#KoreanStudyLog

[koreanstudentiseul]

“You're thinking about something, and it makes you forget to talk.”

As much as it pains me to say this, I think I may have fallen out of love with Korean. I hit a wall I can't seem to surpass with it and I'm running out of ideas on how to try and get past it.

So for the last 6 or so months it's very much been like going through the motions; class, homework, flashcards, repeat. And honestly, not wanting to do any of it. I still kinda don't want to do Anki but I I did not work for a year to get the reviews down from 450 a day to 80 and the pain of clearing all the Int 1 cards is fresh enough that I will do it even when I'm ill just to not get back to 400 again.

I tried doing more to see if that would help feel better about studying, I did 74 days *and counting* on Lingodeer, finished the first course and I'm about a quarter into the second and I'm still doing that since it's nice grammar practice and is only 5 minutes to do and every now and again I have a glimpse of understanding word order. I tried through Jan/Feb to do Lingodeer+ too but yeah after the 30 day badge I stopped that it isn't as engaging to me right now and I don't really need things highlighting how much I don't want to study.

This didn't really help matters though, I thought doing more grammar would help me feel a bit better but alas no. I tried writing on Journaly a little bit but it just highlighted the problem more that I can't use or produce Korean even when writing it. Which is weird to me since in my head that should be easier because i can spend 6 hours thinking about it if I want to unlike in a conversation where you need to reply fairly quickly and I just don't. I sit for like 10 minutes trying to work out what was said to me, and how to reply and end up not saying anything.

I have one last idea, sort of a final ditch effort to not feel like a complete fraud and to show myself I can actually do it. Today I have a lesson with a new tutor, and while I normally run away from social interactions at the best of times I have to learn to comfortably speak to natives, I gotta go speak to natives.

So I'm going right in to the deep end and I booked a conversation lesson with a tutor who has an English level probably very similar to my Korean level and I either correctly gauged my level and if I just speak it'll be fine which would be ideal but I doubt it'll pan out that way, or grossly oversold myself and will fail epically which is what I assume will actually happen. I have spoken to her a little already and I did explain my listening leaves a little *okay well a lot* to be desired and I struggle speaking but want to get better so hopefully I don't just ball up and think to the point of pain and forget to speak.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do if this fails, possibly take a break from languages, possibly continue in denial as I currently am calling it a phase... for now I'm going to say it will work and just shhh. Okay wish me luck, I'm going to need it ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

Class related struggles

After a small break from posting to focus on Korean I've noticed I have hit a new roadblock, and one I hadn't anticipated at the beginning of the year.

Over the summer I managed to pass from the Int1 class to the Int2 class with my tutor and I was absolutely bricking it when she told me this because from my studies into Beginner was a big leap in work load, and Beginner to Int1 was insanity I had 200(ish, it varied by chapter) vocab/expressions a week and it was just impossible to clear a chapter before the next one was assigned. So the thought of it going up again was not fun, however so far that's not happened. It's only been about 20 words a week but all the grammar explainations are now in Korean so that's maybe the trade off there.

However, with this dip in the immediate workload I've noticed that I don't find Korean fun anymore. I feel like I'm just doing it for class now and it's just for a deadline and I feel stagnent with my progress I feel like I'm still a beginner and I'm a fraud in the Int2 class cause I may know 1200 words but I can't use 98% of them cause I can't make sentences and express myself in Korean.

I don't know if this feeling is burnout, it doesn't feel like burnout though it's more unlike being unmotivated and just not wanting to do anything with Korean even just getting my flashcards done is a struggle right now and I'd finally got them under 200 a day after the peak of 400+ in Int1 which did slightly fry my head near the end. I've noticed before I'd do work for my class but also do things for myself like topik grammar classes, or ttmik courses, or using my books, but now it's so hard to open anything to study for fun.

So with this I've basically been pouring an unhealthy amount of hours into animal crossing *again* which I say like I haven't done the same thing in Skyrim before several times over across I think 6 save files now and 2000 hours minimum not even going into other games but shhh.

I want to try and strike a better balance for the remainder of the year, I know it's not even 3 months but I think since I'm skipping my normal end of year activities such as Inktober and NaNoWriMo because I do not have enough time/energy this year and I'm not going to try and actually burn out again like 2018 because no, it should be doable to make small changes to try and regain the fun in Korean and not hit 1000 hours in AC before November because atm that's very likely.

At the moment my plan im progress is I want to try and doing daily writing in the vain hope of getting some progress with the sentence forming thing and hopefully it will help with getting comfortable with the grammar too. My friend very kindly made me a list of topics to write about to get started so we'll see how well I can answer those. I'd also like to wrap up my topik grammar class cause it will expire soon and there's only 3 classes left of the 23 total and it probably will be useful for some of the harder propmts cause there's some tricky ones in there. Though she may say the same for the ones I gave her so I shouldn't complain.

Once I get the topik course done I'll probably relax a little since nothing else can run out, I might then split my time reading and progressing ttmik classes cause I don't want to over do it since I will still have homework, and tests, and just generally other homework so I don't want to commit to too much. I just want to be doing something in Korean that's for me and what I want to do not just for classes and somebody else. So if nothing else tomorrow I will be here and posting in Korean and hopefully it's not a disaster...

[koreanstudentiseul]

Day 1: Self introduction / 자기소개

안녕하세요~ 제 이름은 명이슬이에요. 지금은 24살이에요. 생일이 다음 달이에요. 남동생이 있어요. 저와는 달리 남동생은 인기예요. 대학교에서 의상학을 전공했어요. 패션 관련 기술과 제작에 중점을 두고 배웠어요. ♡

Short and sweet because I have no idea what to say and it took me like 6 hours just to figure out how to say my degree name, which I'm still not actually sure if it's right I don't know the difference between 의상학 and 의류학 so that may be the wrong name.

I'm very much new to actually using Korean even though I've been studying it for a very long time now so corrections are always welcome, and if I missed anything important please let me know and I'll follow up with some answers. |ω･`)

Hopefully these will be more interesting as we go on cloudlang has set me quite the list of prompts to get me started writing (and she's amazing so go give her some support too) and I'll apologise for making the same particle mistakes now, I am still very confused by when to use 은/는/이/가/을/를 but I'm trying my best ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

Day 2: What’s the best time of day? / 가장 좋아하는 하루의 순간

무슨 하루의 시간을 좋아해요? 저는 어떤 좋아하는 시간을 모르겠어요. 아마 새벽에 좋아해요... 새벽에 다 것을 조용해요. 모두 아직 일어나지 않았어요. 지구는 아침 햇살이 빨간 그려요. 하루 바쁜 전에 침착한 순간이에요. 또는 아마 3시예요. 차 한 잔과 케이크를 먹어요. 하루에 잠깐 휴식해요. 한 순간 쉬는 후에 더 공부해요. 저는 너무 우유부단해요 ㅠㅠ

Indecisive me said lets roll a dice to pick todays topic, of course it picked one I had no answer for in the first place. I tried to write something regardless but I’m not sure how well I got the point across. I suspect that’s going to be a running theme for the next while but hey ho, one way to see progress is less headaches and longer posts :)

Corrections are very much welcome for these since I’m only half sure what I’m doing ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

Day 3: 좋아하는 영화 / Favourite Movie

아파서 나흘 동안 오프라인였어요. 미안해요.

제 좋아하는 영화... 어려운 선택이에요. 몇 년 새로운 영화가 본 적이 없어요. 어릴 때 제 좋아하는 영화 '스쿠비 두' 하고 '스쿠비 두 2: 몬스터 대소동' 들이었어요. 어릴 때 매일은 스쿠비 두 봤어요. 그것은 가장 좋아하는 만화 중 하나였어요. 지금은 모든 주말에 tv에서 아직 보고 있어요. 아직도 좋은 것 같아요. 어릴 때 좋은 더 그것이에요 그렇지만 행복한 기억이에요. 3 하고 4 영화는 너무 싫어해요. 아직도 영화 1 하고 2 볼 것이다. 영화 3 하고 4 볼 수 없어요. 그것을 너무 나빠요. 저는 향수를 느끼기 이 영화 들의 하지만 상관없어요. 그것은 행복하게 만들어요. 어른으로 새로운 것을 선택해야 할까? 아마도. 다른 걸로 할까? 아니요. 지금은 어른이에요. 저는 좋아할 수 있고 싶어요. 뿐만 아니라, 다른 하나를 선택할 만큼 한국어가 할 수 없어요...

This is probably full of mistakes but I tried my best especially after 4 days of having no contact with Korean ㅠㅠ but yeah I haven’t really watch a new release movie in years, I think the last film I saw at release was The Girl on the Train which was I think 2016? And before that was Monster’s University which was 2013 so some fair gaps there. Anyway, the main point of this ramble is since I was a child I’ve been a big Scooby Doo nerd and to this day still watch like 2 hours every weekend. Used to be 2 hours on both Saturday and Sunday but they don’t seem to show it on Saturday anymore not sure why.

I saw the original movie in the cinema, I remember my aunt and uncle took me to see it and it’s been in my film collection since, I had both films on VHS *age myself there much* then when my video player died I bought the dvd’s for them and they’re still in my dvd collection, though 3 and 4 only lasted 2 watches they annoyed me way more than anything realistically should but yeah they went into a donation box fairly quickly. Those aside I still enjoy the original 2 of what should have been 3 films, they’re probably still my most frequently watched films. They make me happy, the casting I think is pretty solid, some of the CG hasn’t aged well but it’s still better than some recent films so for 2002 it’s going damn well.

Also I have a soft spot for Matthew Lillard and Seth Green as Without a Paddle is the reason I got an A in Chemistry, no joke ♡ so even out with these 2 films I have very fond memories around the cast so yeah nostalgia veil going strong and I don’t care :3 I’m an adult I can love the same film I did at age 6 if I want to, no shame here.

[koreanstudentiseul]

Fear of failure, leads to failure

So it’s been a little while, I’d taken a break from Korean to clear my head and get away from the negative space it had fallen into. As I started easing back into it I noticed some things that I’d not noticed I was doing before.

So I have always had a huge fear of speaking Korean, have done since like 2013 when I was just about able to read. I was so scared to speak that I basically never have, even in my tutor lessons I get constantly prompted ‘answer in Korean’ and it was out of the fear of failure and insulting/upsetting someone. So this is one way that shows that being held back by the fear of failure essentially created the failure I feared, I held myself back so much that when I wanted to talk to people I couldn’t. Not to say I insulted them, but I couldn’t understand them, and even on the rare occasions when I could I didn’t know how to reply I couldn’t give an answer.

At first I brushed this off, it was all in my head. I told myself the struggle was from lack of people to talk to, I had no natives to chat with and textbooks weren’t natural enough so the way they spoke confused me. Which technically isn’t entirely false as textbooks often are more formal or stiff than how people naturally talk so it was easy to tell myself.

How did I come to believe how much I was hindering myself? Well, the TTMIK website update. That sounds a bit random, but it kind of is so bear with me here. As many people know up until a day or two ago the end of level test dialogs were removed from the basic members (and premium members to be fair they were completely removed no paywall) level 1-5 courses. Now I was very sad to see them go, I’d wished that I knew they’d go before the original site went down to download them and their pdfs to use them even though I was only just into level 3 and wouldn’t be near some of them for a good while yet.

So there was a good weekish where I was kicking myself over this, and then they added them back. I was so excited that I went back and re-listened to the level 1 and 2 dialog as soon as they appeared back in the lists. Which is also how I found out there were certificates for the essential courses cause it showed as 100% complete but they only showed up after I marked the dialogs complete, so for anyone else i that boat, or with an old completed course that’s marked complete and doesn’t have a certificate on it if you undo and re-complete a lesson in the course it’ll show up. I had that happen with how Korean sentences work, slight tangent there.

Going back to the dialog tests, when I first moved up from level 1 I listened to the dialog and it was like white noise, I didn’t understand a word listening and even reading the script I didn’t understand most of it. Actually the same happened with level 2 not that long ago though I understood more while reading this time round. This time, even with the traffic noises in the background I understood 90% of the level 1 dialog. I was so surprised that I understood any of it I went and read it to make sure I was right, I didn’t trust myself. I don’t know if it was because the less I thought about it the more comfortably I could follow it or if I just remember trying last summer and being like the first time, or if it was because it was 3 people and I’ve never really had luck with 1 person speaking nevermind 3 and that made me question it.

Now with level 2 it wasn’t as smooth but it was still better. The first half was absolutely fine, I could just about follow it but the end I really fell over. At first I scolded myself, it’s only level 2 how can you not follow it, you’re meant to be an intermediate student, you’re a failure.

There it was, that word again. Failure. I will always be my own worst critic, but I don’t want to be a roadblock to myself. Instead of being excited that for the first time I’d understood any of it, I was tearing myself down for not understanding part of it. I’ve been trying so hard to improve my listening with dictation and watching drama’s and variety shows (I’ve been binging 언니들의 슬램덩크 recently, Sook is hilarious) so it makes sense that I can now understand something or at least be able to distinguish words better.

I always thought failing in a language meant giving up on it, but now I think I might have misjudged that. I’ve been doing flashcards daily and again I don’t give credit for the 100+ I get right but the 20 odd I forget or slightly misremembered I beat myself up over those. I have over 6000 cards, I can’t expect to remember them all perfectly that’s why I have flashcards in the first place. Really was it any wonder I felt I wasn’t making progress when that’s where my focus was.

My biggest failure has been not giving myself the credit for how far I’ve come, I was so focused on the small details I forgot about the big picture. I’ve come so far with Korean, I can read, write, and on a good day speak and on a fantastic day I can understand when people when they speak. And yet, I never stop and acknowledge that. I’ve had days ruined by doing flashcards which is ridiculous to say but I was so upset over how badly I’d done. So I’ve decided to scrap my new years goals for Korean and instead I want to sort out my headspace.

This year I want to be more positive about the learning process. I want (and need) to learn to have a better work/rest balance because working to burnout and then having to take huge breaks and restart isn’t healthy and also isn’t helping the feeling of not progressing. It would also be nice to get past the current procrastinating by doing other studying things. Like I have homework to do but I’ll do an essential course grammar lesson, or a video course lesson (or 5) etc you get the idea it’s avoiding the work I don’t wanna do by making it still feel productive unlike spending a day playing video games. Basically I want to stop feeling like I’ve failed at Korean ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

Intermediately stuck...

Okay so by some manner of miracle I passed the level test, but I kind of wish I hadn’t. I hadn’t really managed to cope well with the vocab dumps from the beginner course and the intermediate textbook is sooooooo much worse. It’s lists and lists of vocab, 2-3 times more per unit compared to the beginner, and then phrases on top of that. Also it’s the worst textbook I’ve ever used, I understand why it exists but I am very much not the target audience for it. The amount of mistakes in it is worrying I’ve found mistake myself and had to get a lot of the vocab lists words corrected, to actual use which is the one positive to having to do the chapter exercises. The grammar explanations are really worrying, any textbook that talks about allowing dogs to die to eat them is very concerning to me. I say allowing cause they could have used the same grammar to say they were taking the sick dog to the vet rather than thinking about eating it. Also some weird vocab that even in English I never use and it makes me wonder if the writer was just accounting for every kind of person or is this a reflection of how foreigners are treated in Korea... really hope it’s the first one.

So, with this new textbook came a substantial lull in my will to study. I wanted to study but because most of my studies were dictated by the tutor I had to do a lot of work with this textbook which just sapped me. There was a brief moment where I thought that’s where Korean ends for me that’s how much I dislike this textbook. Thankfully she’s realised the effect it was having on my work flow so now it’s not the main focus. I still have to finish it, but it’s not what I’m working on week to week I’m not working on stories and speaking which I really desperately need anyways I do not get enough practice speaking or forming sentences. It’s also really nice to see traditional stories not just translated ones even if I don’t understand the difference between seemingly identical verbs.

I hope that this helps with the struggle that is making sentences, or at least help chip at that fear making them out loud cause that’s very much a problem too since I can just about handle the 3-5 word basic ones like 우이 말고 브로컬리 좋아요. with relative ease *if I got that the right way around word order still a bit of a struggle*. So basic words, beginner tenses, no particles because I still never get   the subject/topic/object ones right first time they confuse me so much. I should really try and just accept the fear and run with the mistakes but speaking to people is so stressful so I need to find a good way to ease into that. Maybe speaking to other learners would be a good starting point, if anyone sees this and has any tips for language practice/exchange I would greatly appreciate it cause I have tried and bolted out of conversations after 5 minutes so I need lots of help ㅠㅠ

Basically I need to let go a lot of underlying perfectionist tendencies and roll with the punches but that’s easier said than done so this year I hope to work on that. Social anxiety is a big focus for 2020 anyway so let’s see if messaging people can get any easier regardless of the language it’s in.

[koreanstudentiseul]

Beginner or Intermediate...

Okay, so the eventual has come. My tutor has given me the date for the end of course test. I mean I always knew it was coming she told me the set up back in my trial lesson when she didn’t know if I’d even take lessons from her yet. However, I wasn’t expecting it so soon.

I don’t feel like I’m ready to take the test, I know it’s a 4 part reading, writing, listening, speaking test. At the moment I feel I can almost do one of those never mind all of them in one go. I want to do well and I’ve been trying to improve my weak areas but my lessons started mid-late November last year that’s not even a full year I haven’t even gotten all the vocab down let alone have any clue about the grammar. I literally had to make myself a cheat sheet chart for grammar cause I literally remember maybe 5 of the 35 in the textbook, and that’s even worse when you consider the overall number for the year currently stands at 74. 

I have been doing my flashcards daily trying in vain to get the vocab down to the point I’ve learned that Anki can mark cards as leeches, like how many times do you have to forget a word for that to trigger it’s been months of failing at vocab why’s it only starting to do that now? Also no I don’t want you to decide the cards not worth studying that’s not how classes work I can’t choose to ignore problem vocab much as I’d like to. I still have issues with uni course names, actually at this point general uni words like major/minor, credit etc. Though again that may be down to in my school experience none of those words apply.

As much as I’d love to try the intermediate course, I know it naturally will be harder than what I’m already doing which I don’t deem easy anyway. I guess I’m just hopeful that because I’ve tried so hard this year especially with being ill and not having the best retention, or concentration, and generally just being drained I might still do okay. Though factoring that in, I feel like I’ve managed a fair amount regardless of pass or fail.

With a current pool of over 2000 vocab, I don’t have many problematic words and I’ve gotten over the issues with most of them. The grammar’s still difficult but I suppose one side always will be harder than the other. I know with time it probably will improve, with slowly being able to read more (harder) texts, having something that resembles listening skills will also help loads since I’ll be able to listen to songs, and radio shows, and podcasts and even watch tv and be able to hear the grammar in use. I understand why my tutor wants me to avoid Korean tv for the moment but it’s also kind of a bummer cause I see people being all excited about shows and I want to try and stay spoiler free but also do as I’m asked... please lift the ban soon ;u;

Basically I’m panicking over this test and slowly realising how little high school actually did to show you how to study properly. High school studying was a wing and a prayer and cramming in vain and retaining literally nothing after the fact. I didn’t really notice till now since at the time it’s all we knew, and was what everyone was doing and what the teacher’s basically told us to do and that was just the norm and was fine. But now when I actually need/want to study and retain long term it’s like walking through thick fog and I’m wandering aimless and hopeful but I could easily fall flat on my face or into a well or something.

My expectations of how this will go, is I will probably fail and it’ll be down to lack of grammar. Though I don’t really know what I’m going into more than simply you’ll be tested on all sides. I don’t even know what the pass rate is or if it’s 100%/fail. I’m not sure which I’d prefer to be honest, I don’t know if I’m ready for intermediate, I can’t tell where I sit anymore which is part of my stress like I could be fine and ace it or I could be as prepared as a 7 year old taking a standard grade (I know they’re nat 5′s now, but I’m old they’re the exams I know I don’t understand the new exams, but if you took them please feel free to let me know I’d love to see if they made life easier for people with the new set up).

I think I’ll make myself a supportive cup of tea and just have it with me should I need it in the hope it will mean I won’t run away and or start crying, I suppose I’ll find out on the day but I generally do better on practical exams so I’m easily most worried about the written section, even more so if the questions are written in Korean. I’m just going to be walking stress until this is over It think, but thank you for reading and happy learning~  ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

Reflecting on my Studies.

Lately I’ve been feeling rather deflated about my Korean studies, I feel like no matter how hard I try I just stay standing still. A little like wading quicksand. I tried so hard to move forward, I was churning through my vocab cards in vain hope that some of them would start to click and I’m still struggling hard. For some reason uni subjects just don’t retain for me, or the 4 marrige verbs (engaged, married, divorced, remarried) though that’s possibly in part to not being something I’ve thought anything about in English let alone Korean.

I am maintaining my italki lessons, which are currently equally frustrating to me as I fell after nearly a year and being basically finished the beginners course (having started unit 20 of 20) I should at least be able to write a decent sentence. Or at least able to write more than one three word sentence without resorting to checking every word on Papago. Admittedly that ones on me but I’m not confident at all in my abilities and I don’t want to offend anyone. Still traumatised by the time I accidentally swore without knowing I’d strung a word together let alone a cuss.

So I had a good long think about what I was doing, what I wanted to be able to do and decided that there’s going to be a little change of action this week. Since I managed to do all my homework the day it was given which I’ve never managed before, I get to do what I want this week so I’m taking steps to tackle a major problem area. Listening.

For someone whose been listening to K-pop for like 7-8 years my listening is awful, I can listen and pick up the words and sing along quite happily, I’ve even performed several K-Pop songs but I can’t listen to dialog and understand much of anything. I am not exaggerating when I say my tutor can say something, even something simple in Korean and I will understand nothing and then she’ll type it for me and I’ll understand perfectly, like I know I spend years studying alone with books but that’s really bad 11 months on from my trial lesson with her.

Now, I know she really doesn’t like TTMIK, but since I’d already bought an excessive amount of their products before saying this (well and I like them which is the important thing) I’m going to use them. So after going through the things I had I have picked out the Listening Practice in Slow Korean, and IYAGI Beginner’s courses and instead of just listening to them I’m dictating them. So far I’ve done the 김밥 and 카페 stories, with varying degrees of success. For 3-4 minute stories, they’re taking 2 hours to write and correct so I’m worried about moving onto the IYAGI ones cause they probably will get longer.

Even at only being 2 stories in I am noticing an improvement. There were words in the 김밥 story that I got very very wrong and in the 카페 story managed to get them right so I can see that there is some progress, which is really nice but I’m hoping it gets to a point were I hear it and understand it because that’d be really nice. I’m also handwriting them because that way I don’t have the red squiggly line of ‘nope, try again’ because I don’t trust myself not to autopilot and fix it before I realise what I did.

I’m also hoping listening to all these I’ll start to understand sentence structure more and begin to help the grammar side of things cause I know that’s part of my problem too. I have covered at least 250 grammar points and I remember maybe 10 of them. Not to mention anything that might help with understanding what particles to use when can only help. 은/는/이/가/을/를 are probably the thing I’ve reviewed most and I still basically guess which is the appropriate particle in the sentence, sadly knowing whether to use 은 or 는 doesn’t help decide if its 은, 이 or 을.

I’m hoping by the end of this exercise I will have a better foundation for my listening skills, or at least create a foundation for my listening skills since they’re incredibly lacking. I have been instructed not to use drama’s for listing practice, reasons not given and technically I was told not to use TTMIK either but shhh we’ll just not mention that.

So that’s my goal for the rest of this year, I feel like it will be the best starting place for everything I’d like to improve going forward. I feel like if I can do more listening and actually understand what I’m hearing rather than it just being noise I’ll be able to play more with the language and be able to listen to podcasts or watch tv or one of the growing piles of dvd’s and not have to rely on Korean subs just to know what they’re saying, regardless of comprehension. Nothing to do with having 0 idea how else to tackle grammar so it’s less of a problem area. Anyways, thank you for reading and happy learning~  ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

Trying to Remove my Language Crutches

Okay so for the longest time I’ve had a confidence issue with Korean. For some reason, I’ve always felt I couldn’t write/speak because I couldn’t form sentences. I’ve literally held myself up with Papago for the last 18 months or so.  Every time I’ve had to write anything, whether it was for homework, or I posted on my insta story (granted it was all of twice I remember doing that in Korean) I’ve used Papago/Naver Translate. Not to say I was typing in English and just copied what it spouted in Korean, I did try in Korean and just failed miserably every single time, and took advantage of some of the predictive answers too.

Safe to say, I knew this was holing me back. So this week I decided to try and correct this. On top of wanting to work on my listening skills since they suck, this was a huge hurdle that I’d created for myself. Maybe this was part of the reason I have massive anxiety around using Korean, or at least why they’ve carried on this long.

So when I received my last load of grammar homework I looked at making a change. Aside from having Naver up for the words I’d never seen before cause that always seems to happen in these exercises, seriously if it’s not at least shown in the textbook why would they assume you know it, I made an attempt to do it on my own. For the essay question I did check after the fact to make sure the gist was right and caught a pretty bad typo from it that could have been concerning. Safe to say, while discussing the weather the word skinning shouldn’t be involved. But other than this I did it by myself, and uh turns out my understanding of word classes and their rules is not very good.

Even in English I have no idea most of the time which really doesn’t help matters. It’s all well and good saying this is how you make a verb into an adverb, when you don’t know what an adverb is in the first place or how to use one. If it had said this can only be used with verbs, it would have been fine I’d probably have no got half the sentences wrong since all the exercises were intended to test the adverb conjugation and vocab understanding in one go.

This actually took so long to get to the root of the problem we only got a fraction corrected so that didn’t help matters, though she did give me an interesting explanation of the -게 conjugation I wouldn’t have gotten from just the textbook so that was sort of worth it. While it was about what I expected I was still really happy when I got it right. I mean I think nearly all them had incorrect particles too but I struggle so much with those. Though I have done some work on that this week too in vain hope of getting them right more.

So all in all a fairly good experience for a first time trying to do the work without relying on Papago. While it was only a little step forward since I still had to check on what I’d done but I’m trying and having some success for the benefit so so far so good. Hopefully things continue to go well and I can soon put papago completely out of my mind. Anyways, thank you for reading and happy learning~  ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

iTalki: Thoughts 9 months later.

So I’ve been using iTalki for a while now and I thought I’d come in with an update because, well I didn’t expect to be still going through with it this long, and it’s just nice to see reviews. I like reading through them sometimes and I can’t be the only one. (¯―¯٥)

I had made my account back in February last year, but didn’t feel brave enough to deal with it then so I left it sitting with a few teachers favourited but nothing more done on the site. After several months of arguing with myself, I did my first trial lesson mid September, and was absolutely terrified. I actually had a panic attack 5-10 minutes before it started and nearly knocked a full cup of tea over my laptop. Probably wasn’t my best move, I knew I’d have an empty house and thought it would be the best time to try it out because I knew the house would be quiet but it came with having to pull myself together very quickly which I’m not very good at even now. 

So the trial lesson was essentially a placement test, she gave me things to read to see what my pronunciation and reading abilities were, reading was way worse than I thought it was going into it which was a good reality check on my studies. Then after that, I had a bunch of words I’d to define if I could, or I was given the English word to see if I knew the Korean word for. I knew I’d have to do this going in, but I wasn’t expecting to struggle as much as I did. Granted I’d never had that type of interaction where I couldn’t take as much time as I needed to and had to actually hold a conversation in a reasonable time.

After this she told me that if I was to take lessons from her I’d be in the beginners course, which I’d expected anyways being on beginner textbooks at the time. She was really good about giving corrections, I wasn’t allowed to progress until I said it correctly, which is something that I really wanted to have in a tutor since well who want’s to learn to speak incorrectly. Added bonus of having something to work on each week was a big selling point at the time, I was in dire need of some structure at that point.

Since then it’s been very up and down, much like normal classes I’ve been both excited to have work to do and severely bored of it. There have been weeks where I could knock everything out and understand everything, but mostly it’s been a whole lot of headaches and frustration. Even with this my tutor’s been super understanding, if I can’t manage the work for one reason or another (not for lack of trying) it’s fine, and if I need to reschedule for a doctors appointment even rather last minute it’s sorted with no issue which is particularly useful right now.

Even though right now I can’t get my head round 80% of what I’m doing right now, and it’s driving me crazy, I know I’m still making progress. Without these lessons, I’d never have spoken a word in Korean, I wouldn’t be trying form sentences properly (not talking about the success rate here since it’s still basically non-existent) and I’d be about 10 steps further back with particles than I currently am. Not that I’m very far forward but I’m making fewer mistakes than I was and that’s a start for now.

Even ignoring the actual learning side of the tutoring, I can see a huge improvement overall. I no longer take panic attacks before the calls, anxiety spikes still happen but they’re way easier to deal with. I’m no longer a sobbing mess afterwards either. Normally I’d have to sleep something like that off for 2+ hours, but now I can just go on and do something else (at home anyways). I’ve never been good at talking to anyone, let alone strangers, and now I can somewhat comfortably hold a conversation and not have a total meltdown.

By no means would I say it’s a magical one size fits all cure, I mean more than 1 person and I’m still way out my depth and basically useless, but I can now manage 1 person. Even if it’s not in person, 1 person is a start. I never thought I’d be able to get on top of my social anxiety, but this makes me feel like it’s not quite as impossible now.

Going back to the language side of it, I do still get tongue tied, and I have moment’s when I just wanna hang up and run away and yes I say the wrong word which for her is hilarious half the time because it obviously sounds ridiculous and that’s fair. Sometimes I can even laugh at it too. This would have been impossible this time last year, I would have been a sobbing wreck and probably would have hung up there and then and not went back. So the fact I still take my lessons, I think that shows some progress.

Overall, I’m glad I took this leap. It’s something I never saw myself doing, and now I’d seriously consider doing it again for another language in the future, and even more so doing it myself possibly. I don’t know if I’ll act on that one, but I wouldn’t have even thought of it before so it’s something interesting I’ve noticed. While it can be very daunting to find a tutor because of the sheer number of them, and then finding one that suits you/isn’t too expensive for you can take longer still but is definitely worth the effort. Admittedly if you’re like me and are (very) socially anxious then it will be hard at first, and it may not be for you but I would say it’s worth trying it to see if it can help. You can tell the person that you have this anxiety and it can be a way to either make it easier to go ahead with it, or learn that they’re not the tutor for you, and this can be done before paying for anything so something to keep in mind.

I am sad that the trial lessons are capped at 3 (1 per teacher) but I can understand why this is implemented. It was a nice test to see if a tutor suited but apparently that wasn’t the intended use so I can’t really argue with the decision. I did only use 1 knowing I wanted to do more languages in the future and I was very lucky to find someone that did what I was looking for/was comfortable with first try but not everyone will be this fortunate so that’s something else to be aware of.

I hope this was somewhat useful, I know there’s a lot of reviews for iTalki but I didn’t find a lot from other people with social anxiety, at least I personally couldn’t really find them not to say there are none. If I missed anything, or you want to know anything I missed just let me know and I will do my best to reply. Thank you for reading and happy learning~  ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

My Language Learning Experience (2006-2019)

Hello~ as requested, here is my language journey/experience post. So fair warning this is a very long post. Way longer than I meant it to be, but I did warn this when you guys asked for it so I’m sorry in advance.

For this, I’m going chronologically, but I’ll mark it clearly if you wanna just read specific bits, I don’t blame anyone who wants to skip sections it is a lot of text. With that said, let’s begin~

1st: Spanish.

My first experience learning language was in Primary school, at aged 10 (due to a late birthday) when we were surprised by a sparkly new class that wasn’t offered in the school before. Spanish. I don’t remember much from this point being nearly 14 years ago but I remember finding the class difficult because the teacher wasn’t very approachable and seemed to play favourites. At least in the context of only helping certain pupils rather than all the pupils. I picked up a few things, like 1-10 and some animal names but that was about it.

I continued Spanish in High school as it was a mandatory subject in the first 2 years, I learned more from these classes mostly I think because they were more used to teaching the subject but I can’t say that with any certainty. I have mixed memories from this time as we were forced to endless exercises that didn’t explain anything, yes/no style corrections which don’t help anyone, and my teacher told me off for knowing the answer (I still remember this clearly, she asked what the word for fish was, I said pez. Then she asked what the plural was, I said peces and she scolded me for knowing that. To this day, I don’t know why) so that was traumatising for me and meant I didn’t speak up in class again for well over a year.

At this point I’m 4 years-ish into Spanish and I think I’m doing okay, I can do the homework and the exercises with minimal issue (not always correct, but was done in a reasonable time) and we get to picking our subjects for our exams. At which point, my teacher who was talking to everyone about their choices as most did (this was to explain the exam courses and what to expect so you know what you’re choosing, which I think was a nice thing but they stopped doing this sadly) and when it was my turn, it was “implied” that if I picked the subject I wouldn’t be allowed to take the class. I was told that I wasn’t smart enough to pass so I couldn’t take either language course and that I’d to pick another department.

This knocked any confidence I had with languages, I thought I’d been doing okay, at parents night I always had good comments so I don’t know what prompted this delightful comment. And with it being their word against mine I couldn’t prove it was said, but I knew the school would have sided with them anyway. This is also the reason I have Spanish as a want to learn rather than can speak because aside from my fish trauma, I can count to 99 and do basic insa chitchat and that’s all I retained. Oh and the words for library and sharpener, because my favourite place is a library and un sacapuntas is just something that’s always amused me for reasons unknown.

2nd: Korean

So, fun fact, I’m surprised that Korean’s here because I actually had been counting it as 3rd until I actually thought about it for this. My derpiness aside, Korean comes in at the beginning of my 5th year so would be late 2011 (Our school year starts mid-August) when my friend introduced me to K-Pop and oh boy my mp3 player has never looked the same since. It was a serious exam year, so no great progress was possible, especially with trying to get into college. I didn’t find TTMIK till much later than this but for this point in time, I found the lyrics on live performances really intriguing. I mean it’s nothing I was used to seeing on our equivalent shows, they never had the lyrics up for songs, in fact I don’t remember them telling you the artist half the time was towards the end of their broadcasting time. That tangent aside, the words just looked really beautiful and by September that year I was enamoured by the sound of the language, so I started looking up things about Korean in between the onslaught of homework and assessments. Also according to old social media I was subconsciously singing it from the December onwards, so good to know that that was always a thing I did. It took me until March to be able to read enough to write and even then it crude as anything. There’s very little trace of anything from that time but I struggle to read what there is.

Sadly this is where things end here for now, exams and getting into college and having space to breathe after years of being up till 2am trying to get all my work done and not having weekends cause I had to study too kind of pushed it to the back burner. What can I say, it was the first actually free summer I’d had in 5 years and I wanted it to be a detox before college started just in case it was the same set up of no sleep. And then I bumped into the aforementioned Spanish teacher again over the summer who made a comment to the effect of “Bet you’re glad you didn’t take Spanish, otherwise you’d have a nasty fail on your results.” Which for one annoyed me because it implied I had any say in the matter, but also removed any confidence I had regained since our last encounter.

3rd: Japanese

Now this is going to be really underwhelming, you’ve been warned. So I picked up Japanese in exam season 2012 (’cause I clearly didn’t have enough going on) and if I recall correctly used Japanesepod101 for it. I just followed their podcasts so I never learned to read just speaking/listening really. I suppose the 3 alphabets scared me off some, still kinda does scare me but I have a plan of action now so it’s a long term goal rather than wishful/fearful thinking. Still not sure what prompted this though, maybe an anime revival, or just finally caving since I’d wanted to for years.

Anyway, I got through the most basic level on JP101, and a little into the next one when as previous stated getting into college/return of the Spanish teacher caused a little bit of a crisis and I fell away from languages. I also have retained basically no Japanese, and this bothers me so I look forward to getting back to where I was.

2nd (again): Korean

Oh hi, Korean’s back again. Okay this time it’s gonna be a little longer, this goes up until the day I’m posting this. So I picked Korean back up in 2013. At this point I found TTMIK (through yahoo answers would you believe, they hadn’t come up in my search for learning Korean back then). I did level 1 and then I think only got to lesson 4 of level 2 before college hit like a tonne of bricks. And then we have another gap.

We come back in yet again in 2017. I never stopped listening to K-pop, sorta dipped in and out of dramas in that time very lazily, but didn’t really learn anything between 2013-2017. I had to reteach myself to read because it was really hazy and only half remembered, no surprise though it had been more than 5 years since I’d really touched on it at that point.

So once I could comfortably read again, I was confident to go ahead and redo level 1. I did all 25 lessons in 2 weeks. Level 2 however, that caused more trouble. Admittedly I was really ill at this point, I actually had to stop working because of it so level 2 was a lot slower than I wanted or even expected. I knew it was basically new ground in level 2 but even so it was difficult to see the time between lessons, and how much work it was to understand lessons progressively increasing.

I had hoped to get it done in 6 weeks, but it took about a year. Even now some things I still struggle with and get muddled, though it’s getting better with time which is reassuring. At this point my motivation was crippled. I wasn’t progressing, I was barely looking at Korean and I honestly thought about quitting. It also wasn’t helping that the studygram that had once been an ally turned foe showing me all the work everyone else was doing while I was doing nothing at all.

I have now since learned that it doesn’t have to be something demotivating. If someone wants to study 13 hours a day, fantastic! But that’s not for me. Some days are easier than others, I am still in recovery and that’s okay. Some days I can do 4 hours no trouble, others 5 minutes seems impossible. But I should have days off, I shouldn’t make myself ill worrying about studying. I should have time for games, and painting, and wandering round the woods with my camera, and general self care things.

In saying this, I’m guilty of saying this then ignoring it. Especially since I started using italki, where I’d have to learn 100 words, write a presentation and answer 30 questions in a week. I should push myself to try and do the homework, but at the same time, I have other things to do too and I shouldn’t torture myself with cramming homework and nothing else cause it takes so long to try and do the stuff that’s physically handed in let alone anything else.

Don’t get me wrong I love my tutor, she’s the only person who has me laughing at my mistakes, has me trying to use the language because I was terrified of doing that before. Well, I still somewhat am, but it’s getting better. Sometimes the workload is a little crazy, funny how I wanted homework now I just want to throw it all away and just do what I feel I need with the language between lessons. Not sure if it’s a phase or the initial excitement’s wore off and it’s not like wading quicksand.

So, before I start rambling I’m going to have a tl;dr summery here in regards to Korean this year.

The good from this year is hands down the studygram/studyblr community. Before I was annoying people talking about or posting about studying Korean, and these communities offered me a safe welcoming place to be where I could discuss what I was learning, and even get help when needed. I will always be eternally grateful to those who answer my questions in relation to anything, be it being unable to read handwriting, or grammar, or vocab confusion or something as simple as recommendations.

Slightly less good, no fault of Korean admittedly, probably is the difficulty in understanding and retaining information. Most of it is down to being ill. The rest, just generally me being confused because the way our schools teach English, so I don’t really know the different word classes and the rules for each. I can’t look at a word and be like, that’s an adverb, or even if I’m told ‘oh this is and adjective’ I really don’t know what to do with that information. I can do noun, and verb that’s about it. Not for lack of trying though, I have since tried to teach myself, and I have a cheat sheet but I can’t use that in a conversation so hardly a great use. It also means forming sentences is quite tricky, since if one type of word must follow another to be grammatically correct, or even make sense I have no clue about it.

Even further from good, and not something I like to dwell on too long, I feel like I’m cheating with Korean 95% of the time. With Spanish, I never had to double check anything, I could form sentences, and say what I wanted with what I knew and it was fine, but with Korean, it’s like the exactly opposite. I don’t trust myself to write anything without quadruple checking it. I wish I could just write sentences and just look up words/grammar as I need them but no every word of every sentence and even then it’s still flooded with mistakes which doesn’t help me try and wean bad habits.

So yeah I think that about wraps up Korean, but it doesn’t sound particularly good in this explanation. Hopefully next year it’s better.

4th: Turkish

Langjam number 1 (for me), and I had Turkish. Delightful experience, granted I was very ill. I had the flu that weekend because of course it had to hit that weekend, I’m not allowed to have plans apparently. But it was fun, I learned how much of a time sink grammatical concepts are. I feel like all I did was learn grammar that weekend, and I don’t remember any of it, but I still have the sentence I made at the end of the weekend:

“Merhaba, adım Rosie. Hastayım bu yüzden fazla çalışmadım. Ama, Türkçe çalışmaktan mutluyum.”

Not going to lie, all I remember clearly is Merhaba, but that’s better than nothing. I would love to go back and do it properly, or at least without the flu. One of my best friends, a very sweet bean is from Turkey and I’d love to be able to try and speak to them in Turkish a little since they speak English every day for me and yeah I’d love to be able to chat to them a little (though I still can’t type it on my laptop properly so that should perhaps be task one on returning to it).

I don’t know when I’ll go back to Turkish, but I kept all my resources and my notebook so it should be good when I do. Perhaps when I get to an intermediate level in Korean Turkish can resurface, though don’t hold me to that I may just wanna do it randomly. 

That’s it for now! Bet you’re glad you don’t have to read anymore of my boring language past ;) If I missed anything, or didn’t entirely answer the question you asked, just let me know and I’ll try and get back to you as soon as possible.  Thank you for reading, have some cookies and happy learning~ ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

A polite request.

This is not aimed at anyone in particular, any usage of you is vague/generic/lack of a better word, and while this is not dissimilar to my Language Learning Q&A (Negative Questions) post from back in April, because this is also related to upsetting things people say in relation to language learning but it’s more statements than questions and yeah I’d just like this off my chest.

1. Please stop assuming why people are learning a language.

It’s okay to ask someone, that’s fine. If you see someone studying, or know a friend is studying by all means ask what they’re doing if you’re curious. Walking up and saying something to the effect “Oh, you’re learning -insert language here-, that’s pointless. You’ll never use that, you’re wasting your time.” or “You’re only learning -insert language here- because it’s popular/everyone’s doing it/you want attention/a band’s getting lots of attention from that country and you’re bandwagoning to seem cool.” <- don’t say any of these. Yes, sometimes they're true, that’s life. Maybe they’re learning to speak to family that don’t speak their native language, maybe they have to learn cause work, or they’re moving to the country and want to be able to ask what’s in a product if they have allergies or special requirements. Maybe they just want to learn for fun, and no one has the right to belittle that.

2. Please don’t assume how long someone’s been learning a language.

Full disclosure, I’ve only seen this with Korean but it’s annoyed me enough to be included. The amount of time’s I’ve heard “You’re only studying it because BTS are popular.” <- PLEASE don’t. Just, please. I get that so often and it’s like wtf, I’ve been learning Korean since 2012, which btw is before BTS debuted so cannot be the reason I started learning cause they didn’t exist then they debuted the year after. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, have since No More Dream, but not everything revolves around BTS. Just saying.

3. Please, please stop feeling you have the right to comment on someone’s language learning.

Sort of tied to the first one, but the amount of people who ask about your studies just to mock is unreal. I don’t care if someones learning Spanish, Japanese or Klingon, it’s their choice. It either is out of necessity, or just for fun and they really enjoy it, neither reason is an opening for someone to comment on. If they choose to share this with you, they trust you, don’t betray that trust. A language, whether you understand it or not, is a personal choice, it’s self improvement, it can help with mental health, and can help with mental ageing (though no guarantees), it’s so beneficial to the learner and yet people see fit to try and take that away.

4. Please stop thinking that someone learning a new language has anything to do with you.

Oh boy. This one. The amount of people I’ve seen get really upset that someone they know has started learning a language is ridiculous. They get upset because they spend less time with them, you know cause studying. They get upset because they talk more about learning the language(s), this usually being annoying because the person likes the attention on them or themselves to be the topic but granted not always, sometimes they just don’t care and don’t want to hear about it which is not really any better. These being true for both self studying and at college/uni I’ve seen it for both scenarios. Don’t take it personally if someone decides to study a language because I guarantee it has nothing to do with you, whether you like it or not. Although, certainly one way to spot friends you may want to stop interacting with.

5. Please stop the language hate/snobbery.

If nothing else, this is the one I would really really really like to change. And the sad thing is, this one, isn’t exclusive to people who don’t learn languages. People can be really snobby with languages and it hurts to see/hear. People can be so elitist with languages, if it’s not a classic language it doesn’t count apparently. Like you of all people should understand the joy of learning a new language, there’s more to the world than Spanish, French and German so why are they the only ones you think count? If you want to learn them, by all means, go ahead and good luck to you but if someone wants to learn Chinese that’s no less valid. There is no such thing as a bad language or a wrong language, if you want to learn it, that’s it, go learn it. It bothers me so much when people put stupid restrictions on something they really have no say in, like “you’re not a real language learner unless you’ve done x, y and z”. Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were the real language learner police, may I see your credentials please?

Getting sassy with the last one I’ll stop there, but seriously that one really bothers me, probably the most of all of them. I know these don’t apply to everyone and not everyone they do will do all of them but still they’re all really common and not just online I’ve had people say this to my face it’s ridiculous. Again, I know that probably no one will see this but even with the slimmest chance it will help someone understand or stop someone degrading someone’s hobby/interest then this will have been worth it.

If you made it though all that, wow, thank you! Have a cookie! You’re awesome! But I’m going to leave it here so thank you for reading and happy learning~  ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

What Happened...

Hey. It’s been a while. So I hadn’t really intended to go so afk, especially after trying to restart my blog but um technology had other ideas. I can only really call it a disaster, the hub that allows use of wireless internet gave up entirely so that was fun, then my laptop died, and then the one I got to replace it didn’t work either. So I couldn’t go online for like 6 weeks, I lost all my digital resources amongst other things so that’s been fun to try and recover.

Unfortunately, while this was going on, my Korean nosedived. I didn’t have my TTMIK podcasts, or audio clips, or actually most of my textbooks since a lot of them were ebooks, and most of my apps don’t work offline either which meant I was thinking of studying more than actually doing it since all my go to’s were inaccessible.

On top of all this, my motivation took a hit too. Nothing I really want to go into here but there was some external input that really made things difficult and caused a bit of a crisis with what I was doing (in general, not just with regards to Korean). So that was less than ideal to have going on amongst everything else, it just all seemed to hit at once and that was really scary and caused some sleepless nights.

Anyway, lets move on from the bad, I have tried to get past these horrible feelings and have set up things to try and push myself out of my studying comfort zone in the near future. Basically though, once the internet was stable again I made a start on rebuilding my resources. It took a lot longer than I expected, but I suppose doing it all at once would seem longer than staggered over a year or so. Regardless, I have all the TTMIK files restored and most of my other textbooks back too if nothing else, so slowly getting back into things which is nice.

Now this has mostly been sorted out and we seem past the patchy internet phase things should be on their way to returning to normal. I’m excited to get back to studying, especially now the weathers turned. Just curled up with a blanket, a warm cuppa and revision of everything that’s been forgotten over the last 2 months :3

Well, maybe that ones just me, anyway thank you for reading and happy learning~  ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

June 5: Anxiety issues.

I didn’t want to have to post this, but this blog is meant to be a way for me to track my progress and this is a huge boulder that’s blocking the path right now so it only seems fair.

Since last February I’ve been taking particularly bad panic attacks, and they’ve become a lot more frequent this year which is becoming a huge inconvenience in general but it also ruins any and all attempts to study regularly. I’d been studying or revising daily getting 10+ hours a week in, but because these are becoming so common it’s meant that I’ve been lucky to get 4 hours done. Most of the time they hit late at night so I’m up all night and it’s just hard to focus long enough to study when you’ve not slept a wink.

Even my motivation to study has begun to fade, some days it’s fine, but because some of the attacks can take a few days to get back into a normal rhythm again it doesn’t really help matters. It’s kinda funny, between the rest of the issues I’ve had to deal with this year I was so excited to be ahead of where I expected to be, and to be back on track for what I’d wanted and then to have this happen has been quite difficult to deal with.

Over the last month I had tried to tackle it, thinking it was the studying triggering it but I’ve had little to no luck (the fact I’m switching doctors right now probably isn’t helping). I tried making a studygram and that worked for about 2 weeks before they came back, but it’s at least something I’ve really enjoyed doing amongst all this so I hope I can maintain it.

I think until this point I’d wanted to believe I could still go on like I was well and fit to do so, but I’m slowly realising that I simply can’t. I thought when my concentration and memory began to come back everything would be fine but I’m still recovering so I need to be more thoughtful with what I’m doing. I need to find a balance between what I want to do and what I can manage because as much as I want to study, I don’t want to do it at the expense of my health especially when it’s already taken so many knocks. It may be that for a while I just need to take it as individual days instead of trying to enforce a schedule because it’s just not possible to say every day I’ll do ____ if I need to take 2/3 days to recover from these attacks.

That was long, and not very interesting so if anyone made it through all of that I’m sorry and thank you so much for reading it all, and happy learning~  ♡

[koreanstudentiseul]

June 9: Week 20- I’ve finally learned my lesson.

It’s only taken me 6 months but I’ve finally learned from my mistakes (or at least I sure as heck hope I have), I have tried on at least 3 separate occasions to push myself to study daily and do a good chunk of time doing so which is great in theory but not quite so good in practice. While I fully admit it’s the fastest way to improve, it’s just not sustainable... at least for me.

Ironically, what made me see it had nothing to do with language learning. I was out watching my brother compete for his athletic club and while we were waiting for his event to start there was an 800m going on. As they hit the last 200m the girl in first had given absolutely everything and was ready to collapse into a heap she was so burnt out, yet her coach was screaming at her to keep pushing and go faster and increase her lead and she just simply couldn’t. Watching this, I felt sorry for her, and while she still came first all be it just, it twigged that’s basically what I was doing to myself.

Granted it sounds a little ridiculous, but I’ve been exhausted and yet I tell myself off for it and force myself to study for 2-3 hours a day when I’m just not fit to do so. I need to learn to not be so hard on myself when it comes to studying, I don’t even know how it started. I started learning for fun, because I liked the language and I had an interest in the people and the culture and now I don’t really enjoy it any more. It feels like a chore, and I hate myself for turning it into that.

So, I’ve decided that I need to be better about this. I’m not going to force myself to study daily any more, I’ve taken a week off at this point and that’s helped a huge amount to clear my head. From here out, any day that has appointments booked on them are going to be free days because the stress of those is ample without having to worry about studying. The day’s I do study I am still going to commit to at least 2 hours because I do still want to progress and I still want to learn the language (and more later), I just don’t want to further damage my health both mentally and physically.

I think for the next few weeks what I’m going to do is see how I feel that day, and if I’m feeling up to studying then I will, if I’m struggling that day then I’ll leave it and try and take more care of myself that day instead. I admit this probably will mean 1/2 days at first but that’s fine, I wanna ease back into it and let it be fun again. Plus if in the process I can stop some of the stress that’s taking an affect on my physical health then that’s a huge bonus.

Oh, I have also decided to try out keeping a language journal, I’m too nervous to speak to a native (or really anyone) in Korean at the moment and that’s been bothering me because if I don’t try I’m not going to get anywhere even with all the vocab and all the grammar it’s just not going to work. However if I write in a journal in Korean, I get to see what concepts I’m struggling with, I can see where my knowledge is lacking and all with the added bonus of the only people who could potentially see it other than me can’t speak or read a word of Korean. I hope that with some practice and a better grasp on the word order and grammar I might feel less anxious about using Korean either to talk or to post in. At least that’s what I hope the result is, time will tell if it works. Anyway, this post has gone on for far too long so thank you for reading and happy learning~  ♡