The downsides of conversation partners

 So recently I have been trying out the conversation method of practicing a language. It has many upsides I've found out.

• They can correct your pronunciation - the one thing you cannot learn by yourself is pronunciation because you cannot magically in-tune yourself to a native speaker. It is impossible so either get used to watching a lot of movies, listening to music, or find yourself some sort of friend in the target language.
• Help you understand things better - In theory a native speaker will be able to correct your word usage and tell you what you are supposed to use.
• Make new friends - Friends are good, there is no reason you should not make them, seriously stop being a loner. Especially since the internet has made it so you don't have to actually meet face to face.

Okay, so there aren't thousands of reasons to use the conversation partner method opposed to other methods. There are the perks of meeting with an actual person and feeling less like a creeper, but there are downsides as well.

1. You can meet a lot of creepers - So let's say you went to website to find a conversation partner, great start right? No, because if you are a woman you will have to wade through a lot of men only there to hit on you and be inappropriate towards you in general. When you finally find one you might be a little frustrated in general. Or if you are a man....you will have to prove you aren't a creeper if you happen to find a female conversation partner.
2. They are a real person - So if they are in another country, you may have to bend to their schedule. Either of you could get distracted by the real world and just drop off the radar without notice, it has happened to me and I've done it several times. Life is rough gotta pick your priorities.
3. The give and take balance - You help people, you expect to get something back in return, right? Right. The problem is when someone is taking a lot more than they are giving, or just not giving. It can be frustrating when you are teaching someone your native language and they aren't helping you with their language.
4. The inability to explain - The truth is, as a native speaker it is really hard to explain why we do things. Yes all English speakers sat through hours and hours of grammar classes during school, but who really remembers them? I don't or I was sick during them and there was n way to make them up. So when someone asks me to explain something, it may take awhile to explain why it is so.

That is what I've got so far, it maybe that conversation partners when you find the right one is a break even. I haven't found that yet so....this is my take on the idea. Even when you hire someone to teach you, they can still fall through with expectations. Conversation partners are not for everyone, but a lot of people enjoy them as part of their language learning experience.

A fun way to learn?

 So talking to a co-worker he helped me stumble upon a website called memrise.com, it is much like quizlet.com (I highly recommend this for any high school or college student with tests coming up) where you can pick a language (or any subject really) and basically you are trying to learn to recognize the words and their definition/English meaning. You can create your own set or go off the ones others have created. Nice, unfortunately this website is still new enough that it does not have a corresponding app yet.

Here is the little gimmick, your words are seeds and you are planting them in the garden of your mind. Memrise.com will send you e-mails to remind you that

a) Your short term memory words are ready to "harvest" or move to the long term memory garden.

b) Your long term flowers need to be watered to keep them in your long term memory.

PROS:

• It is kinda fun, at least for me, the idea that these words are seeds and I'm making a garden of words in my brain. What can I say I'm all about the cute factor. 
• You can create your own set and they currently have tons of different language sets to chose from.
• It is free, that is a huge pro because not everyone can shell out $500 for Rosetta Stone (and you shouldn't)

CONS:

• While you can use other people's sets, you are reliant on how they spelled things, if you are learning a language with a different alphabet besides the roman one you could be screwed. I have run into this problem a couple times. You are also reliant on them for what the word means, and they can be wrong. You can suggest a change, but it is up to them to change it. 
• Currently as of 6/18/2012 the site is down for maintenance very often making it difficult to maintain your garden.
• The quizzes on the words are timed, which can be very frustrating when you are typing in a foreign alphabet on a English keyboard, it can be utter fail.

 Overall:

  This is a great site, although it seems to be in their fledgling stages, if you want to build and maintain your vocabulary this is a great place to go. I have yet to see anything about sentence structure or grammar as of yet so for people who want to learn  a language you are going to need supplemental material.

It has been awhile

  I am now halfway through my contract in Korea, and only slightly better at the language. I feel horrible about it too. I can answer basic questions like "Where are you from?", "Can you speak Korean?", "Would you like a bag", and "Do you have a point card?" ...yes the last two I consider basic because it is asked of me every time I go grocery shopping. I've learned a little, but nothing I have learned has been magical immersion learning, I've had someone either tell me the meaning of the question or have enough vocabulary via forced study to piece together the question listening for keywords.

 I really need to think on this language more because I am finding that it doesn't interest me as much as I originally thought it did. I think I saw it as exotic so I wanted to learn it. I still plan to work on this language, but I will move it much further down the list now. So here is my progress with my other languages.

 Japanese: Still working on kanji and vocabulary I think I am at 750 kanji at the moment. I am actually debating making my next job in Japan so I might speed up the learning a little bit.

 Hindi: I have finally learned the Hindi alphabet, and with the help of some native speakers am actually learning! I have learned basic sentences and I am working on building my vocabulary. I am now debating trying to plan a fun vacation to India because I now know that I could at least ask for directions and read a sign.


I'm debating starting up Chinese again because I now have the correct copy of the textbook I was using, but I feel like I should keep reluctantly studying Korean instead and focus on these three languages for now.

Learning through immersion

I'm still not a fan of this theory and living in Korea for 4 months has really encouraged this. The only words I've learned are words that have been explained to me, or that I've taught myself and use daily. There is no obscure magical word I know that I haven't asked about or looked up at some point. Maybe there are different circumstances for different types of learners, I am a visual learner so immersion is not for me. Which may explain my ability to pick up Hindi by watching movies and reading the translation.

I feel that learning via immersion is really a personal experience on how immersed you are. I'm pretty sure that if I was dumped somewhere with no way of communicating with English, I would be learning Korean a lot faster, but still I would like to meet someone who has actually learned a language purely through immersion like many companies claim.

Updates on my progress

This is a mild update of the personal goals I had when I first started this blog and where I am with my language learning goals. So let us see where we are:

• Korean: I have learned to read and write in Hangul with some confidence and I am proceeding to learn new vocabulary I apparently know around 75 words/sentences according to my flashcards that I can go through with ease.
• Hindi:  I found out through a fluke accident that I know more Hindi than I originally thought I did just by attempting to explain a song to someone and realizing I knew 2/10 words in every verse. Still have not mastered the written script because it is very complex compared to the other languages I know
• Japanese: Through continued work teaching other people Japanese I have vastly improved my grammar knowledge (or just refreshed myself enough) and I can confidently say I know at least 500 kanji (yeah I know not that big of number, but I know both readings!) and still working on the progress.
• Chinese: no progress as of yet

So right now I'm mainly concentrating on Korean, because of a potential job, and Japanese, because I have more resources here, and using my time in that matter. I am occasionally working on Hindi just because it is fun because I get to watch movies. I have gotten my list of languages narrowed down and I think I can update my language goals

Japanese - know the entire joyo kanji list, pass the JLPT level 2 exam, and be a confident speaker.

Korean - Get to an intermediate level, be able to read and write Hangul with ease, and be a semi-confident speaker.

Hindi - Again get to an intermediate level, be able to read and write with confidence, and be able to ease drop the next time I go to Devon to see if these ladies are trying to hose me >_> I see you Indian sellers over there talking about me, I understand things enough to know that.

Other - work on the following languages and get to an intermediate level at some point: Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, French, and Mongolian.

In other news if I end up getting the fun exciting job I'm hoping for I will use this blog to also talk about my experience there because it is relevant.

Language Learning

 In my quest to learn new languages I have run across many different programs that claim to be the best thing since sliced bread for language acquisition, but are far from it. The only way to find this out half the time though, is the waste vast amounts of money on things you will never use again.

A good example for this situation is Rosetta Stone, it claims that you will learn the language without having to do useless drills, but this program does just what it claims not to do.  You are paying up to $300 or more for a program to keep repeating a word at you, I have tried Rosetta Stone in these three languages: Korean, Hindi, and Japanese ...and it was all epic failure and I was very pleased that I hadn't wasted my money on it, but saddened that my friend had. Slowly you are memorizing phrases that really don't make sense like "The plane is on the boy" ...I really would like to find a situation where I would need that phrase, but at the same time never hope I need it. Overall I find it a waste of money when there is a free online program that is literally the EXACT SAME THING, but with more. The program I'm talking about is livemocha.com, where for the small favor of helping other people learn your native language, you can learn 40+ languages for free, and unlike Rosetta Stone you can learn multiple languages at once. It does run into the same issue as Rosetta Stone where you aren't really learning how to write in the target language and are not getting grammar explained to you, but hey  it is free and you can chat with native speakers if you have questions.

Overall opinion: If you want Rosetta stone, please try the alternative version of livemocha.com because you will get a really good idea of what Rosetta stone was going to try and teach you, and this will be for free.


The main language series I use for outside of classroom language learning is the Living Language series, it covers a vast amount of languages and if relatively cheap, most basic sets are around the $30 mark. I thought this series was awesome after I had bought the Hindi and the Korean sets and they are in fact a very good language learning supplement for these two languages. HOWEVER, much to my dismay many of their other language learning sets are not as stellar, the other language learning sets I have run across that involve different alphabets ended up being a huge flop because they went through the entire course using only romanized letters. Yes at one point you did learn the alphabet, but then it is forgotten in the lessons and you only deal with how to spell these words in English. This is not very good when you are learning Japanese, Chinese, or Arabic because you will rarely run into a sign that is in that language, but written in the romanized pronunciation of the word. On the other hand for the two languages I have encountered that this program works for, it does a good job. It has little sections in the chapter that explain culture points, grammar, and just other little factoids that gives you insight into the language you are trying to learn and has CDs that go along with almost everything in the book.

Overall opinion: Unless you are thinking about learning Hindi and Korean, buy these sets with caution because it is a hit and miss. While you may learn the language you are not learning the alphabet so if you just want to be able to speak a language this might be the set for you, but if you want to be able to read, write, AND speak you may want to skip this series unless you are trying to learn one of the two languages states above

Get a different Japanese boyfriend everyday for 300 days

 Learning a foreign language is scary so we all come up with crazy language learning strategies, like the one mentioned in the title.

Get a different Japanese boyfriend everyday for 300 days: The idea is that you will have to speak to them in Japanese or that you will hear enough Japanese you will get better at it, and the constant changing of boyfriends will let you get some variety in the language/vocabulary.

 The problem with this strategy? Well there are several, not all of us can get (or want) a Japanese boyfriend let alone 300 of them. It is just the idea behind it this strategy seems like an easy fix to learning Japanese because it is a hard language to learn. Personally I don't think this strategy will work for me.


 I personally am using a focus on your interest strategy, you find what interests you in the area or culture the language is from and you use it to help you in learning the language. For me it is music and fashion I cannot tell you how many words I've learned from watching musicals (in Japanese or other languages) and just the tangent learning episodes it has triggered.


Kanji example

袖　そでー sleeve


This is normally used in referring to Kimono like the tomesode or furisode, but it actually has other uses!


袖の下-bribe
袖乞-beg
袖文-sleeve length
袖時雨 -weeping