Hello and welcome back to The Bliss Bean! If you haven't watched my first video on
how I study Korean you can watch that here. Or don't, I don't really care, but
the reason I'm making this one is because I was not expecting people to be
so interested in how I studied Korean. But there are a ton of follow-up
questions and I feel like I've just been typing out the same responses over and
over on YouTube, on Instagram, etc so in this video I'm gonna be answering all of
those questions in one place so it's nice and organized, and I'm also gonna be
doing some updates, because it's been a year now (!) and so I want to update you on
the new tools and techniques that I've been able to find since then. So a year
ago when I did that video I was studying every single day for about 25 minutes
per day, and this worked for me because I had a pretty open school schedule and so
I would usually find time during one of my study halls to fit in some practice
and I had those study halls every day, so a daily schedule worked really well for
me. But now since I don't go to school
anymore, my days aren't as structured and uniform, so it just doesn't really make
sense for me to study in short bursts anymore.
So once summer started, since I was basically at home all day, I decided it
was more productive for me to sit down and really focus maybe fewer times per
week but for longer chunks of time, so instead of practicing 25 minutes, 6 days
a week, I did one hour, three times a week... *thinks* yes. I also applied the same reasoning to
other things I used to do daily like studying Spanish or reading, so if you're
interested in how I put together like a weekly study schedule, I talked about it
in a recent edition of my newsletter and you can find the link to that in my
description. You should also subscribe to my newsletter for weekly inspiration and
tips I don't share anywhere else *wink*. Anyways, very recently though, I've
actually had more time on my hands and because I have this problem where I
can't not fill my entire day with doing things hjkjhljh I decided that I would try
studying every single day for an hour. I only started that a couple of days ago
but so far it's been pretty enjoyable because honestly I really enjoy studying
Korean so it's just a matter of finding time for it, it's not something that I
have to force myself to do. But whatever schedule you create for yourself I think
the most important thing is consistency. So if you say you're gonna study every
day, study every day, and if you say you're gonna study Monday Wednesday and
Saturday, study Monday Wednesday and Saturday. Alright so that's how my
schedule has changed. In terms of new tools that I've introduced, one thing
that I discovered recently that I love is called Anki. Anki is a free software
you can download to create flashcards, it's like Quizlet but much more powerful
than Quizlet. A little harder to use and learn than Quizlet but in the long run
definitely a lot more helpful than Quizlet. So the way that I used to learn
vocab was I would make these tiny little flashcards and on one side it'd
be English on the other side it'd be Korean. Very classic, very old-school, but
the problem was that I was still relying on English words. So I wasn't just
thinking in Korean, I was first thinking in English and then translating to
Korean which is not the ultimate goal of language learning. This method also
didn't reinforce my pronunciation, so like, I knew how to pronounce all of the
words because basically in Korean, words are pronounced the way they're written
(English could take a few hints from that) But I really like hearing a native
Korean person saying it over and over so that I can learn exactly how I need to
say it. 만나다 (to meet). So Anki key fixes all of these problems. The way I set up
my flashcards is on the front I have an image, not an English word, but an image
that represents the word. Obviously some words are just too abstract to be
represented by images but I still try to get creative. I really want to avoid
putting the English word. So for example today I was making a flashcard for the
word 되다, which means to become and so instead of a picture what I wrote
down was "when I grow up I want to ____ an
astronaut. And that just gets me thinking of like, the idea of becoming something. So
yeah, the front of the flashcard has the image or some sort of hint and then the
part of speech that it is, and then the back side contains an audio file as well
as the Korean word. So with Anki you don't have to like, come up with your own
study plan, it just automatically organizes study sessions for you. It'll
give you the words that it thinks you need to review during that study session
So the way I have my flashcards set up is I'll see the image and the part of
speech, and when I click to "flip it" it plays the audio file automatically and
then I can give feedback on how easy it was for me to recall that word so that
Anki knows how soon it needs to quiz me on that word again. 원하다 (to want). So
I've been loving it, I've been in the process of inputting all of the vocab
that I have in this little notebook into Anki and I have gotten very quick at
this. My method is: I will snap Anki to the right side of my screen and then
both Chrome and Finder to the left side, and if you're wondering how I can like
snap them to the side of my screen instead of manually adjusting them
there's like a little app that you can download for Mac maybe for Windows, I
don't know, it's called Magnet. So yeah I have those side by side on my screen, I
type the Korean word using a Korean keyboard, copy that into Anki, then into
Google Images to find a suitable picture, drag the picture in, open up my audio
files that I purchased and downloaded from How to Study Korean, drop in
the audio file, and then repeat and repeat and repeat. Whew! Another thing that I
started doing recently is finding webtoons that are in Korean, so I don't
even bother to figure out what they're about, I literally just click on them and
if they're all in Korean and there's not too much text I just go ahead and start
trying to read it. So this is a very very slow process because I don't know much
Korean, but I go through sentence by sentence I'll write the sentence in my
notebook, try to translate as much as I can based on the knowledge I already
have, and then whatever words or like conjugations or
grammatical concepts I don't quite understand
I'll look those up and write what I learned about them in my notebook and
then finally when I have like a final translation I'll also write that down. I
really like this because even though it's super super difficult at least for
now for me... It's a really nice opportunity to
like finally apply what you've been learning to something that isn't even
intended for Korean learners, like it's just a Korean webtoon. But to be able to
finally start understanding it a little bit is very exciting! Then real quick
some other helpful websites that I found... Learn with Oliver I really like
for translating individual words and then if I'm translating full sentences
then Naver Papago is very helpful. Google Translate sucks
whatever language you're trying to translate, it sucks. And then when I need
to type in Korean I use Branah.com/Korean I don't know how to pronounce any
of these except Learn with Oliver. And now onto some commonly asked questions! A lot
of people asked me where is your notebook from and unfortunately I got that
notebook at a summer camp so I have no idea. Also unfortunately, I left that
notebook in a hotel on a school trip, so that sucked. I got this new one from
Walmart and the brand is Exceed. So when I did my last video if you recall I would
put all of my vocab at the back of the notebook and then all the grammar at
the front it was like divided into three sections which was honestly just a pain
so since I had a chance to restart even though it really sucked to have to
rewrite all my notes, it was nice because I had the opportunity to now split into
a grammar notebook and a vocab notebook. And I also am a little bit more
organized this time around, so I have a table of contents on the first page and
then page numbers on all of the pages but yeah, the opportunity to get more
organized was the silver lining in that sucky situation.
My bra is falling off my shoulders... Okay anyways! A lot of people also ask how do
you memorize vocab and honestly when I first started studying
I sucked at memorizing vocab because there was just no method to the madness.
But I was taking AP psychology and so I tried
to kind of apply some of the things that I learned about memory in that class so
instead of just reading the English word and the Korean word and hoping that they
would somehow make a connection in my brain I actually started putting in the
effort to come up with some sort of connection for every single word that I
was learning. As an example the word for movie is 영화 - yeonghwa. So the first part, yeong
sounds like "young" in English and then hwa is the root of the word Tuesday. So all
days of the week in Korean end in 요일 (yoil) and Tuesday is 화요일 - hwayoil, so hua basically
represents Tuesday. So my brain remembered this movie theater where students got a
reduced rate on Tuesday evenings, so the connection that I made was that young
people on Tuesdays can see movies for a cheaper price
yeonghwa. Wo just whatever pops into my head while I'm studying is what I go
with. Some tricks work better than others but really just making that like
little connection in your brain makes all the difference. Another question was
how can you find study buddies. I don't personally have study buddies. I do know
some Korean people whom I've asked questions of when I'm confused and like
can't find an explanation online and I think all of them I met because they
watched my first Korean video or just found my blog in some other way but I
don't have like any conversation partners, so if that's what you're
looking for, there are different apps out there like one that I've tried is called
HelloTalk. I personally did not have a very good experience with it, maybe it's
just my style of learning but you just basically send text and audio messages
back and forth and you like help others by correcting their language that
they're learning and then they help you in return. But I didn't really like that the
conversations were really fragmented, like you log in and you
send a message back but then they're not gonna send you a message until they log
into the app so it's just... it doesn't really feel like a nice flowing
conversation it's just kind of little snippets, and so I didn't get enough
value out of that to continue using it. Otherwise for finding conversation
partners you might look in places like Facebook groups that are all about
studying that particular language or honestly comments sections of YouTube
videos like this. If you're finding that you're having trouble finding someone
that's like compatible with you (<3) um, but like if you guys are at different levels
of language learning and it's hard for you to communicate because of that or if
you just don't click, like there's nothing for you to talk about, or they're
bad at responding or you're bad at responding, you might want to think about
investing like in an actual language tutor. The only place I know of for that
is iTalki, that's another website. I'm gonna link to all of these in the
description. Somewhere I read that the rates go from like ten to thirty dollars
an hour so they basically just are language tutors that will help you
practice conversation and correct you and it's nice because there's no
expectation from you, like you are not expected to teach them anything and
they're actually like trained in tutoring other people in that language
so you might find that the money is worth that investment for you. Someone
else asked is everything that you take notes on from How to Study Korean?
Mostly it is. Occasionally I will have some other questions that I go to
outside sources for, which is always a good thing because it's great to read
different explanations of the same subject to make sure that you're really
understanding it, and so when I go to a place besides How to Study Korean
I'll just make a new page in my notebook for those notes so that I can keep them
separate. So recently I had some questions on two ways to say "now" the
difference between 이제 - ijae and 지금 - jigum, as well as the various ways that Korean has
to say the words "young" and "old". And then the last common question was - do I use
romanizations? And no, I do not.
Romanizations are hard to work with because first of all there's different ways to romanize.
Second of all it's really hard to get the pronunciation down if you're relying
on romanization, um what other complaints do I have... I think it makes it harder to
identify the grammar concepts that are within the words and the sentences. The
only thing I use romanizations for is when I'm trying to learn fan chants, so...
but when I'm actually studying Korean then never. I don't mess with romanizations.
So yeah that's all for this video, thank you so much for
watching this. Let me know if you watched the first video because I think it'd be
super cool to see who stuck around for all this time and also let me know if
you're new cause then welcome! If you have any other questions feel free to comment
them, I pretty much respond to 100% of comments that are genuine and kind um so
you will probably get a response from me in under a week. Make sure to give this
video a like and subscribe to my channel and I'll see you next week, bye!