Posted in Personal, Selfstudy, Uncategorized

Last goal of 2016

The year is slowly coming to an end and as I do every year, I have been thinking about how to end the year in the best possible way. I started thinking about this last week and decided that I wanted to end 2016 with a feeling of having accomplished a lot in my language learning journey. And to enhance that feeling, I decided that my last goal of 2016 should be to finish 5 of the books that I am currently studying with. I’m always studying with a ton of books and e-books at the same time, because I just can’t wait to get started, when I buy something new. So this way I can put away 5 books from my ‘books-I-am-currently-studying-with’ shelf (Yes. I do actually have such a shelf! It’s on my desk!) and move them to my ‘books-that-I-have-already-finished-but-keep-near-by’ shelf (Yes that’s real too).
I decided to finish these 5 books:
1. 서강 한국어 쓰기 1 – I only have 1 chapter left in this book as well as a few pages I want to review, so I guess this wont be too difficult to accomplish!
2. 백설공주 – I still had 7 stories left in this book when I made the goal, but since my reading pace is slowly becoming decent and the stories are pretty short, this too wasn’t very difficult. I read the last story yesterday! Success!
3. 빈도별 토픽 – This will be one of my bigger tasks since I’m only about 70% finished with the book. However the book is very easy to understand and doesn’t have a lot of assignments compared to my other books, so it is definitely doable!
4. Korean Q&A sentence patterns – I only need to finish 3 chapters in this one, and it’s pretty easy compared to what I usually study with, so this will be doable as well.
5. Korean folk tales & Aesop’s fables – I’m not sure why I never got around to finishing this book but I guess now was right the time! I only had 4 stories left and I finished them all this week.

So 2/5 books have been cleared and I have a week left. It’ll definitely take up a lot of my time, but since my holiday break started today, I am quite OK with that! I will also be visiting my home town next week, which means that I need to entertain myself for the 2×5 hour train ride – Perfect timing! Not to mention that I will be staying with my sister who has work everyday til 4pm, so I’ll have plenty study opportunities there as well.

Time to fix those loose ends before the year ends! Wish me luck!
Merry Christmas guys!

Posted in books, Personal, Selfstudy, TOPIK, Uncategorized

Re-entering the world of dramas and books

With all the hectic things that have been happening in my life lately combined with the fact that Christmas is always super busy at my house, as well as the fact that I have had some self-caused issues improving my Korean skills (I talked about that in this post), has caused me to feel really stressed when it comes to studying Korean. I feel like I don’t have time enough and since I ‘wasted’ (but not really though) a lot of time, I’m constantly worrying about whether or not I can succeed in the goals I made earlier this year. Because of these doubts I have been focusing a lot on progressing and being effective with the time that I do have, and it seems that this has caused me to completely forget to enjoy the language in itself, as well as appreciate the things that I already know about this beautiful language.
I haven’t even thought about watching dramas or movies in several months and I haven’t picked up any of my beloved books from the Indigo series, since the beginning of August – these two things used to be some of my favorite activities!

I realized this while dusting of my shelves during my weekly Sunday cleaning sessions, and I suddenly felt an urge to read one of my books. It really has been a while!
So yesterday during my lunch break, I decided to continue reading the webtoon that I put aside a while ago to save time, and I truly enjoyed just casually reading without putting more thought or energy into it. When I got home from work and had finished dinner, I started watching 도깨비, and immediately found myself enjoying it. I watched both episodes and I’m looking forward to the next episode. I didn’t get to ‘really’ study, but I really enjoyed myself and that’s important too!
It made me feel a lot more positive and energized for ‘actual’ studying. So this morning I picked up 백설공주 from my shelf and brought it with me to work. Despite it’s title, it’s actually a compilation of small and famous stories like ‘Little red riding hood’ and ‘Rapunzel’. It’s actually quite lovely! I totally recommend this for people who are new to reading Korean books or who simply get bored too fast to read long stories. Especially since it’s well-known stories that don’t demand too much attention and focus from you.
Anyway, I finished reading the first story in the book, in the bus on my way home, and now I feel happy, re-energized and ready to do my best during a study session with 혜선쌤!
I guess it’s all about balance.
To celebrate I decided to go shopping a bit on Gmarket, even though I really shouldn’t. So I bought a new study book and 3 more books to add to my 인디고 아름다운 고전 시리즈, collection. As superficial as it may sound, shopping does wonders to my general mood!
And that’s ok too!

All these hectic things will be finished soon and I know that I will be able to study more like I’m used to, so for now I’m just going to relax and keep a balance between studying and just enjoying the language.

Posted in Resources, Selfstudy, Uncategorized

Christmas vocabulary

HI GUYS!
It’s finally that time of the year again! Ah yes, as you might have noticed by now, I am that friend who is always overly excited about Christmas.
I’m not planning on too many Christmas rants on the blog, however of course I need to take advantage of my Christmas love, and use it to learn some Korean! And you guys can use it too! Since there’s a lot of differences between Christmas in Denmark and Christmas in Korea, it seems to naturally become a good topic to discuss with language partners and friends. You will also naturally see Christmas related words during this season, so maybe you want to prepare yourself a bit. Maybe you just love Christmas as much as I do! No matter what your reason might be, I have prepared a long list of words that might become useful to you guys during this season!

First, here’s the list without translations. I recommend looking up the meaning of the words on your own, as it help you remember them better when you have to write them yourself. However, if you prefer having the translations immediately, then you can download the word list as a PDF here along with their translation!
NOTE, I have not used Romanization anywhere, because I personally believe that it’ll only slow you down if you depend on it too much. 🙂
I also created a study course on Memrise, so if you want to study with this list, you can do it through Memrise, via your computer or smartphone! Just click here!
Also, A HUGE THANKS to 효진쌤 (너무너무너무 고마워요! 역시 효진쌤 짱이당~) who proofread my list to make sure that I didn’t publish complete nonsense!
Lastly, please remember that I choose the words based on my own logic and experiences. Christmas in Denmark is very different from Christmas in America, so while Turkey is relevant in America, Duck is more relevant in Denmark, and therefore the relevant words will obviously change from country to country. Feel free to add the words you personally find relevant.
Enjoy guys~

크리스마스
크리스마스 트리
선물
산타 할아버지 
메리 크리스마스  
순록
휴일
케이크  
사탕  
요정
칠면조 고기 
눈   
크리스마스 카드 
썰매
북극  
굴뚝 
예수 그리스도 
크리스마스 캐럴   
베들레헴 
기념하다  
눈사람 
벽난로
겨우살이 / 미슬토우
크리스마스 양말 
호랑 가시 나무  
지팡이 사탕  
종   
루돌프 사슴코  
눈송이    
장식  
생강쿠키 집  
진저맨 / 생강쿠키 사람  
화환 
천사
양초   
촛불  
불빛   
켜다 
촛대 
자선단체 
밤 
석탄
쿠키 
쿠키 커터
12월(십이월) 
에그노그  
선물을 교환하다   
가족  
장작 
서리  
과일 케이크  
가랜드
거위 고기
안부 
빨간색  
녹색
흰색  
금색 
은색 
핫초코 / 코코아  
행복  
껴안다 
얼음 
고드름 
딸랑딸랑/짤랑짤랑
기쁨    
징글벨  
크리스마스 전등  
사랑
벙어리장갑 
호두까개 
쿠키통 
퍼레이드  
소나무  
솔방울   
리본    
눈뭉치  
크리스마스 쇼핑      
목도리   
내리다  
포장하다   
풀다    
방한화 / 겨울 부츠

하트  
전통  
노래  
겨울
소원  
포장지  
나비리본
나비 넥타이 
오리 고기  
대림절 일요일  
대림절 달력   
크리스마스 리스   
반짝거리다   
크리스마스 모자  
평화
대림절 초
춥다