Language learning
-
Rewind and repeat
I’ve been listening to 세바시 talks almost non-stop for the past few days. Sometimes I listen to the same one 3-4 times in a row, just to see how much more I can understand compared to the first time. Even though I don’t understand it all I actually do understand quite a bit, and I cannot…
-
All or nothing?
This weekend I’ve been working hard on my listening skills through podcasts, Korean TED talks, and of course a few subtitle-free episodes of 여름향기 (currently have 4 episodes left). During all this listening I’ve made a strange discovery. It seems to me that I either understand everything (여름향기) or next to nothing (random Korean podcast on Korean culture from…
-
Speaking practice
Yesterday my language partner had to cancel our meeting, so I didn’t get to practice any real Korean conversation. However, I was pretty determined not to let that stop me from practicing my speaking, so when I got home I spent the time I was supposed to have spent on our meeting reading a veeeeery…
-
The puzzle of the “ㅅ” 받침
The more Korean words you know, the more compound words you can make. This is of course very neat, but I’ve noticed a peculiar thing about written Korean which makes making compound words slightly more complex than we are used to with English. In English “coffee” + “shop” simply form the compound word “coffee shop”…
-
How the student became the teacher
“Won’t you teach me Korean?” I never thought I’d hear these words from my husband, but this is exactly what he asked me a few weeks ago. After our first visit to Seoul last December we’re already planning on going again later this year, and we’re very seriously contemplating going to Korea for a longer research stay…
-
Korean motivation: 아직 할 줄 몰라요. 그런데 할 수 있어요.
The headline is taken from a sample sentence from Talk To Me In Korean grammar lessons. It roughly translates as “I don’t know yet how to do it, but I know I can do it.” It’s taken me quite a while to learn to live by those words, although I’ve always found them to be true.…
-
How to have fun while learning Korean
어차피 해야 되는 거니까, 재미있게 해요! I love this sentence. It is originally a sample sentence from level 6 lesson 7 of TTMIK’s (www.talktomeinkorean.com) grammar podcasts. I find that this sentence pretty much sums up my learning philosophy: If you have to do something, you may as well have fun in the process. Of course…
-
How fast can you really learn a language?
In my eager to become fluent in Korean the above question has puzzled me for a while. Over the years I’ve learned a great deal of foreign languages, but never in this way (organized self-studying). Gradually acquiring e.g. German from classes in middle through highschool combined with regular trips to Germany, while regularly being exposed to…
Sofie to Korea 