Tag: confidence

Posted in books, korea, Podcasts, Resources, Selfstudy, Uncategorized

Blind listening

Posted on by 카밀라

While my biggest strength has always been listening, I discovered quite early in my Korean journey that I seem rely a lot on my other senses too. It didn’t really bother me until I started preparing for TOPIK 1. When doing the listening part I would suddenly feel all panicky because I couldn’t follow along as well as I usually could when watching dramas or anything else really.
Obviously it bothered my quite a lot and I immediately started to practice blind listening. It was incredible frustrating for such a long time, but never the less I started to improve. I would find small audio clips or news videos and then put all my focus into understanding the short clips while closing my eyes. In the beginning it didn’t work at all since my general Korean knowledge was quite lacking, but after some time I was able to at least catch most of the words even though I didn’t know their meaning. When I was doing other things or just felt to tired to fully focus on listening, then I would find longer clips and let them run as a background sound, hoping that it would still help my listening skills as well as my intonation. I feel that it did indeed work and this is basically how I met one of my best friends:
PODCASTS
I found a few different ones while using my practically non-existing-google-skills. It worked out fine but after a while I discovered a site that seemed to have all the podcasts that I was listening to and a ton more. I have now been using this site for a little over 10 months (Find it here) and I find it incredibly helpful for my listening skills. There’s so many podcasts to choose from so there should be something interesting for everyone. Go check out the recent uploads, the most popular uploads or search for a topic that you like. Want news? Language learning podcasts? Radio-style podcasts? It’s all there.
Another reason to why I love this site is that they have an app that just makes everything incredible convenient. You can easily listen from your phone when you’re on the go and even if you don’t create an account, it’ll still remember your history and last played podcast. I listen to a lot of long podcasts which means that I often need to stop in the middle of an episode and I just LOVE the fact that it remembers how far I got and just starts me back up exactly where I left it.
I’m currently listening to a podcast called 소라소리 which is a series of free audio books. Each book usually has 1-4 episodes and each episode is around 1-1.5 hours long (Though they just started a new one which is 12 episodes long!) and you can even download them if you know you wont have internet access later. You can also skip back and forward with 10, 15, 20, or 30 seconds in one go, so you can easily listen to certain parts over and over again til you get it right, or you can easily go back if something interrupts you and causes you to loose focus.
In my case I just really enjoy audio books so I searched around and found 소라소리, but I got even more hooked when I discovered that Book 2 and 3 are both stories by Roald Dahl! If you have read about my London adventures then you might remember that I bought a book full of stories by him, and luckily both of the audio books are in my paperback as well! Double bonus! I just started book number 3, and I think I’ll just let it keep playing in order until I have listened to all of the current books. I definitely feel like this one is one of the more difficult podcasts as you only have one reader playing different roles and during certain dialogues the speaking gets really fast, but I still find it so helpful, challenging and kinda therapeutic too.

Wow this became a lot longer than expected. Anyway I just wanted to share my best friend and absolute favorite way for listening practice. There’s so much gold here! I hope this will be just as helpful to some of you guys, as it has been and still is for me!

Posted in Personal, Selfstudy, Uncategorized

New beginnings and a boost of motivation

Posted on by 카밀라

Today is in many ways a very special day to me. There’s a few sad reasons, a few neutral reasons and some really good reasons as well. Isn’t it fascinating that one can experience so many emotions at the same time? While the sad reasons are.. well. sad. I feel like the positive reasons manages to over-shine the sadness of today. As for the neutral reasons, I had a bunch of new experiences that made my day feel special, but they didn’t really add any good or bad vibes to my day.

However, this evening I had an amazing experience which made me go straight to the blog, even though I really should be getting ready for bed (Working weekend – again).
You see, today was the start of something new (cues High School Musical) and very nerve wrecking to me! Today I had my first Italki session with my new teacher/language partner. Whenever I speak in Korean I feel way more nervous than I should and this causes me to constantly switch back to English, and to be completely honest I feel like I never really put in my full effort when it comes to sticking to Korean. As a result it makes me feel really nervous when talking to new people – especially native speakers. I believe this is actually quite common, but nevertheless it means that it takes me a long time to feel comfortable enough to speak freely – with or without mistakes – and that just makes me even more nervous. I don’t like to waste time and I hate feeling like I’m not doing my best.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I entered this 30 minute session while thinking of it as starting fresh on a blank page, and with the intention of doing my very best and make sure that at least 70% of what I said would be in Korean.
Much to my surprise my nervousness disappeared almost immediately and I was able to follow along just fine (though honestly, understanding usually isn’t an issue. Saying something myself on the other hand… Yikes) and somehow we ended our 30 minute session without using any English at all. How on earth did that happen? I’m really not sure. I was definitely more determined than I have been in a very long time, and she made me feel comfortable almost immediately. When I got stuck I just took a deep breath and that was usually enough for me to regain control over my Korean, and when I felt completely lost I simply rephrased my thoughts so that I could either say it completely or at least say something similar enough for her to understand me easily and then learn the correct way from her. Even when I couldn’t remember the meaning of a certain word, she explained the meaning of it in Korean instead of giving me the translation.
She was super patient and I didn’t feel like those deep breathes of mine, were awkward at all. She has a lot of the same good traits as my previous teacher, so maybe that’s why I felt so comfortable? Or maybe she’s just one of those people who have a calming effect on people? I honestly don’t know.
Generally I have always preferred casual conversation about whatever we feel like, but she seems a lot more structured than me. I new this from the messages we exchanged before making the session, and she likes to have a specific topic prepared beforehand so that we both can prepare diligently. While this is not usually what I prefer, I actually think this will be very good for me (which is exactly why I choose her – It was supposed to be a new beginning after all) and I suddenly feel amazingly motivated and proud of myself. I did something that I had no idea I could, and I can’t wait to improve even more!
I just requested 5 new 1 hour sessions, and hopefully she accepts them so we can make me speak even more.

Now, I really need to go to bed – BUT! Tomorrow I will be home earlier than normal and there’s no doubt that I’ll be using my hours wisely! MUST STUDY!

Posted in Selfstudy, Uncategorized

Sudden confidence?

Posted on by 카밀라

Have you ever had a sudden boost of confidence after realizing progress? In my case, I work hard every day and that usually results in a general feeling of progress. This also means that suddenly realizing progress and therefore getting a boost of confidence, is a rare feeling to me.

About a week ago, I was talking to my awesome LP/Friend and he mentioned that my Korean seems to improve a lot faster lately, and that he could feel my progress even though it hadn’t been long since we talked the last time. I was happy as always, but I didn’t really think more about it until this weekend. Last Friday I had my usual italki session, and my teacher told me that my Korean indeed improved noticeably every week, which caused me to think about how that could possibly be? Where does all this progress come from?
The friend I talked about in the beginning of this blog post, is definitely one of the best language partners you could wish for, so shouldn’t I be making less progress when we don’t talk for a little while, rather than making a bigger progress?
I have been thinking about this all day yesterday – I mean let’s be honest here! We all want to know where our progress comes from, so that we can improve even more, right?
Anyway, today it finally hit me. I was looking through my conversation with another LP, and I realized that I hadn’t written anything in English for almost 2 months. After going through a few other conversations I could see that I was generally not using English anymore, with several LP’s. This answered my ‘Where does all this progress come from?’ question, but it also gave me another one. ‘How did this happen?’. I most certainly haven’t done it deliberately and if you asked me to stop using English, then I would probably have told you that it wouldn’t last for long. I didn’t decide to stop using English.
After thinking about it for a while, I realized what these specific LP’s had in common. None of them are confident in English and these specific LP’s aren’t really interested in learning it either. They just like to help people who are learning their language. This is when I realized that my still-quite-lacking Korean, has become better than their English. This obviously means that when I feel lost or have a question, I always ask in Korean, since I at this point feel like I understand their explanation in Korean better, than when they try to help me in English.
I speak a lot of English with my good LP/Friend, since he’s fluent in English and therefore I understand his English explanations a lot better than if he explains it in Korean. Also, when I’m in a hurry or if I’m doing something else while talking to him, I usually use English until I’m finished with whatever I’m doing, as it is a lot easier when I don’t have to look up words or focus too hard on writing.
This however, simply isn’t a possibility with the other LP’s anymore. I’m forced to look up grammar and vocabulary all the time, and I’m forced to create complex sentences that I would never have tried to make, with some of the other LP’s. Either that, or I simply have to only have super simple conversations and since I’m able to do this in Korean already, I wouldn’t be using English anyway. Now matter how I twist and turn it, I’ll only be using Korean. This of course also means that I make a lot more mistakes, but my LP’s always understand what I mean and I always understand their corrections, so I suppose those mistakes are pretty useful anyway.

This sudden (and honestly quite shocking) realization, has caused a big and sudden boost to my confidence. We can all probably do a lot more than we think. It also made me think that I should put more effort in my other conversations as well, and more importantly I should stop choosing the easy way as often as I seem to do.

I think I’ll start making dinner now, and then return to my Korean books and maybe even my drama. Remember to celebrate your progress! 🙂