Korean Job Discussion Forums

[philinkorea]

I've been in Korea 10 months now. one of the things i really wanted to do here except for taekwondo was to learn korean. i had lessons that stopped because my teacher always came late and i've just started some new lessons in the last few weeks.
the thing is i always assumed i would get more korean friends and somewhat feel motivated in that sense but havnt and the ones i know can speak english so unless for novelty purposed hardly seems worth me attempting korean. i guess if i met some people, or a korean girl maybe that could somehow motivate me i's continue. i feel bad cos it seems really bad i think being in a country and making hardly any effort to learn the language. i meqan i know some basics to get by. but in my last korean class i hadnt practiced and can't really feel any motivation to learn these different room names of a house and whatever else so i'm thinking i may leave it. before i do i'd just like to be curious and know of others motivation they had to learn korean. at the moment it seems i be best of just not having lessons but just picking up small things as they seem useful.
cheers

[ratslash]

learning the alphabet and the sounds that the individual symbols make is easy and it can change your life. look up at a bus stop - you don't know where bus 34-1 goes to. learn the korean alphabet 'well holy sh*t! that bus goes right past my house! it will save me an hour a day'. and the best part about it? it only takes a couple of hours to learn.

the motivation i had to learn was the fact that my girlfriend made me!

[Skarp]

One of the most discouraging things when trying to take lessons in a language when you are an EFL teacher is watching your teacher making a hash of it!

Try to get a really good teacher who will find out what you need to know NOW and teach you that.

If you're learning taekwondo - ask for useful language to do with that for example. Useful phrases you can say during or after practice.

Whatever lights your fire. Room names have got to be low on anybody's (except an estate agent's) to learn list.

I once taught a friend who was working in a pub (but had no French) some basic bar work phrases. Much better than the nonsense his Alliance Francaise 'teachers' were doing.

'Il faut bien comprendre la grammaire avant de faire une phrase' - mon cul.


My god - how I ramble on....

Skarp

[just because]

The biggesty motivation for learning the language is........
PICKING UP.
The bar girls love it here when you speak sweet nothings in their ear that is Korean. It works so well, even if your Korean sucks the big one. It shows you have showed some interest in their country and your attractiveness sky rockets.....
However, I don't know what I am talking about, I am in a great relationship but I do help my friends out from time to time. All in good fun.

[little mixed girl]

.....

[posco's trumpet]

[Mashimaro]

[posco's trumpet]

[Skarp]

You've got to want to learn a language to learn it well.

Low intemediate level (about 1500 words in English) is when it starts to get genuinely useful.

It's not very useful for most people to go beyond upper-intermediate (3-4000? words) level, so relatively few people ever do.

If you want to make your life in a foreign country you probably want to go for near bilingual level - which I'm told takes 7 years. (I personally think more like 20).

Anybody got a positive 'learning Korean' story?

Skarp

[some waygug-in]

Learning Korean has got to be one of the most difficult things I've ever tried to do. Apart from the initial phase of learning to read hangul. I have a real problem remembering anything. I find myself studying the same stuff over and over and can't seem to retain anything. I've tried tapes, I've got books, I've used the Sogang web site, I've taken private lessons but I still feel my level of Korean is about somewhere between beginner and elementary. I just can't seem to remember the Korean words for some really basic things. I still get confused with colors, some numbers, some week-days, months, time, emotions, body parts, adjectives to describe people, you name it.

Because of this, I have a real problem staying motivated. When I get home from work, the last thing I want to do is crack the books out. I don't know how advanced you guys are that say "Korean was easy to learn", you must be a hell of a lot smarter than I. Either that or you really don't realize how little you actually know.

I find a lot of the course books seem very poorly thought out, pedagogically speaking. They start you out OK, but then they seem to make huge assumtions about what you have learned and expect you to use and understand vocabulary that you haven't even seen before.

I've been here just over 2 years, and I thought I would finally be making some headway (no pun intended) in the language, and although I can see that I am making some small progress, it is small and painfully slow.

I find Korean frustratingly difficult. To those of you who say it is easy, my hat goes off to you. But I wonder if you have really learned that much.

Anyway, that's my little rant about Korean language aquisition.
Cheers

[the_beaver]

[some waygug-in]

I don't know what my "learning style" is, but I do know that learning Spanish was a hell of a lot easier. In Spanish, when I was learning new vocabulary there was usually some English word that I could relate the Spanish word to. This helped me to remember the word/meaning and I was able to advance quite quickly.

With Korean, there is no such luxury. (except for obvious Konglish words) Korean words (or syllables) all seem to sound the same to me. It's not that the language is that difficult per se. I understand what I am studying and have no real problems that way, it's just that 10 minutes after I close the book I ask what did I study? My mind just goes duhh!
I can't remember much if anything that I just studied.

I found tapes are helpful, because I can go over and over and over again, basic vocabulary and lessons, which does help me to remember. I am using Korean through Active listening, and it is somewhat useful for practicing vocabulary, but you have to totally ignore the little activities and just go to the back of the book where the tapescripts are. Listen and follow along with the script (at least 5 times per conversation) until you understand every word. I disagree with the author of that course, who thinks you can just get a vague understanding of each topic and then move on. At least for me, I have to know every word they are saying, or my mind just goes numb and I can't understand anything.

After you are fairly familiar with the conversation, then you can go try the activity and it will make some sense to you. To do it the way the author suggests will just leave you confused, frustrated and learning very little.
(sounds like the way I felt for most of my 2 years here)


Anyway, I hope this is helpful to someone.
cheers

[the_beaver]

To my good friend some waygug-in,

Spanish and Korean are on opposite ends of the difficulty scale for a native English speaker. Don't worry too much about that.

You've said that you're unhappy with your progress in Korean and I would suggest that you look at your study style and change it as it obviously it isn't working.

You said the you forget everything 10 minutes after you put the book down. This is probably indicative of bad materials or an ineffective study style. Don't get discouraged by that in any case. Research shows that it takes multiple exposures (perhaps hundreds) to vocabulary and grammar in order for your brain to whittle from no idea to a vague idea to a close idea to a specific understanding/definition. In this light, quantity practice/study is as important as quality.

Many people do feel a need to understand every little bit of the language they're studying but research has shown this to be undesirable (everybody's different so maybe you're an exception, but maybe not). General comprehension is seen as a more effective way to learn a language mostly because of the problem you described -- try working on ambiguity tolerance and maybe your mind won't go numb when you don't understand every word and twist of grammar.

A few points often overlooked: it takes thousands of hours to learn a skill (and brother, there's no skill as complicated and convoluted as a new language) and most of those hours should be dedicated to practice. To put it in perspective, if you study for 1 hour a day and practice for 3 hours it'll take you over two years to get to upper intermediate level (some lucky sods do it more quickly and a few unfortunate souls take longer, but that's accurate for the average joe). I'm almost at the end of the Sogang program (I'll be going into level 6 of 7 when I get a chance to go back) and I can tell you that most of the people who finish that program are an advanced on the ACTFL scale, which puts them halfway to what a native Korean can do -- that's after 1,050 to 1,400 classroom hours as well as personal practice and study time.

I could blather on about this forever. . . I'll cut it here.

[tomato]

According to one of my textbooks, most non-Indo-European languages, including Korean, are 3 times as difficult as most European languages, such as Spanish.

Even that seems optimistic to me. I've been here for almost 4 years, studying like crazy the whole time, and I still can't speak Korean as well as I spoke Spanish after 1 year in the classroom.

Posco's Trumpet, could you please give me the documentation on your friend's thesis? I'd like to read it. I have suspected that Koreans have resented my practicing Korean. They seem to think it's an imposition. Sometimes they are so openly hostile that I feel guilty even glancing at Korean store signs.

But what I can't figure out is, why does a Korean have a right to practice English in my country if I don't have a right to practice Korean in their country?

[canuckistan]

Sometimes I'm not sure if understanding the not nice stuff some Koreans can hurl at you is such a great thing.