[Apply Now] 5th Book Review Lucky Draw.

Reblogged from twoChois:

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안녕하세요-

다들 잘 지내셨나요?

제 4 회 Lucky Draw에 많은 관심을 보내주셔서 감사합니다.

오늘부터 진행되는 다섯 번째 Lucky Draw도 많은 관심 부탁드려요- >_<

This book is suitable for elementary level(very basic) learners.

Book Info.

Korean Language for a Good Job 1
Author : Lee Mi-hye Version : English / ThaiBook page : 212 pages
Supplement : Audio CD, Key Expressions & Drills…

Read more… 308 more words

Let's do this again! Will do it, until I win! ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

[Apply Now] 4th Book Review Lucky Draw just Began.

Reblogged from twoChois:

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안녕하세요-

다들 잘 지내셨나요?

제 3 회 Lucky Draw와 Bonus Lucky Draw에 많은 관심을 보내주셔서 감사합니다.

오늘부터 진행되는 네 번째 Lucky Draw도 많은 관심 부탁드려요- >_<

This book is suitable for elementary level learners.

Book Info.

Hello Korean 1 with Joon Gi Lee (English Ver.)

Author : Ji Young Park, So Young Yoo

Publishing company : Maribooks

Page : 288 pages…

Read more… 478 more words

Testing my luck again! If I win it, I will finish reading it, review it quick and give it away again to a new Korean learner through our IKLG (Indian Korean Learners Group) on facebook! So let's hope I win it! ㅎㅎㅎㅎ

[Lucky Draw Bonus Week!] We have one more. :)

Reblogged from twoChois:

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Surprise~~~

이번 주는 특별히 두 권을 준비했어요!!! (잘 했어요? ㅎㅎ)

이번 책은 Advanced learner들을 위한 쓰기 책 입니다.

많은 참여 부탁드려요~~

Book Info.

서강 한국어 쓰기 1 ( Sogang Korean Writing 1)

This book is written for students who is planning to study in Korea.

All written in Korean.

Suitable for advanced learners.

외국인을 위한 한국어 쓰기 교재이다. 학습자의 눈높이에 맞춘 문법 설명이 곁들여져, 문장 쓰기의 간단한 연습부터 복잡한 작문까지 단계적인 연습을 거치면서 한국어 문장 구조에 대한 지식을 습득할 수 있다.

Read more… 198 more words

this could be a bit advanced to me as I am an intermediate learner but I don't mind winning it and doing a review! :P thanks twochois!

21 Questions tag!

Celebrated Korean learner Shanna (hangukdrama.com) has posted “21 Question tag – the Korean learner version” post today 3 days ago, where she basically answered 21 random questions she came up with.

Here’s my version, I hope it isn’t boring and too long. Enjoy! I would love to hear your versions too, feel free to write them or tag your blog url in the comments..

1. Why Korean?

Short answer: I am interested in learning foreign languages and I happened to be watching Korean dramas that time and got curious with what all those ‘signs’ could mean…

Long answer here: http://prashlearnskorean.wordpress.com/2012/04/24/why-korean/

2. Daum or Naver (dictionary I mean)?

Daum..why? One reason is, the day I decided (late last year) to actively learn Korean, Hangul script wasn’t working in naver (don’t ask why, even I don’t know why!) and the other reason is I am quite comfortable with daum so far.

3. First website that you visit everyday?

I hate to admit but it’s facebook. If I my blog had as many active followers as Shanna I would be checking my own blog first.

4. Best thing that happened to you? (related to learning Korean)

Thanks to Korean learning, I met some amazing people from various nationalities.

5. Ever regretted learning Korean?

Not yet and never would.

6. Most common feedback/question you get when you say you are learning Korean?

Why are you learning Korean? [me being an Indian, lots of Koreans end up asking this first before anything else!]

7. First Korean food that comes to your mind?

비빔밥 [bibimbap] – I am not a fan of Korean food but it just comes to my mind if I have to think of Korean food.

8. Most over-rated Korean drama?

I agree with Shanna that ‘Full House’ is quite over-rated. I feel ‘Secret Garden’ comes a close second. Sure, it’s a good drama but not a great one in my opinion, please don’t bash me up.

9. Most under-rated Korean drama?

I would just say many of the dramas which came prior to 2009, especially in mid 2000s I guess. I started watching dramas in 08 and the initial dramas I watched mostly were which came in 03-07 time and they are pretty good unlike present dramas which I find too fancy compared with the older ones which had more content.

10. Latest milestone in learning Korean?

Passed Pegasus ‘GoGo’ course. (beginner’s)

11. Favorite Korean word/phrase?

바보 [babo] = fool.

12. Name 3 people (fictional/real) who motivate/influence your Korean learning journey.

Shanna (hangukdrama.com), if she could do it, we all could do it! Karla, fellow Korean learner, she spends so much of time than me on Korean and has been doing great so far I guess!

Hungrywolf (our first Korean teacher, I promised him I will not give up Korean and will one day be speak in Korean with him)

Allan (our recent Korean teacher from pegasus, although he is from UK, his Korean is excellent and sure is an inspiration to me)

13. Secret ambition/goal (relating to Korean)

How can it be a secret if we answer it? Anyways, my goal relating to Korean is to be conversational in Korean within next 2 more years.

14. I want to sound like _____ when I speak Korean

I want to sound like someone who can converse in Korean with Koreans.

15. Best compliment received (for Korean)

“우와~” by Korean friends I met in Toronto.

16. When is the last time you sat down and study Korean?

If sitting on an exam counts then, last sunday, because I took an intermediate Korean exam that day. [I failed!!]

17. Favorite textbook?

“Korean Grammar In Use”…why? because this is the book which is giving me some hope that I still can get better in my Korean.

18. Special people you met (online or otherwise) through Korean?

Hungrywolf (that’s his online name from [tt4you.com], he was my first Korean teacher online), karla and many more, can’t list them all here.

19. How has learning Korean changed you/your life?

It changed my life and me myself in many ways, I better write a different post just on this single question sometime in future. In short, I met many amazing people, it changed my views about cultures, languages, people and many more things for better.

20. Ever dreamt in Korean?

Not yet!

21. Single best thing about learning Korean?

I can read/write/speak Korean, one of the scientific languages in the world, isn’t that the best thing in itself?

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I think I could have written this post better if I had written it in one go rather than drafting it numerous times for 3 days and finishing it, finally today. I blame it on my laziness and schedules/unscheduled power cuts here in my country (India).

If you have done a “21 question tag” post, feel free to comment in the comments. I would love to check them out.

Some versions here:

Shanna’s original version: http://www.hangukdrama.com/21-question-tag-the-korean-learner-version/

Karla’s version: http://noshortcutstokorean.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/21-question-tag-the-korean-learner-version/

Archana’s version: http://panjjakpanjjak.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/21-questions/

 

[Apply Now] 2nd Book Review Lucky Draw Begins!

Reblogged from twoChois:

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안녕하세요-

다들 잘 지내셨나요?

제 1 회 Lucky Draw에 많은 관심을 보내주셔서 감사합니다.

오늘부터 진행되는 두 번째 Lucky Draw도 많은 관심 부탁드려요- >_<

Book Info.

Arirang Korean Basics 2
Author : Seoul National University Language Institute Book page : 224 pages Supplement : Audio CD
ISBN-10: 8959957631  ISBN-13: 9788959957637

About This Book
• Contents originally aired on " Let's Speak Korean " for Arirang TV.

Read more… 307 more words

Let's check my luck! Thanks 'twochois' for conducting this lucky draw! :)

Liebster Award

My friend Karla (fellow Korean learner) suddenly messages me on Skype saying she nominated me for Leibster Award. I wonder what is it about. Anything about any ‘award’ can excite just anyone. It seems to be an award created to discover ‘undiscovered’ blogs.

Read a blog post about it here. It appears to be some sort of chain letter/mail kind but I like the idea. We can discover new blogs which are not popular and could be in hiding although they have a quality content.

Thanks Karla for nominating me for Leibster Award. (‘Leibster’ in German means ‘dearest’)

Rules: (I wonder if these are the original rules!)  

1) List 11 facts about yourself
2) Answer the questions left by the blogger who nominated you
3) Nominate five (or more) bloggers who have less than 200 follower. Make sure to notify them.
4) Make up questions for those you have nominated
5) Display the Liebster Award badge on your blog

11 Facts About Me

1. I have more friends whom I did not meet ‘yet’ than friends from my ‘real’ life.

2. I spend more time on internet than anything else.

I hope this changes because I  strongly believe that living away from internet with our friends and family building bonding and relationships is quite important.

3. I touched other foreign languages too apart from Korean.

My first foreign language learning experience was with German way back in January 2009. It didn’t really go well although classes were quite good. I blame myself for that. Later, in late 2009 I took French classes as I might to to Canada the year after and Canada’s 2nd official language is French. I had to leave to Canada before I could finish that course. I re-took French again while I was in Canada but that was a disaster too. I’ll stop it here, otherwise this post might get longer.

4. I enjoy listening to quite diverse genres of music.

My music interests are quite diverse, they range from western classical to Kpop (not much lately, enjoy K-Indie now), Jpop to modern music genres like trance, house and electronic, our own Indian music (even regional) and much more. I always wonder how many do that.

5. I am not a religious person.

Although on paper I’m a Hindu person, I’m not religious at all. But, I still respect others and their beliefs and I expect them to do the same too.

6. My Korean name is 신군. [shin gun] (meloncreme wrote her chinese name as one of the facts about her)

Initially, I just named myself as 신,[shin] more than 3 years ago when I liked Korean drama “Goong” a lot. (신군 [shin gun] is the name of the main lead guy) Now, I use 신군 as I realized from Korean friends that ‘신’ [shin] can have more than one meaning.

7. Let me just tell you that I’m a software engineer and I have also studied Project Management. I’m into tech stuff quite extensively.

8. I am an introvert.

Yes, I am. I might not sound like an introvert but I actually am one. I’m quite reserved in my real life but I am quite opposite on internet.

9. I passed TOPIK (Test Of Proficiency In Korean).

Yes I passed TOPIK way back in 2011 but I have no proficiency in Korean at all. I can hardly speak or make sentences in Korean. Don’t ask how did I pass then.

10. I cannot swim. 

Yes, I cannot, which means it’s highly likely that I might just drown at places where we can just swim. I am planning to learn swimming though.

11. I cannot play any musical instruments too…(picking again from meloncreme’s facts, she said she cannot play any musical instruments too). 

We had music classes in our primary/middle school but we were not taught any music. I always had an interest to learn music but I haven’t yet. I bought a Yamaha Keyboard to learn music and attended basic muisc learning classes. I understood some theory but I still couldn’t get hold of the complete concept. Never knew that music could be this difficult.

I practice those basic notes once in a while now on my Yamaha keyboard.

Questions from Karla

1. Would you like to live in Korea? If so, which celebrity you wanna meet? What will you say?

Yes, of course. I might not cope well enough to live forever but for sure I would love to live there for a while. I like to live in other countries so that I can understand people there and their culture inside out.

I would like to meet Korean singer Younha 고윤하. I have seen her in concert in Toronto last year and she was just amazing.

I would just tell her that she is an amazing person and her songs are cool!

2. Do you have a mannerism? What is it?

I guess I brush through my hair with my fingers quite often in a day.

3. What is an ideal day for you?

An ideal day for me would be a day when I just wake up early and perform tasks all day which I have planned to do, have a positive mind all day and not end up hurting anyone around me.

4. If you could meet a person in the past who will it be?

My grandparents. I think that I didn’t spend enough time with my grandparents who have passed away years ago. I miss them.

5. What is your favorite subject in school and why?

Maths was my favorite subject. It’s probably because I find it interesting. It also could be because of the way my teachers taught us. I always believe that most subjects in our primary schooling can actually be taught in an interesting way and children don’t need to hate any subject.

6. What is the most exhilarating thing you’ve done when you were young?

Exhilarating = making lively and cheerful; making joyful.

I have been a bad kid, so I’m wondering if I did anything exhilarating lol. Will answer it if I remember any.

7. What is something you can’t live without?

Computer with a high speed internet on it. If you are asking me seriously? Then, I would say family and my friends!

8. What is the recent Korean word/phrase which seems to be running through your mind?

I can’t remember any at this instant.

My questions to the nominees

1. How many languages can you speak? How many are you learning at the moment? and why?

2. How do you lead your life with a positive attitude every day?

3. Mention 5 things from your bucket list.

4. If you would advise your previous self, what would you advice him/her?

My nominations:

1. Japanese Joshi (Nice blog if you are a Japanese learner)

2. Angeli’s blog (Karla nominated her for Leibster Award too, so I don’t want to trouble her but I wanted you to check out her blog. I’ll also let her know of my nomination some time later)

3. Cindy’s new magazine! (my friend Cindy turned her blog into a complete online magazine! Do check it out if you are into Korean stuff)

4. SOSHI LOVE (Karla nominated her already too!)

5. Karla’s blog (It would be nice if you answer my questions too Karla! )

Pegasus Gogo Korean Exam

I have been attending their courses for past five months but seems like I haven’t written about Pegasus courses or my experiences with them before in my blog so let me take this opportunity to do that now before I write about the Gogo exam I had yesterday. Pegasus is a society started by my online friend a British person who is studying Korean professionally (as in, in a University) and they conduct these free courses using Skype and other internet technologies like blogtv.com to teach Korean.

I have been taking both of their beginner’s which is called “Gogo” and intermediate level called “Push it!” Korean courses. Why am I taking both of them at the same time? because my Korean proficiency was somewhere in between when I was thinking about which one to take. Only now, I actually realized that I took a good decision of taking even the beginner’s one as there was still a lot that I thought I already knew, things like grammar and vocabulary, but didn’t and would have missed if not for this course.

If you are a Korean learner, looking for a proper way to learn Korean especially if you do not have access to any classroom lessons around your place then I highly recommend checking out Pegasus courses. They would be starting their next batch sometime in July (I’ll surely notify you all when they put their notification.)

Now coming to the Gogo Korean Exam which I took last night…basically it had 4 parts, Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking (yes, speaking too) in that order, 60 minutes to each except for speaking, which is just 10 minutes.

We were sent pdf files of the exam, audio files for listening part and we have to submit our answers in a document via e-mail.

Although I’m not a ‘beginner’ beginner in Korean language learning I still thought that I wouldn’t do well in this exam and was still a bit nervous but I’m glad that everything went by quite comfortably and was pretty ‘easy’ for me.

Reading! (60 minutes) – to my surprise I was able to finish it in just 30 minutes, that gave me some positive confidence which I needed to last for the rest of the exam.

Writing! – this one was not difficult but it took exactly 60 minutes for me to finish it. I had to skip few questions too.

Listening! – I am not sure what you write about this one. Either the Korean person’s Korean in the audio files is too fluent or my listening skills are bad or got worse, I had to repeat some audio files like 20 to 30 times to guess answers. Today, I learnt that even after listening to those files so many times I still answered a question wrong. (age of someone)

Speaking! – my topic (almost typed topik, lol!) was “Family”, luckily a fellow student had the same topic just few minutes before my turn came up. Not that I could prepare something in just 5 minutes gap but somehow I felt a bit at ease.

are you still reading this post? good! You got some patience! You qualify for language learning!

I’ll provide our exam files after consulting with our teacher if he is fine with me sharing them. If you are a beginner in Korean language, I am sure they will be quite helpful to challenge yourself and further your Korean learning.

Seems this post got quite long, sorry about that, I end up writing long sentences in general.

Time to brush up my Korean and Japanese!

Tags

hong kong trip, japan, japanese lesson, korea, korean, korean language, language learning, learning korean language

Hi everyone, how have you been? It’s been 2 months since my last blog post.

Excuse no. 1, I was on a short trip to Hong Kong and excuse no. 2 is that I’m a master of procrastination. (I do help people if they want to get some training in procrastination at no cost!)

Now, that I applied for JLPT N5 (did it today), it’s high time that I start revising my Japanese, hopefully I’ll revise it consistently. I’ll put my lesson notes on my blog one by one (did I say this already and didn’t do it? I’ll, this time around!)

Next post will be our 2nd Japanese lesson!

In my real life, we are already in our 34th lesson! But, seems like I just put only our 1st lesson on my blog!

And coming to Korean, early next month, we are having our final tests in the online course(s) by Pegasus Korean Society I’m attending. I’m so not looking forward to it! Why? I can hardly speak any Korean and beginner’s level itself has a 10 minute speaking section and I’m also taking the Intermediate level course (which itself has a 20 minute speaking section) along with beginner’s from them! (Why!? because I put too much on my plate than I can eat!)

I’ll just cross my fingers about how far I’ll take it with these 2 languages.

By the way, I’ll probably make a different post on my Hong Kong trip and also on the language learning books I bought during my trip.

Meanwhile, enjoy one of my Hong Kong trip pictures!

“What is the second step in learning Korean?”

Tags

blogging, korea, korean, korean language, language learning, learning korean language, talktomeinkorean

A Korean learner asked the question “What is the second step in learning Korean?” at a foreign language learning website called “Italki”. Below is my answer, which I replied to her at that website. You can check the question here at this link if you are interested in reading other answers, or answering it yourself.

http://www.italki.com/answers/question/179430-1-1-2.htm#.UQzCQ6VthB8
“I attended “free” beginner lessons by Korean consulate in Canada but I’m still not an expert and also a bad learner, because I have been “inactively” learning Korean for more than 2 years and still did not reach intermediate level yet but I’ll just write my opinion, I hope it might be helpful to you.

I don’t say that you should not learn vocabulary but we cannot also say that is the only second step. As we take more steps, at each step we add up more learning activities in language learning, that’s what I realized all these years of language learning.

What I mean is, first step was ‘learning hangul’, 2nd step could be of 2 or more activities like learning vocabulary, learning greetings and/or few expressions and may be also learning some basic grammar like the particles (subject/object/topic particles).

Then you can start learning the numbers, days. Remember, as you keep learning you will be learning some vocabulary at the same time because we will come across so many words in the example sentences of lessons we browse in internet.

As Mojave mentioned, TTMIK (talktomeinkorean.com) is a great for some simple and effective lessons, they are pretty organized by levels too. Unfortunately, they were not very effective for me as I didn’t practice consistently.

You might also want to check blogs of other Korean language learners to see how they are learning, for sure we can pick up some tips from here and there.

Shanna has a popular blog here: http://www.hangukdrama.com/
this is my blog : http://prashlearnskorean.wordpress.com

I hope that helps! Good luck!”

[Japanese] First Japanese Lesson!

Tags

anime, foreign language, japan, japanese, japanese classroom, japanese greetings, japanese language, language learning

So finally after procrastinating Japanese language learning for years, I ‘officially’ signed up for Japanese classroom sessions here in Hyderabad. We had our first session today and it was awesome in spite of the class being scheduled at a very early time, 7:30 am and you can guess how hard it could be for a person like me who is not an early bird.

I hope to share each of my class experience with these blog posts, I hope it’s helpful to someone out there. If you are interested you can study with me by following these posts.

What did we learn? First, Nakamura sensei started off by teaching us Japanese greetings which I described below..

ohayoo gozaimasu! (Morning)
konnichiwa! (afternoon)
konbawa! (evening)
sayoonara! (Good bye!)

watashi wa Masaki desu. (I am Masaki)

Onamae wa nan desu ka?
(namae = name)
(nan = what?)

Sumimasen! (Excuse me!)
arigatou gozaimasu! (Thank you!)
doo itashimashite! (You are welcome!)

Of course, you must be familiar with all of these expressions if you are already into Japanese language or stuff. By the way, we did not start learning Hiragana yet so she was teaching Japanese in romanized form.

Meanwhile, she also taught us that we have to address other people using a suffix ‘san’ along with their name. Then she made us say the following expressions among ourselves,

hajimemashite!
watashi wa prash desu.
yoroshiku onegaishimasu.

She then asked us what do we know about Japanese culture or places, and asked my classmates to find and show us where is India and Japan in the huge world map we had in that room (which was a board meeting room, as it was a Japanese company office). They had some difficulty finding Japan on the map, I helped them though :p

We then started discussing few places located in Japan like Tokyo, Nagoya (an industrial place), Okinawa (she said this is an important place to remember), Hokkaido, Osaka and she drew a map of Japan on the board and started marking out the cities in Japan.

JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test)

Conducted twice in an year, once in the month of July and again in December. There are 5 levels of JLPT

N1, N2 (These 2 are the advance levels and we are expected to know 2000 Kanji here)
N3 (Intermediate)
N4 & N5 (beginner levels, we learn scripts for N5)

Hiragana (45 characters)  & Katakana (45) both are based on sounds but Kanji (1000 + ~) have both sound & meaning.

Then she wrote Japanese numbers from 0 to 10 and asked us to remember in 3 minutes. Yes, just in 3 minutes. I wondered if I could do that, when she erased the Japanese words for numbers and asked us to recall them, I was able to recall all of them, so it seems like if we really want to remember then we can.

0 zero (ree)
1 ichi
2 ni
3 san
4 yon (shi)
5 go
6 roku
7 nana (shichi)
8 hachi
9 kyuu (ku)
10 juu

watashi no denwabangoo wa [5690-3544] desu.
(My number is [5690-3544])
- (hyphen) = no.