Korean Job Discussion Forums

taobenli · Joined: 26 Apr 2004

Another poster mentioned that you learned a lot of Korean through music. Any advice on how to do that, where to go online? I'm not in Korean, but in the U.S. I appreciate your help!

taobenli

cheem · Joined: 18 Apr 2003

bugs.co.kr

You're welcome.

just because · Joined: 01 Aug 2003 Location: Changwon - 4964

Give him a private message. Search for his name and then you will see his profile. That is the easiest way to get a hold of him

just because · Joined: 01 Aug 2003 Location: Changwon - 4964

taobenli · Joined: 26 Apr 2004

Any other recommendations? Actually, I can read some Korean, but on my computer most Korean comes up as little questions marks....

taobenli

Mashimaro · Joined: 31 Jan 2003 Location: location, location

mithridates · Posted: Mon May 03, 2004 6:22 am Post subject:

Mithradates, though not the spelling I chose, is another way to spell his name so it's not exactly incorrect, though it wouldn't turn me up on a search.
Bugs seems to be having a lot of problems recently and a lot of their songs are being cut off (problems with the record labels) which is too bad; there's no guarantee that they'll be around for the next few years.
As for how I learned Korean through music, here it is in point form:

-first, use any textbook you can find to get your Korean to a level where you can decipher just about any sentence with a dictionary. The first few months when working on the basics will be boring, but there's nothing you can do about it. It's not bad to listen to music at this stage, it just won't be that helpful.

-when you are at the point where you have the basic grammar down, find a band or two that you can listen to over and over again. That's important as nobody can stand listening to music they don't like repeatedly. Listen to the song, look up all the words you don't know, listen again, look up the words again if they are unclear, and more than anything try to gauge the overall feel of the song, the message. Don't get lost in the individual words. There will be parts of the song that you won't be able to figure out by yourself and that's when you need a Korean friend or teacher. Do as much of the work as possible and then ask them later when you're stumped.

-An average song has about 100 words. Some 40% or so of those will be grammatical words that appear in just about every sentence. Find a good CD, devote a month to it, memorize everything and your vocabulary should increase by about 700 words, plus they will all be imbedded in your mind. Find a good band, buy 5 CDs of theirs, spend half a year devoted to them and you should be half-fluent, though it's still necessary to come over here and live for a few months; no way to get around that.

Does that help I wonder?

taobenli · Joined: 26 Apr 2004

Thank you, MithrIdates, it sounds like you have a good system...

I will take your advice, wise one....

taobenli

just because · Joined: 01 Aug 2003 Location: Changwon - 4964

jajdude · Joined: 18 Jan 2003

Mith,

Does it really work as well as you suggest?

Can it work as well with any language?

I once saw Jackie Chan on TV and he said music was what helped him learn a lot of English.

Why don't we use more music in teaching here?? The often boring books don't seem to be doing a great job.

mithridates · Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 3:52 am Post subject:

It does work well, though you have to be careful not to skim over anything. It's easy to pretend you understand when you don't.
I assume it's not used with most textbooks because music varies to the individual's liking though it would be interesting to see it organized by genre.
Learn English in 1 year (70s rock)
Learn English in 1 year (hip-hop)
Learn English in 1 year (Beatles)
and so on...actually I'm pretty sure there are some devoted to the Beatles already.
Also, I don't think textbooks with music would be too popular because they would be best for young people and young people are generally too busy worrying about test scores to really care if they have fun learning or not.

waggo · Joined: 18 May 2003 Location: pusan baby!

Who did you use when you were learning Mithradiates?

PatrickSiheung · Joined: 21 May 2003

Learning through music is a good idea. For a while there I was learning pretty diligently by reading comic books lol. Yeah I'm a big geek. I love reading those Samurai stories though.

I learned a lot of cool phrases. So I suggest to those that don't want to listen to music, pick up some comic books.

mithridates · Posted: Thu May 06, 2004 5:09 am Post subject:

Comic books are good too, as long as you have another method to improve your listening skills on the side.
I learned Korean mostly through �ڿ츲 and �ѷ��ڽ��, though I listened to a few other bands as well. If you're going with �ڿ츲, get their first and second CD first; they're lyrically the easiest. Next get 2.5. After that get ��'s first solo CD, then �ڿ츲 3, and then 4 if you want but it's not quite as good as the others and has a few songs with English interspersed, which I've never really liked.

jajdude · Joined: 18 Jan 2003

Comics would be good, but it does spoil the fun to have to use a dictionary. And then even perhaps not understanding due to the culture in the comic. But ya gotta learn both right?

I also suspect there would be a lot of (parental) complaints if we started using lots of music. School isn't supposed to be fun!

Sometimes it would be nice to use TV shows, cartoons, movie clips too.

More variety would be nice than just the book and a few games/puzzles that don't always go over great either.