강미 | learning koreanWherein I finally bid farewell. With words, rather than absence.
One of my pet peeves is bloggers who point out how long it’s been since they’ve posted and how sorry they are for not posting. I’m not going to do that here.
What I am going to do is wrap up kangmi with some parting words on the best way I know how to learn a language--any language. Back a ways, I started studying Korean with a local friend--this was during a period when I focused on my Korean learning and didn’t blog about it at all. At the same time, I’d been reading Steve Kaufmann’s The Linguist on Language blog. He also has a language-learning site called Lingq. At the time, Korean was not one of the languages offered, so in conjunction with my tutor we came up with a plan. Namseok recorded books. I took the recordings and broke them up into smaller bites, maybe 30-60 seconds each. I studied the vocabulary on my own, repeatedly listened to the clips, and worked out my questions with Namseok.
It was work, and most of the work was mine. At the time I had a 60-minute round-trip commute, so I had plenty of time to listen to the audio. I found that within a short time my comprehension went way up, far beyond anything I’d achieved before. Had I continued, I expect that I would have continued to make progress.
But then life got in the way, and I haven’t picked it up since. And it seems likely I won’t pick it up again in the forseeable future. It was time to say good-bye a long time ago.
Still, I felt a pang when Lingq added Korean to its lineup earlier this year, but it passed quickly. However, I highly recommend Lingq and its methods. Listen a lot, read a lot. Repeat.
You’ve been a great audience, and I’ve made some life-changing friendships because of this blog.
The blog itself won’t immediately disappear, but eventually it will. Unless I have something else to say, this is the last thing you’ll see from me in your feed reader. You may, however, find more me here.
Posted by kangmi on August 29, 2010 at 3:30 PM