Are you there Korean? It's me Bella.

Thought I'd share my so called game plan for my studies currently. As part of my new years resolution, I'm spending at very least an hour engaged in language study related activities every day ( no matter what ) and 1 hr listening to spoken Korean.

• I'm using the TalktomeinKorean.com lessons + different youtube vlogs and Elementary Korean as my core sources. I'm supplementing with translating simple unknown sentences I encounter
• Rosetta stone for the vocal pitch recognition ( though I must admit It's not what I expected, but it was a gift so...).
• I review lessons of flash card in m spare time during the day and I practice my Hangul touch typing with web games.
• I watch a show or movie or listen to Seoul.fm for an hour for the listening requirement. It' s pretty motivating to catch a phrase or word here and there.
• And Finally I have a native born Korean friend will to have simple conversation text chats with me. But I'm still in the crawling baby stage, where that can only go so far lol.

Sounds like overkill, but an hour+ a day flys past. An avg day might break down to a 17 min audio lesson, 3 mins or less of text chat, 15 mins playing a children's typing game for 20 mins, 20 mins learning a new chapter portion from my text book, and about 5 mins making flashcard of the new vocabulary gained from today's study. And for the listening to native speaker bit, I can watch an episode of Strong heart before bed or listen to Kpop for an hour while making dinner or doing laundry. I use a language log to keep track of where I left off in the different areas and to keep me accountable. Fingers crossed the routine will continue to go smoothly.

Good luck fellow learners ^^. What methods or materials are you using? How's it going so far?

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Feel my heartbeat travelling to the beat. Love the symphony

I made a break through in Korean just now and had to share. I still feel like a clumsy ogre when I speak out loud. but I realized I was drawing the syllables out to long and the breathe holding trick  only worked to a point, and well it also made me look foolish lol. I especially started having problems when I had the bright idea to learn the lyrics to my favorite songs as a way to improve vocab, pronunciation, and speed. It was a major fail. Forget getting to the translating part of the ride, every sentence felt like the cruelest tongue twister ever. I've drilled the syllables over and over again, so why couldn't I string them together when need to, *sigh* so frustrating. I  started snapping my fingers out of annoyance to hurry myself along I guess and surprise surprise I got through the sentence. The light bulb dinged on above my head and Shazam lol!  I raced to my computer to find  a Internet metronome to try. It took a bit of experimenting but so far  I've had the best results with 70 bpm, adagio, 4 beats per cycle, beat 1 accented. I breezed through to the first chorus using this method.

All Hail the Metronome. Metronome be praised

 Also my brain is fighting remembering the lyrics much less. I tried this on my collection of  phrases and it did wonders. Seemed a discovery worth sharing. Let me know if it works for you.= )

벨라 화이팅!
Bella Fighting!

 

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