Study methods
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No English, please
After having seen a super cool TED talk with two guys setting out to learn 4 (four!) languages in 1 (one!) year by using absolutely no English I was really intrigued. They succeeded in reaching a decent conversation level in Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and Korean in just one year by sticking to the strict but…
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Going back to Seoul (…in a few months)
So here in the middle of summer, winter is far away and I shouldn’t really be longing for frost and snow, and significantly fewer hours of daylight. Nonetheless, this is EXACTLY what I am doing at the moment. Because when winter comes, I’m going back to Seoul!!! My husband and I are going to spend two…
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Re-entering Dramaland
Aside from lots of time for cramming Korean I have a lot of drama watching time on my hands these days. It took me less than five days to finish off the melodrama 유혹 (Temptation) with hallyu veterans Choi Ji Woo and Kwon Sang Woo. I first saw them in 천국의 계단 (Stairway to heaven)…
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걱정하지 마세요… I’ve got a plan
I’ve entered full vacation mode which in my case translates into full-time Korean studies. I was set back after a minor bout of food poisoning keeping me tied to the bed with a bucket safely within reach for three days after coming back home. I lacked the strength and energy to read anything, let alone…
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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…
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Korean building blocks
In my quest to improve my conversational skills in general and my narrative skills in particular, I have laid off all the grammar and vocab cramming for the time being. Instead I have been listening, reading, and speaking like crazy. For listening I’ve found the most amazing resource on youtube. If you type in 세바시 you will be…
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Korean ups and downs
Here’s a blog post about two very different Korean-learning days. The first one (Saturday) was a very unproductive day. I had so many plans and good intentions for this day. I was going to review my notes from my LP meeting, listen to podcasts, practice speaking and pronunciation, read a news article in Korean, look…
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A Korean listening challenge
Earlier this week, Jeremy from MotivateKorean kindly sent me a link to a youtube video where a Korean professor of philosophy gives a talk about how we currently live in a polarized society and how we may achieve the right balance. It is about 20 minutes long and quite challenging but I’m sure you’ll find it worth listening to.…
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Studying Korean grammar
A while ago I bought the intermediate version of Korean Grammar in Use. I admit that this wonderful book has spent too much time just sitting in my bookshelf looking new and shiny. I therefore recently made a pact with myself to study two new grammar points every day. They’re not all “new” to me…
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The struggle of retaining and building Korean vocabulary
Ever since I started subscribing to TTMIK’s “News in Korean” my reading speed and vocabulary have both improved rapidly. While that is a huge step forward, I felt that I was having a hard time learning and retaining the often specialized vocabulary presented in the news articles. Until now I’ve studied with the articles by looking over the…
Sofie to Korea 