journey

Notes from the MOOC Mindshift. I've read the book some time ago. I'd also started the course some time ago but never finished it, but since Coursera is offering free online learning (that is, the certs) for selected courses due to Covid-19, I decided to give this another go. Mindshift You can do more and be more than you think. Aptitude tests (and your internal feelings) only reflect that you are good at at this point in time. But you can change - due to your brain changing (forming new con...

Today (and probably last week) should be considered as Beginner 2A, as evidenced by the pop quiz that we got today. But more on that surprise test later. (The teacher calls it a test, same as the big test from 2 weeks ago, but these are always only written - in the sense of short questions - and last no more than 15 minutes.) Erica didn't come, apparently she was busy last week and this week as well. I hope she's all right, and it's not because she's sick. I know that she was sick a couple of w...

Test Results We got back the test today, and everyone did very well. We all scored more than 90 out of 100. This is apparently quite high (I guess comparing with their past classes, at least according to the teacher). The teacher commented that when she was marking our tests she didn't believe it because we were saying it was hard and stressing out about it. To my utter surprise, I got full marks for oral. Actually, I got full marks for everything except writing, which I lost 0.5 marks on, so ...

The cards for chapter 6 were released today. Since we were on chapter 5 for so long, I forgot the extra effort required to import all the Quizlet cards into Anki. I do this because I want the spaced repetition for memorising the vocab. The deck (well, the Quizlet term is "set") is private to certain classes, so I first make a copy that is public and then import it using the Anki add-on. Then I delete the public set. Next, I add my custom tags since eventually I will throw all the notes/cards ...

The Test I'll do a rundown of the different sections of the test and how they were carried out, and some of my own notes for how I tackled it, and how to prepare better for a next test (for the sections where I feel this is necessary). There were essentially 4 parts to the test, if you think about it in that way. The teacher had said it was reading, writing, listening, speaking. All right, it's kind of like that. But I'll split it into five sections. We were first given the main test paper. T...

While browsing the Language Learners forum, someone posted something that led me to this site - Talk to Me in Korean. I didn't listen to any of their Soundcloud lessons, but I've started to read through the content and it's a good grammar revision for my upcoming test. I learnt that 이, 그, 저 can be attached before any noun to say "this [noun]"/"that [noun]", so for example 이 커피 means "this coffee". Plus, I learnt a new expression for expressing desires: -고 싶어요. (I want to...) You remove the 다...

I had this idea the day before (after my lesson) to randomly generate a date, and then have some TTS software to speak it, and then test myself on how how well I can hear the dates from that. I found out about the Web Speech API, and got something working yesterday, done in React. I started with React JS but converted it to TypeScript because I'm more comfortable with that. I used Create React App, which is definitely overkill. I really don't need all those extra dependencies... What I made ha...

Today was a revision lesson. We did not use the textbook. There was a new 4-page handout, where the vocab for the 5 chapters was on the first page, the grammar on the second, and the last 2 pages are for this week's homework. Again, the test is reading, writing, pronunciation and listening. I guess pronunciation is better than oral, or maybe it will be both. I don't know. But there will be dates involved, we will have to read dates out. The writing component sounds like it's an essay, so not a ...

1. And, With When do you use 같이 (together), and how do you use it in a sentence? I was looking for example sentences on Tatoeba. I know that to indicate doing something "with a friend" is 친구하고 . Example: 친구하고 먹었어요. (I ate with a friend.) But we first learnt that 하고 means "and" for connecting nouns. And the formal version of 하고 is 와/과 (depending on whether there is a Batchim; this is the one with the "inverse" rule). I looked at Tatoeba and on the first page of results saw this sentence: 친구와...

It occurred to me today that the Korean textbook doesn't have a map (of Korea)... or that we didn't cover it in class. I did a quick look at the book and there's no map at the front or end of the textbook. It is possible it is hidden somewhere... I know the French textbook that I had definitely had a world map because it was showing France and the French territories, basically la francophonie. (This is the textbook I can check, because I still have the very first textbook as I've never managed...

This lesson was finishing up chapter 5 in the book. We had finished the handout last week, and the homework handout was completed as part of the previous lesson's homework. This week's homework is a writing assignment - 3 journal entries: 1 weekday, 1 for Saturday and 1 for Sunday. We covered the textbook, starting on p. 135 with the listening activity and until the end of the chapter. It's like déjà vu, you know, the listening activity which was to hear the dates and mark it out on the calenda...

Found out yesterday after a visit to the language learners forum (which I don't regularly go to) that Podclub.ch shut down last year, after having the last episodes aired in September. At the end of the year in December, everything was removed from the site. Officially, the last 30 episodes of each? podcast are on Soundcloud for the different podcasts, but that's it. The efforts to download individual podcasts seem to have stalled on the forums, so there's no central repo that has all the audio...

I was revising on Anki and 알다 came up. It means to know, and I wondered if there is a difference between to know (knowledge/learnt information) and to know (people/things) in Korean. In the other languages I've learnt, I know this distinction exists. I first encountered it in French with connaître (people) and savoir (knowledge). Italian has conoscere and sapere. German has kennen and wissen. Then I thought about Mandarin Chinese, and I realise it has that distinction too, 认识 (people) and 知道 (...

This is the final grammar point for this chapter, which is chapter 5. We finished the handout. Next lesson, we will finish up the chapter, and then the following lesson will be a revision lesson from chapters 1-5. Then after that is the test. The test will have writing, reading, listening, and oral. The oral component will be done in pairs. I guess that gives a hint to me on what to expect. But yeah, it's Beginner 1, like the teacher says, so it isn't too hard. We also had a surprise quiz toda...

Audrey didn't come for this lesson either, and the teacher said she couldn't make it, but I still think she may be trying to (less subtly) transfer... (I saw the teacher that Audrey said she preferred, who is also the one in-charge, talk to our teacher... saw because they spoke in Korean and obviously I didn't understand any part of that exchange except for Audrey's name.) We learnt the past tense in this lesson. We also had the quiz, but not at the start. We first went through the dates/days o...

Audrey didn't come for this lesson. I think she might be switching to the Wednesday class... even though it's 2 weeks behind. It's a hypothesis for now, but it will be more obvious in the next few weeks. We spent about the first half of the class finishing up chapter 4, and then starting on chapter 5. We will be learning the past tense in chapter 5, and then after chapter 5, there will be a test. There is also a vocab quiz in the next lesson on the temporal adverbs (pretty much that's what the...

For this final lesson, everyone was here, all 7 of us. I got to talk to 2 of my classmates on the way back, which I documented in the post before this. The new person who joined has 4 (after this, 3) lessons more, so it seems like the school allows people to join in in the middle and count the term from there. I guess that having a fixed 8-lesson cycle for payment is more straightforward. I was feeling vaguely irritated this class as I didn't have my pencil case and had to borrow a pen from a ...

Some of my thoughts (that were originally) about commitment and self-studying, even when you are taking a language course from a school. I'll get the post for the last lesson done soon, but my head hurts, and I've been feeling sapped of energy since Friday. It was pretty bad yesterday. I don't think I am sick (at least not in the usual you-have-a-cough/cold/flu sense), but I did get an MC for yesterday. Today, I'd decided to work from home, since, anyway, I didn't think anyone will want me to s...

This is my farewell to Lingvist. I received an email from Lingvist yesterday, saying that they had sent an email 3 weeks prior announcing changes in 2020. No surprise that the changes were that they were doing away with the free tier entirely. I had seen this coming, even back in 2015 when it was still a new app, its UI much less refined. I first used it to revise my French vocabulary, the only course they had. This tool was too good, too polished, to be able to sustain itself if it remained ...

The 7th lesson of the term. This lesson was where I paid my fees for the next term (another 8 lessons). I got the reminder and invoice on the 6th lesson. The final lesson will be 2 weeks from now, because of Chinese New Year next week. I did some calculations. If I intend to continue until I finish the intermediate syllabus, it will easily be another 2 and a half years at minimum. The estimate is 1 year for beginner, and 1.5 years for intermediate. I've just about finished only the first set of...

In this lesson, we finished chapter 3, and started on chapter 4 in the last half an hour. We continued practising making sentences about what you are doing (오늘/지금 뭐 해요?) - both today and right now. Naturally, all of our answers to 지금 뭐 해요? ("What are you doing right now?") was some variant of 한국어 학교에서 한국어를 배워요. (I'm learning Korean at the Korean language school.) Some omitted the location (like I did), but others included it, with the actual name of the school. As for what I'm doing after (그리고...

Since this was always meant to be a language blog, and not just a Korean language blog, and I had to do some German homework (a writing assignment-turned-presentation that spawned out of some stuff I mentioned to my teacher after my last class), here's something I wrote about subscription services and why I generally don't pay for them. The mention of Netflix, Spotify, and Audible is something specific to the conversation that we had, as they were explicitly mentioned. There's probably some mi...

I have decided to add the lesson number within the course to the title for this and all future posts. This will make it easier to keep track of in future. I don't imagine I'd stop taking the lessons for a while. I'll continue to increment each lesson by 1 still for each post. I'm currently on the second set of 8 lessons, which is Beginner 1A. Before this, the first 8 lessons were classified as Foundation. In this lesson, there was a test on the conjugation for the verbs and their meanings. Las...

I forgot to include this in the post for the last lesson. We did a gift exchange for Christmas and so apart from wishing each other a Merry Christmas, we also did a New Year greeting. (The next time we will see each other is in the new year.) "Merry Christmas" is... Merry Christmas: 메리 크리스마스. To wish someone the best for the new year: 새해 복 많이 받으세요! Bonus (German, since my teacher made me say this the day before for my German lesson): (Ich wunsche dir) einen guten Rutsch ins 2020! Literally, ...

There was no lesson this week because of Christmas and New Year's, but since I was a post behind, I still have something to post. Plus, this also serves as revision. This lesson was where we learnt two main things: Conjugation for the informal polite present tense Direct object marker Conjugation (Informal Polite Present Tense) The teacher emphasised how this is the most important thing for the entire Beginner level. I'm not sure if she meant the entire Beginner level, as in the set of ...

I lost my 140+ days (at most) Memrise streak today. Today I was greeted with a 0-day streak on half of the courses I usually do (it's only 8 now). Initially I thought I had forgotten, because of all the events yesterday. Having to go to the hospital early in the morning, and afterwards, the work (post-)Christmas party... which I also ended up leaving early to go to the hospital for another visit. Then I remembered that I did finish it, early in the morning, while waiting at the cafe in the hosp...

Merry Christmas! Since I've a day off on Christmas Eve too, I figured I should finish this post. Now, this is for a lesson that was more than a week ago... In which I learn that the verb for "to work part time" in Korean (아르바이트하다) comes from the German Arbeit, which simply means "work". We started on Chapter 3 of the book. It's the Seoul National University book. Basically this lesson was an introduction to other verbs (apart from "to be" and "to have" which was covered before). Lots of verbs...

I don't know, felt like writing some non-technical (not really technical per se) stuff, so this is partially more reflective. Or more like a regular journal. Really a text dump of my rambling thoughts. For Korean, I started to learn it because I had two friends mention that they were going to take a Korean class in September. It was an arbitrary statement about signing up that one made to another at a gathering, that it was the last day to sign up for a discounted price. I went home and immedia...

This is overdue because there was some resistance on my part to list out everything. Here's some vocabulary from the first 10 lessons. There's more, but I doubt there is point documenting them here, since I already have them as cards in Anki. The only point for documenting is to see the weekly progress, and this is a dump of 10 lessons' worth. Vocabulary Words Countries, Languages, Nationalities Korean English 나라 country 지도 map 한국 Korea 한국어 Korean (language) 한국 사람 Korean (pers...

I've been learning Korean for 3 months, and I thought it would be good to document my progress. But first, I should write down what I've gone through so far, so that in future I can just build on it. It's always interesting to see how my language learning process changes from language to language. Part of it has to do with the language itself, and part of it has to do with the methods that I use, and perhaps, it might also be me. I hope I did not make any typos; I'm still not used to typing wi...