journey

I was almost 10 minutes late to the lesson because of, basically, technical difficulties. For some reason, the password for the Zoom meeting was "wrong". It kept telling me I typed the wrong password. Initially I thought I'd remembered it wrong. Then I thought it was the wrong keyboard (since I use Colemak, but switch to the Korean one to type in my Korean name, though usually it switches back). But after trying so many times, I really suspect something went wrong somewhere. I not only used t...

We started the lesson with going through the different responses that we had to do for the homework, which was giving advice based on one of 4 scenarios. Turns out that I was overthinking because the other students submitted pretty short answers. Mine wasn't very long either, but had a few more sentences. Then we revised the vocab for Chapter 12. The teacher had a Zoom virtual background today, and though she was at the school (she turned off the background later when we did the revision with t...

Note: I realised today that the footnote linking on Listed is broken after making an edit to Lesson 42. This seems to affect even older posts, so I don't think it's something that is only affecting new posts. Ah, well. A delayed post, one student didn't attend. The one whose English name I still don't know, but whose Korean name is that of the previous teacher. It's unfortunately been too long since the lesson for me to remember the contents. So this is with reference. We mostly completed the ...

This lesson was a bit different. The teacher used her iPad instead of her laptop, because apparently the battery stopped charging that morning. She had used it for a physical in-person class in the morning (which also explains why she's now at the school every week), and then the message about the battery needing to be charged came up even though it was plugged in. This meant that we had no breakout rooms, and there was no listening to the audio files. There was no interactive textbook stuff (I...

Started the lesson going through the common mistakes for the test. This time, it was going through only the oral components. I checked my score after the lesson (even though the teacher had sent the report earlier in the day), and it turned out that I scored full marks for listening, which was surprising. I had guessed at least 1–2 of them. We started on Chapter 9, which is the last chapter of the SNU 2A textbook. We covered the vocabulary and first 3 grammar points in the handout. Then, we we...

It's a new term but there's no one who left or joined. The teacher was in school today, so I wonder if she will be there from now on, since this breaks the pattern. This lesson was on 15 August, which is also Korea's National Liberation Day. Since it's a public holiday that falls on a Saturday, the teacher asked us if we get Monday off when Saturday is a public holiday. We said that it depends on the company that you work for. (I'm not sure if it's more of a converation starter than her not re...

Wow, it's lesson 40 already. I didn't even realise it was the last lesson of the term, since the teacher didn't mention it. I guess everyone is continuing on to the next term. The girl with the name as the previous teacher did not attend the lesson. The observable pattern still holds, that our teacher was at the school during this week's lesson, so it really looks like alternate weeks. I wonder if they are doing some form of split team ops. We did some revision of last week, doing the activiti...

We spent the first 10 minutes or so of the class going through the common mistakes. Then we started on Chapter 10. The teacher only sent us the test report at the end of the lesson, and like before, only the writing component (sentences and essay) were graded. The rest are in the report. I lost marks in speaking and writing, so in the end it was still pretty high. I managed to end up with full marks for listening despite the apprehension I was feeling last week. My friend didn't come for cla...

I figured I should write this before I forget the details. I'd like to think I won't forget but of course my memory will just fade. There was one student (the person who typically sits in a dark room) who wasn't present for the test. The test was conducted online, so around 10 minutes before the lesson, the teacher sent via KakaoTalk the test paper to everyone individually. For some reason I thought it was going to be sent via email, so I had also prepared to log in. It's quite fortunate I c...

TIL for Korean. The Grammar Extension at the back of the textbook is a treasure trove of information. I was supposed to post this yesterday but I forgot, so I added in even more last minute stuff from my morning revision. I'll do a separate post later for the test. 19 July Looking at the conjuation tables on Wiktionary, I realised that for contrast, 지만 is formal non-polite. I have no idea what I was thinking about the casual vs informal distinction. There shouldn't be one (though I mused a...

There is a test next week. I think everyone in class was kind of shocked when the teacher made the announcement. I knew it was coming; it had to be the case. When the new textbook arrived, there were handouts for Chapter 9, but there was also the revision sheet for Chapters 6-9. When I saw it, I knew that there had to be a test because there was a similar one for Chapters 1-5. I had also remarked this to my friend just the week before (on Zoom, of course, I don't really meet him otherwise)......

We continued with the handout for the third grammar point. There were many speaking exercises done in pairs. Since we had 5 students (the person whom I said had the same Korean name as the previous teacher wasn't here today), for some of the activities, one lucky student had to do it with the teacher. (I did it only the first time, the rest I was paired with the youngest girl in class, also someone from my previous group.) We finished the Chapter 9 handout and most of the things in the textbook...

First, an explanation... ... that no one asked for. (If anyone is actually reading this for the Korean content then skip ahead to the next section.) I tried to write this post last week, but evidently could not, because apart from a link to a relevant How to Study Korean webpage, this was what was in it: I can't do this now sorry ;( I've had Lesson 36 earlier today. This past week was insane for a number of reasons. I spent most of my Sunday afternoon and evening after church (livestream...

We finished up with the first textbook (1A) within the first 15 minutes, which was just the pronunciation and the self-check sections. For the new textbook we went through the contents for an overview of what we will be covering in the 1B book. Finally, there's a vocab quiz next week. I think it would be quite challenging, as there has to be some conversion of sentences done for the honorific speech. I hope the Quizlet deck gets assigned soon before I start putting in my own cards into Anki.....

This came up in my German class today, it's about agreement or (Kongurenz auf Deutsch). It's what happens when you have two subjects, joined in a "koordinativ" way. (I'm not sure what is the correct way to translate this, and what are the correct concepts in English.) Examples include using: und sowohl... als auch weder... noch If you have 1st person and 2nd person, then it's 1st person plural: Ich und du gehen... (=Wir gehen) If you have 2nd and 3rd person, it can be either 2nd perso...

It's the same 6 people in this new term. At least for now. We are still having the lessons online until at least the end of July. Since the lockdown measures have eased, there was a poll to ask whether we'd want to have lessons at the school after June, but I chose (and apparently so did the majority) to have the classes online. I think apart from the commute taking time, it's the whole having to go out and being on public transport for an extended period, plus you still have to wear a mask a...

We started the lesson with using Quizlet for revision. This is the first time since... well, the beginning of this term. It was still the groups competition (2 groups of 3), but since it's individual effort in that sense, it depended on your teammates. The first round I was paired with 2 people from my previous class (including my friend) and we won. The second round we also won, but this was a different group, with one person from my previous class (the same as in the first round, but not my fr...

We spent the first hour finishing up chapter 7, and the last half an hour going through the vocabulary for chapter 8. I realised after a week of Zoom meetings this past week (I had a couple of workshops for work), how amazing this teacher is at using Zoom. She switches seamlessly between screen share and then stop sharing, to share different files on different software (some are in MS Word, others are in Adobe Acrobat). The way she uses the annotation tools (okay, yes, that's not exclusive to Z...

We are finishing Chapter 7 next week since we covered the last grammar point. That's really fast. The lesson started with revision of last week's grammar, so with the help of the physical flash cards with pictures on one side and the verb on the other, we had to conjugate for both 지만 and then 습니다/ㅂ니다. There were a few variants. With the verb's infinitive shown or the picture side (which is harder), and we had to do both the present tense and the past tense. We also went through the textbook fo...

Today was an intense grammar lesson, covering 2 more grammar points after our word quiz. What was more interesting was that I found out from my friend, the guy who is still taking the class with me, that our previous teacher actually quit teaching at the school. Or, well, she quit at one point, but now she's back. Or maybe she never left (because of the Covid situation), I don't know. My friend thinks she may be teaching part-time. Her last day was the day of our last lesson before the break, ...

It started with the teacher messaging us on KakaoTalk about the weather (as it was raining) a day after the lesson we had on the weather. Then she asked us what we are going to do today. I said I was studying and then exercising. I still have not replied to her follow-up question one day later on what I am studying (and I thought she asked what kind of exercise) I do because I forgot. (This post was meant to be posted yesterday when this happened but I forgot as well.) I feel like I was somewh...

We finished chapter 6 and started on chapter 7 today. For chapter 6, all that was left was really the pronunciation, and then the self-check. There will be a word (vocab) quiz next week. Perhaps it means that the vocab quiz will always be one week after we start a new chapter? So today's post will have a lot of the vocabulary, from the chapter 7 list. We also covered the first grammar point, and it's interesting because this cleared up a question I had while doing exercises on Duolingo. (This ...

This post is really late because I've not finished my homework yet and for some reason I thought I should get the homework done first, since that's what I usually do after class. This week's assignment is taking longer because there is a writing component that involves creating a fake advertisement to sell some second-hand stuff. Me being me, I decide to try to make it legitimate and that means tons of research before I will get that part of it done. So, I decided that I should at least get this...

This lesson was also conducted over Zoom. We had another student join today, so there is a total of 7 students (including me) in the class. 3 of them are from the same class that I used to be in, and the other 3 are not. It seems that this third new person knows the other 2. It's a guy, so at least my friend isn't the only guy in the class any more, but I don't think it really bothered him (the way it bothered the other guy that used to be in our class until he disappeared just around Christma...

The Korean teacher initiated a chat about what we are doing now since it's a public holiday (Labour Day) today. Some new vocab: Korean English Notes 공휴일 public holiday 저는 두 번 봤어요. I watched it twice. Context was a movie. 당연하지요 of course Context was that the teacher commented that we were all at home (모두 집에 있어요), and this was the reply, given that we are pretty much in a lockdown. 대단해요 great; amazing 하나 더 있어요. There's one more. 구텐탁 Hello; Good day/afternoon (German) Guten Tag ...

Naturally since the country is in a state of partial lockdown, we can't go physically for class. This learning from home arrangement is good for me since, as I've said, it's an hour's journey each way for me otherwise. I've not left the house for something like... since 5 April. I don't buy groceries, it's messed up that my parents do it since they are vulnerable, but somehow that's the arrangment in my house. And with the new restrictions, it's just my dad since he's the main driver in our hou...

Why Should You Keep Learning? Some 1400 new neurons are born every day in your hippocampus. This neural birth rate doesn't decline very much with age, but unless your brain continues to encounter new experiences (e.g. by learning something new), your new neurons will die off before they can mature and hook into your exisitng larger neural network. New neurons allow us to distinguish between similar experiences and store them as distinct memories. This means that we need to help new neurons sur...

This is the last part on the Korean alphabet (at least for now). There's much more that can be said especially when looking at the history and its design, but I'll leave that for another time in the (far) future. Since vowels is a separate topic, I split this into its own post from Part 2 which covers the consonants. In Part 1, the 10 basic vowels were introduced. The Korean alphabet has a total of 21 vowels today, so we will look at the remaining 11. There are two classes of vowels: monophth...

An overdue post on the Korean alphabet with reference to Week 1 of First Step Korean. When King Sejong created the consonants, there were originally 17 consonants - but 3 have fallen out of use, leaving 14 that are still used today. Usually, the total number of letters in the Korean alphabet is given as 40, with 19 consonants and 21 vowels. These extra 5 (19 - 14 = 5) consonants are the 5 tense double consonants (ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅉ ㅆ). As for the vowels, there are 11 complex vowelels that are formed by...

Passion and Work There is often a kind of tension between what we want to do (our internal desires, what we think of as our passions) and what the world has to offer in terms of opportunities (external circumstances). We have to be careful not to fall into The Passion Trap, which is where we develop ourselves extensively in one skill (which usually comes out of our passions) without considering its value to the market (and hence whether you can get a job). This is made worse by friends and te...