Back in March I began tracking all my study sessions because I wanted a more visual overview of my study habits. I wanted to see where I put in the most effort and where I put in the least and then compare it to the aspects that I feel need the most work. It’s easy to complain about a certain skill not improving if your not actually working on improving them.
I have now gotten into the habit of tracking almost all my sessions (I don’t track things like chatting with friends, listening to music etc. I also only track drama watching if I’m not doing anything else and is actively watching, which is pretty rare these days.) and I’ve been contemplating whether or not to share my results on the blog and have now decided to keep a monthly study log until my exam in November. I want to actually write down my thoughts on my progress for my future self, instead of just look back at a bunch of numbers.
I track in two different ways.
I use my TTMIK 100-days planner to create goals and plan out how I’m going to reach them. I write down what I want to accomplish, how I’ll accomplish it and I give myself a realistic (though slightly optimistic at times) time frame for accomplishing it.
Then I use my tracking app to actually track my work. I simply create a few categories like reading, writing, listening and also categories for specific books that I’m working on, because many of my books can be used to improve several of those aspects within the same chapter.
I then write the results down in my TTMIK planner and use those numbers to adjust my next goals.
Lastly, I have been taking a TOPIK practice test at the end of each month, which is how I evaluate my progress and figure out whether or not my efforts have worked, in order for me to create a new and better plan for the next month.
It’s basically a way for me to learn more about what works for me and what doesn’t, while at the same time trying to prepare for my exam.
MARCH STUDY LOG
A Tracker: 85 Hours, which gives me a daily average of: 2,8 Hours.
My daily average back in march was 3,1 hours so it’s not a super big difference, and I had 4 days off from studying when I went to my hometown, so that’s probably why it’s lower this time. I enjoyed my free time and we all need days off, however I would still like to keep it on 3 hours or above, until I start working again.
TOPIK:
My TOPIK practice results for April were:
듣기: 34/50 correct answers.
This is 2 correct answers less than in March. My listening skills pretty much felt the same as the last time. I didn’t do a lot of specific listening practice as I chose to prioritize other things that needed more work.
읽기: 30/50 correct answers.
This is 3 correct answers less than in March. However I felt like my reading speed and stamina was pretty good and my correct answers have been increasing every month since January, so I’m not really too bothered by my result. As long as I’m making overall progress.
There’s always a chance that my results are due to good or bad luck – sometimes the questions are simply harder than other times, and sometimes I just happen to know a lot of vocab on a certain topic that appears in a test. However, rather than luck, I think it’s due to the kmooc course that I have been working on every day. I haven’t really been working with a lot of other materials throughout April which means that the majority of the things that I have learned are all related to the same specific topic, and most of the vocab is super fancy linguistic related terms that I didn’t meet anywhere throughout the test, so it makes sense that my results would reflect that.
To work on in May:
I feel a bit silly writing this when we are always halfway through May, but oh well!
I still want to work hard on my kmooc course even though it isn’t really the best way of preparing for my exam, but it’s still really important to me, and I’m halfway through it so I’m not giving up on it.
I will however try to prioritize other types of studying. I’ve been reading a lot lately and will continue to do so.
I’ll try to practice listening a bit more as well.
I’ll make sure to keep my daily average on 3 hours or more. (I’m currently on 3,1 – So far so good!)
Most importantly I’ll try to enjoy myself a bit more, and do whatever type of studying I feel like doing, whenever I have some extra free time.
Cammilla's Korean 