Hangukdrama & Korean

0 In N2 Journey

2019 JLPT N2 Experience

On 4 Dec 2016, I wrote the following about my first JLPT N2 experience:

1. I’ll very likely fail it, or in the best scenario, scrap a mediocre pass.
2. The listening was really tough.
3. I was not prepared at all.

Almost three years later, I will say the same things again hahaha. It’s entirely my own fault, but I felt really unprepared. I walked into the exam room not remembering what is the format of the JLPT exam and if the listening came first or not. Word of advice: don’t follow my bad example.

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today and I was in such a grumpy mood. For one moment (or more), I contemplated to skip the exam cos I just want to hide at home and wallow in my own unhappiness. (lol sulky kid much) But I remembered that I had skipped the N2 exam last year and told myself sternly that I would not do the same for no good reason. So I dragged myself out, bare-faced, uncombed hair and all. And I was glad I did.

Cos I felt soooo much happier while taking the test. I should do it every half a year or so, cos it’s really like language therapy. To spend a couple of hours concentrating on solving questions in a foreign language is a bliss. Really. It takes my mind off things and I’m truly immersed in a language I love.

The paper itself was rather challenging, and I felt even more so because I haven’t been practicing (or keeping up with) Japanese for a long while. While the front sections were technically supposed to be easier (?), I was stumped. I only felt more at ease at the reading section. I’m ready to face lengthy passages, but not “short” questions asking me how to read a particular kanji. I always fail at that. So I ended up feeling reasonably confident about the reading portion, but the grammar/vocab section was a total fiasco. I went with my “gut feeling” for quite a few 🙂

The listening portion was really difficult. I felt that I was relying more on my examination skills by picking up key phrases here and there and piecing information together, rather than understanding the whole dialogue. Definitely not good. I still have a long way more to go, before I can reach the same proficiency as I have for Korean, and even then, I’m not that good in Korean too ):

Nevertheless, I walked out of the exam room visibly happier and more motivated! 🙂 Which explains why I’m typing out this long post on my laptop. And I even have my N1 books now 😛 Time to start studying – for N1 in December! Ok, that’s on the premise that I pass N2 this time round. We’ll see.

But yes, it was a good day indeed.

7 July, 2019

Less than 1 month to JLPT N2

The cold hard truth in the title 😉

It’s less than one month to the exam and I’m finally beginning to study for it. Not so much to study for the test, but rather that the text is giving me motivation to study. I’m trying to do a #30daychallenge over at Instagram (@2eightytwo) but hahaha I’m so bad at keeping up. Nevertheless, I’ve been doing more for Japanese in the past week or so, and I hope to continue doing so.

One of my weakest links in Japanese is GRAMMAR. I’m pretty good at picking up (and remembering) Korean grammar points, so I’ve no idea why I find it so difficult to do the same for Japanese. It also doesn’t help when Japanese grammar points can look very similar >.<

Leaving you guys with some notebook pictures 🙂

Can’t wait for the day where I can continue on my N1 journey again. 🙂

16 June, 2019

0 In Others / General

Language Therapy

You know that sinking feeling of dread in your stomach? The unexplained unease and anxiety and stress. I’m not sure where to pinpoint that source of negativity, but I’ve been rather unhappy this week. The feelings manifested itself in physical symptoms too and I’ve been trying to keep myself calm and inject some rationale and reasoning in myself.

Was feeling slightly over the edge this afternoon and decided to pause and do something I love best – language learning. It’s therapeutic to just leave everything aside and delve into a different world. Was reading a couple of pages in of 리진 and I felt a lot calmer and happier after that.

That sinking feeling had subsided and I felt more like myself again. Was finding a playlist to keep me company and decided on my favourite Big Bang songs. I got into Big Bang sometime in 2009 and fast forward 10 years later, I’m still loving their songs. There’s a story behind how I started listening their songs. When I first started learning Korean, I was eager to buy books in Korean, way before I was even able to read a sentence coherently.

It was probably sometime in 2008. Back then, online shopping wasn’t that huge and I was a noob too. Hence, I went down to the 솔 Sol Mart in Cineleisure (who still remembers??), where they had a small selection of Korean books. I could barely read the titles of the books, and picked this one out. I think on the same visit, I also picked a parenting book. LOLOL. So you can tell that the choices were purely random and based on the book covers lol.

I didn’t know who those five guys were, and I probably never heard of the group. When I learnt more Korean, I started to read bits of the book and got curious who these guys were. By then I knew of Big Bang the kpop group and started to listen to them. It was probably an instant connection. I love their songs and continue to do so for the following 10 years. I watched quite a number of their variety shows and tried to keep up with their news. I cannot call myself a die-hard fan, but yet it was as close as I could have ever be one.

It was thus disappointing to learn of their negative news. While I still love their songs, I don’t think I can feel the same way about them again. ):

They were the legendary group (or one of them) back in those days and I really wished they could have remained as such.

If only. If only the fond memories could stay that way.

18 May, 2019

0 In Others / General

[REVIEW] Korean Stories for Language Learners

I love bilingual readers and I wished more had existed when I started learning Korean back in 2008. Those were the days where resources were few, and it wasn’t quite the norm to think about making online purchases from foreign websites.

I was delighted when I received Tuttle’s Korean Stories for Language Learners, and yet I wished it was published back in 2008, instead of 2018. Containing approximately 42 traditional folktales in varying lengths, it is a great bilingual reader for beginners to mid-intermediate learners. Tuttle has up-ed their game, by providing an enclosed audio CD for all the Korean stories. Yay!

As usual, skip to the back if you don’t want to read my long comments 🙂

At first I was a little perplexed cos the track number wasn’t indicated in each other stories. (how would I know how to match?!) But I realised that they had done so in the inner cover of the book (when you first flip it open). So fret not 🙂

For those without a CD players, Tuttle also offers downloadable audio files from their website (link in the inner cover of the book too)

This is so important, because most laptops don’t come with the CD drive anymore. Always love the little touches like this – shows that the author / publishing house understands the readers’ needs.

The audio material is recorded by a native speaker, and there’s a deliberate attempt to read it in a clear and properly enunciated manner. It’s helpful to the language learner, but rather “textbook-y” in nature.

Structure

Passage

The book is relatively well structured, with each passage getting longer (the passages at the back are around 3 pages long). As with bilingual readers, the Korean passage is on the left, with the English on the right page.

Pre-reading Questions

After the passages, there’s three pre-reading questions in Korean, which could be used as a classroom activity. As a self-learner, I just skipped that.

Vocabulary

There’s a glossary list of the news in the passage. I usually would ignore this portion and do up my own notes. I wished they didn’t use romanisation though. )): This was a major minus for me. It’s not a complete beginner book, and even if it was, I can only (somewhat) accept romanisation in the first chapter. Personal gripe about romanisation is that it primes the learner to see the foreign language in the lens of the sounds of English, which shouldn’t be the case. Each language has its own intonation, set of sounds etc, and should be learnt as a new sound system instead. /rant over.

Culture Notes

I like this section, which gives additional insights to Korean folktales 🙂

Comprehension Questions and Writing Activity

Yeah, needless to say, I skipped this portion 😛

Additional Materials

I found it interesting (strange?) that the book chooses to include some basics about the Korean language (e.g. pronunciation of Korean sounds, how to create syllables and some basic activities) right at the back of the book. I would have thought that the book assumes that the reader/learner has some basics of the language. A complete beginner may not have found these additional materials (right at the back of the book) helpful too, given that the explanation is rather sparse. i.e. Going through these materials will not allow a complete beginner to jump straight into reading the first passage with ease. There’s still a gap.

Overall Comments

What I like:

Interesting content, passages get longer and more challenging towards the back
Audio recording provided

What can be improved:

No romanisation – ok this is a personal gripe

While I love folktales, I wish bilingual readers could also explore more genres of texts. Hopefully Tuttle can come up with more bilingual readers in time to come!

Find this book on Tuttle’s website (with links to purchasing sites).

29 April, 2019

10 In About Translation/ Korean learning journey (:

Korean Literature Books Haul

Once in a (long) while, really love a book haul to make myself happy! Although it comes with the usual post-haul guilt of having too many books unread, and the real dilemma of having even lesser bookshelf space compared to books.

I’ve been wanting to read more Korean literature for a while, and more importantly, I’m actually fascinated by literary translation. Which is why I’ve bought both the original Korean and English translated copies of the books. If I may be even more honest, I bought the books because of the translators. Anton Hur and Deborah Smith are my favourites so far, and I hope to get to read more works from excellent translators. I haven’t read much translated works to be able to form a reasonably well-informed opinion yet, but I feel like both their translated works read really smoothly.

The Court Dancer by Kung-sook Shin and translated by Anton Hur is now my most favourite translated work. Really. I love how Anton managed to transform and translate the long descriptive (and rather convoluted) sentences from Korean into poetic prose in English. It’s smooth and yet manages to contain the amount of detail in the original description. I find that very fascinating.

To me, translation is both a science and an art. It takes skill to be able to read in a foreign language, more so to capture that meaning and style in a different language. At this point, I’m stronger in terms of reading non-fiction and hence I still have a long way to go to improve reading literature.

To be honest, I’ve always harbour a secret desire to get into literary translation. Despite the fact that I’m way much stronger when reading non-fiction texts. hahaha well, one can always improve right? At this point in time, I’m not sure if I’m really suited for it. I think I might do better in terms of non-literary / non-fiction translation.

I’m reading 리진 ( the original version) now, and then trying my hand at translating parts of the prose. And found my version to be so woefully inadequate compared to Anton’s translations. But it’s a fun process. I hope to be able to become a stronger reader in time to come, and to challenge myself again.

At times I feel like I’ve taken the fun out of blogging for myself. I find myself wondering if it’s easier for the readers to access if I write on social media platforms, and what kind of content I should put up in various channels. Come to think about it, I should first and foremost, write for myself. To enjoy putting my thoughts in words, instead of creating content for the sake of doing so (or for the views).

Perhaps that was why I stopped blogging for quite some time. It had somewhat lost that personal touch for me and became one of the things I have to tick-off in that never-ending to-do list. I had enough to-do lists at work, and hence the idea of having even more to do after work was not appealing to me (and I had no time). 2019 should be the year where I leave more time for myself, and things that matter to me.

Of course, if you guys are still around, would always appreciate a comment. 🙂

28 April, 2019

1 In N2 Journey

Back to the N2 Journey

Uh. How is it that the last post was in January?! I know time has been passing by really quickly, but it hits me hard when I visit my blog and realise that I’ve been MIA for the past three months. It’s an ongoing struggle of trying to keep up with the necessities of adult life (e.g. job) and then trying to carve out a space for myself. I’ve been trying (not too hard), and yeah, failing.

Finally found enough discipline to sit down this morning to study Japanese. I’m going to re-take JLPT N2 again this coming July. Cos I’m not ready for N1 yet. hahaha. It also serves as a motivation for me to study and to do more. This morning, I (re)-learnt 4 grammar points. Realised that I had ticked them off my grammar dictionary, but I can’t recall what they meant. Sigh.

Sometimes I think I don’t really know how to study Japanese. Unlike Korean where there’s a series of textbooks from level 1-6 published by major universities, I haven’t come across something similar in Japanese. Does anyone has any recommendation for advanced Japanese textbooks? I’m mainly reading novels, and using JLPT preparatory grammar books to learn the grammar points. Which I don’t find it efficient.

Listening to my fav piano pieces performed by Yuja Wang. I don’t really see myself as a classical music lover, but somehow I’m drawn towards her performances. Really hope to see her perform in person, but it doesn’t look like she has any recitals etc in Asia in 2019/2020. ):

On a side note, I love quiet weekends.

Jumbled mess of thoughts. Losing the ability to blog and write in coherent paragraphs.

21 April, 2019

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