In my Output Era (1,5 year log) #8

One and a half years have passed since I started learning Japanese and Korean following the Refold guide, so I guess you could say I am an experienced immersion learner now. One of the elders. With a long white immersion learning beard of experience and wisdom.

(that's me outputting)

 I am just kidding, I feel like there is still so much to learn! Since I have hit intermediate stages in at least Korean, Japanese being a close runner up, my areas of lacking are as noticeable as ever to me. But I am getting ahead of myself! Let's quickly get the news down:
(edit: nothing about this was quick, get a cup of tea please and thanks for reading in advance <3 )

 

2C in Japanese

a few weeks ago I finally put myself in stage 2C Japanese of the Refold level system. This means I can understand a show meant for adult native speakers in my area of expertise with the help of Japanese subtitles. I might loose some details but can follow the plot.

So Japanese has progressed after all! I was getting a little worried there because Korean has been so great at demanding all of my attention. I can certainly tell the difference in comprehension between those two, but it feels appropriate for the amount of time I spent on each language respectively.

As for content, I have been watching a show here and there, mostly freeflow, sometimes with my own special brand of "stealthy English subtitles" where I switch the English subs on and off at different parts of the show depending on how hard it is or if I want to look something up.
I can tell that this is certainly not doing any wonders for my vocabulary and I am on a lookout for some reading material to suck me in that would compensate that.

Interestingly I have now, similar to Korean much earlier, reached a stage where I find myself not as interested in my learner podcasts, or audio input at all. I think this is just a natural sign for me to go read and the mood will return.

 

Taking a Japanese Conversation Lesson

Just the other day I had a tutoring session with a Japanese native and it was a fun and interesting experience. My Japanese skills were just as I had expected, not better or worse, which is a win in my book. Maybe they were even a little better because I like to go into things with an expectation of disillusion. Like a real pessimist!

The teacher asked me for my preference in how I like to learn, which is a green flag altogether, and also followed suit on what I had said. I specifically asked him to not dwell on mistakes and grammar and be gentle in correcting me. I do not think I benefit from getting a thorough break-down of what I did wrong – unless it is a persistent mistake, I will forget and I will correct myself with more input. I was looking for a somewhat natural conversation and was curious to see what a teacher would have in store.

All in all I found it enjoyable to chat, even if it was mindbogglingly hard and even if I forgot the easiest words, or mixed them up. The teacher wrote down some words for me and had me recap them at the end of the session, asking me to make example sentences containing the word. He even offered to make Anki cards out of them for me, which I declined because it seemed like a load of extra work wasted on this Anki-feind here.
That sort of exercise definitely classifies under ones that Refold discourages beginners from doing and I can see why.

The teacher seemed happy with my performance, I got nihongo jouzu'ed and he later told me that his students are mostly fresh beginners so it was nice to have someone further along there. 

However, I get the feeling I would not gain much from taking lessons regularly. As a very independent learner, I do not need anyone to guide me through resources and the process of learning, which I feel is one of the main aspects of tutoring. And the conversation practice I would prefer doing with a friend. Which brings me to my next topic:

My first ever Conversation in Korean

After befriending a Korean native, and convincing them to language exchange with me, I managed to have my first ever full conversation in real life! Whilst I have previously chatted online, even entered language exchange voice calls, I had never had any prolonged exchange of that sort.

My friend and I met up for lunch, and chatted in English for a while, to find a nice rhythm and feel out the vibes. After that we sat down and I suggested we do some crosstalk. This is a common language exchange technique where each party speaks in their native tongue. It is especially great for beginners, you get comprehensible input from your language partner but do not have to worry or stress about speaking yourself. After a while of doing that we both felt more comfortable and switched to all German first, then to all Korean.

The most important thing about a successful language exchange is balance, in my opinion. What I mean by that is: a similar level in target language proficiency and the willingness to spend the same amount of time on both. Also similar learning styles will be important. And then lastly it is of course helpful if you are actually friends outside of exchanging a language. This will set shared interests and make the time spent together more fun.

There are some people who like to view language exchanges as more of a transactional relationship. It sounds sad but may be viable if you don't have the marbles for more friends, don't want to burden your actual friends, or just struggle to find someone who you click with. I won't judge!

Anyway, we got along splendidly, no business transaction vibes form my side. We also had the aforementioned balance, her German was so good! She had played it safe and undersold herself. (we all love doing that. looking at you reader!)

The exchange happened before my previously mentioned Japanese lesson but now I can compare the two. My Korean is much more conversational than my Japanese, I was less searching for words and only struggled a couple times to form sentences. I also preferred the casual ease of a chat between friends as opposed to the formality of a student teacher dynamic.

Of course we were having a really basic conversation about foods and cooking, not international politics. But still, what a lovely experience and I will look to repeat it loads.

Writing a Short Story in Korean

This is what I wrote in the "wins" text-channel on the Refold server on this topic:

Weird win: I wrote a short story and asked a native to correct it. There were a ton of corrections but oddly enough I was happy with them? I usually hate being corrected but it looked like the mistakes a child would make. Like, I kept spelling 옛날 (not 얫) wrong and many more spelling issues of the sort. Had grammar mistakes too of course but much less than I feared and not of the kind I feared. I could really see that I had written it based on what would have sounded fine to my ears which is exactly the way I’d like to learn. But most of all I think the story made sense and was overall not badly written, there were no questions asking what the hell I meant (except maybe one word that I might or might not have made up lol). And on top of that I could see a couple of pointers where I’ll pay more attention in the future; having a larger block of text corrected at once kind of shows you the mistakes you make more frequently (I.e. when to 것, 거 or 게, I suck at passive and subject markers are a pain) Anyway first time I didn’t hate getting shown my errors

And I just wanted to include this for myself and further reference!

Conclusion

Alright this is long enough for now! Usually I touch much more heavily on the content I am learning with but I feel like this is becoming increasingly futile. Not only is it too much, it is also ever fluctuating and not that interesting. At this stage most people will know what they like to consume and don't need a boring list of me. For boring lists, please refer to previous posts.

In short: I am reading and listening and watching shows and it is becoming easier every time. My progress has been steady as before, my immersion habit unwavering and I see no reason to change anything about what I am doing as of right now.

Toodeldoo!

Yours truly,
Gandalf