traveling here.

Gold Version: 

Gold version is actually black 😬

There is this beautiful introduction on the box lid from the inside which shows just how much of a beautiful soul Max is.

It is not very clear here but I’m hoping the orange version will be clearer.

This envelope had the postcard photo in it.

No there is nothing wrong with my camera or lighting this is how the card looks.

The pictures in the photobook are all gorgeous and chic.

And this is the photocard that I got.

Finally the CD.

Orange Version:

Pretty much exactly as the precious album. 

Now let's talk about the songs. As I said there are six songs in the album:

1. Chocolate (Title Song)

2. High Heels

3. Lie (featuring Chungha)

4. Piano

5. Me, Myself, & I

6. No Tomorrow

Each one has a unique sound and each one has its charm, but if you ask me which one is your favorite it would have to be "Lie".

This is the MV for Chocolate

This is the performance video for Chocolate.

This is my favorite song in the album

Finally, this is a special video for Me, Myself, & I

June Journal Update

          This is the first Tuesday of the month of June. So it is time to give you an update about my journaling habits and a look at my June page...before I forget 😂 and do it late like last month. 

          Last month Kuwait was under a full lockdown because of coronavirus and though I was one of the few people I know who still had to go into work every day it was still a slow month for me. Plus it was also Ramadan so it slowed down even more and my days and nights were messed up. As a result of that my journaling habit was also messed up. I pretty much stopped writing in my journal around the 14th of May and even before that my journalling was hit and miss. So this month I am determined to go back to it because it actually grounds me and helps me process my feelings and thoughts. 

CULTIVATE WHAT MATTERS:

This was the break down of my goals from last month. I actually succeeded in finishing two small goals in my Korean studies. I also added one new goal which is to learn Mandarin. We’ll see how that goes. 

This is my tending list from last month and the yellow bits were me taking time off. As you can see there was a lot of time taken off for Korean and Mandarin.

Next, I did my month in review page and moved on to June prep work.



This is my June prep work page. I’m thinking of changing the structure on this for next month but it is still percolating in my mind.

This is my goal breakdown for this month.

My monthly calendar. 

This is my tending list for this month. As you can see the task list is quite short because I decided to use a paper calendar as well as my daily journal to keep track of my study and task details.

My June paper calendar, a free download from Notebook Therapy. 

MY JOURNAL: 

Like I said this past month I didn’t journal much but I did use my trackers and every day.

It worked for me really well so I made a tracker page to June.

This is my June cover page. I printed out a pretty picture from Pinterest with the word June on it and then the rest are stickers.



This is my Blog Idea and Books Read page.



Finally, this is my tracker page. I’m using the same structure as before but I added the first letter of the days so I know the date and day it falls on.

And this is it for my journal update!

Korean Learning: Falou App

          Today I'm going to talk about an application that a lot of people in the Korean learning community on Instagram are recommending without really giving a heads up about what people should expect while using it. This is why I chose to do this review of the application.

The name of the application as you can see is Falou and you can learn more than just Korean as they have other languages there too. 

However, this review is only for the Korean language since this is the one I am learning at the moment.

The application has 3 different types of lessons: situational conversation lessons, word lessons, and what they call sleep lessons which is a recording of conversations you can listen to, to improve your listening abilities. 

Listening Abilities: 

It has different themes and each theme is rated as easy, intermediate, or advanced. 

So far I’ve only listened to the first of the recordings and it is basically the conversations from the first lessons in the situational conversation lessons. I will say that it is a good way to get your ears used to the Korean language.

Word Lessons:

As with the previous category, there are themes to these lessons. This is a good way to build vocabulary and they have a good way of teaching it to you. They depend on repetition and picture association as well as giving you pronunciation. 

  Here they show you the word spelling, pronounce it for you, and give you the picture association. 

Then they give you the word in English and ask you to pick the Korean translation. 

The same thing but in a different way of asking the question, which is repetition. 

Next, they ask you what you hear and you have to pick the right word.

Then they ask you to say the word to check your pronunciation. 

Finally, they ask you which is the correct image for the word spoken in the recording. It is a very effective way to get the words to stick into your brain and get pronounce them.

Situational Conversation Lessons: 

I left these lessons for last because I have found some issues with them, but let me discuss the good things first.

These lessons offer everyday situations that you might find your self in and they give you a conversation to follow first from one perspective and then the other. For example, if you meet someone for the first time, you will play the conversation first from person number 1's perspective then person number 2's perspective so you pronounce both sides of the conversation. The application will not let you move on to the next line unless you pronounce your line as close to correct as possible. The recording of the conversation and the playback can show you where you need to work on your pronunciation and can also show you that you are doing well. It can offer a good boost to your confidence when you hear yourself improving.

How each lesson starts.

The lesson itself. Person A speaks and they give you the response to speaker A. Your speech is recorded and analyzed to see if you spoke it correctly. If you did, then you move to the next line but if you don't they show you where your mistakes are so that you can say it correctly. The snail you see in the picture plays the recording slowly so you can listen carefully and imitate it.

This is a video of a full lesson that I did, as you can see I still hesitate in some places and in some places my pronunciation is not perfect but it is close enough to pass inspection from the application.

Now here are the cons of this application:

1. They mix formal with informal freely, which if anyone knows Korean knows it is not done. In some of the conversations you are meeting someone for the first time and they are speaking informally to each other and that never happens.

2. In a few of the first conversations in the lessons, they use the word 여보세요, which is only used on the phone instead of 안녕하세요, which is what you use when you meet someone and say hello to them.

3. In some of the conversations the words endings used are used by older people to younger people, my Korean teacher was very surprised that it was used in the application as if it was normal. He said that he suspected that the people who put together these conversations were not Korean.

So is this application any good? It’s complicated.

If you are just starting out, then just use the word lessons for now. Until you get a grasp on what is allowed and not allowed in Korean culture when it comes to formality levels. 

If you are intermediate then go ahead but keep in mind what I said above.