[.018] Roadmap to Speaking Success

(So, I had this to be posted a week ago but only today I realized its status was “private” -_____- Yep, I’m clumsy like that.)

안녕하세요!

This week I hadn’t much free time to study and when I had it, I just wanted to sleep or to read my current book (it’s called Red Rising, I’m finishing the first one and I really recommend it). I first started reading it in English (don’t know why, but the English version was cheaper and easier to find than the Portuguese one ._. and it’s not even a well-known trilogy here in my country .__.’) and now I’m finishing it in Portuguese cause I felt like I wasn’t fully enjoying it in English… I’m not fluent in English, but I never felt like that while reading other books. Even when I was reading 1984, that’s a more “complex” book, I could enjoy and understand it completely… ._. Weird.

Anyway, as I said, I’m going to review KDA’s the “Roadmap to Speaking Success” program today 🙂

So, to start, I just got enrolled after seeing a few people giving good reviews about it for a while. They sometimes kinda sound like those products full of fake promises we see on TV, as I said before. Honestly speaking, their ‘design’ was what got me unsure about them when I first saw their website. It seemed like those scam sites, where they ask your infos promising they’ll share the secret of life with you and when you realize, you lost your money. It’s not the case here, fortunately.

About the “Roadmap to Speaking Success” program itself: I do like it so far. I didn’t try their videos yet, so I can only talk about their program. It’s composed of 7 .pdf files, one for each day of the week (but it’s not a problem if you need/want to take longer than that). Each file has a few steps and how much time you’d need to do it, approximately.

It’s kinda like:

~ STEP 1 (5 minutes): Review the words you memorized yesterday to make sure you can still say them from memory.

~ STEP 2 (5 minutes): Memorize FOUR MORE words from that list (that you don’t already know).

~ STEP 3 (10 minutes): Watch the ‘bla bla bla (fictional name)’ video; keep general notes on things mentioned.

It’s kinda like having a teacher guiding you and saying what you should do next. It’s good for me because I often get “lost” while studying, not knowing what I should do next to “fix” things better. I’m trying to combine it with things that I do already and that I know that works for me. I guess I’ll set a new schedule for me, since the last one wasn’t successful ㅠ-ㅠ

Overall, I do recommend it. It’s a simple study guide and may be useful if you don’t have one already. My only complaint is that I can’t download the last two .pdf… I already sent them an email and got no response yet 😦

That’s it! 🙂 ♥

안녕하세요!~

[.013] 드디어! 내 책을 왔어요!

안녕하세요!

So, my new books from TwoChois arrived last week (and I’m posting about them a week later because I was too lazy, sorry)! Yay! They took more than a month to arrive, even with the fastest shipping method… It obviously isn’t TwoChois’ fault, as always, they’re perfect! ♥ It’s just that the postal service in my country is reeeeeaaally poor… ㅠ__ㅠ Anyway, I’m glad they’re finally here! Here are the books I bought this time:

Ewha Korean 1-2 with workbook and Yonsei Korean Reading 1 + pretty handwritten note from TwoChois ♥

I know a lot of people here already know these books (and I still don’t know how to write a good review, shame on me), so I won’t write a full review on them, ok? If you want to know about any specific detail, just ask and I’ll try my best to help! 🙂

So, as I was getting through the middle of my Ewha 1-1, I ordered the 1-2 with workbook so I could continue studying BUT I noticed that, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t focus anymore. I just couldn’t learn anything more. I guess I was overworking my mind? I even commented about it with Julia on her blog when she posted about having a “Hangul Headache” and that she needed time to consolidate and absorb properly what she learned until now. I felt exactly like her and I still feel somewhat like this, I still can’t focus properly and my mind seems to not get anything new…  ㅠ__ㅠ The good thing is that I didn’t forget anything yet, because I keep reviewing things. As of now, I’m redoing all the Ewha 1-1 exercises, to fix those things better in my mind 🙂

The Ewha 2-1 is pretty much exactly like the previous one. Reading through its Table of Contents, I could see that there’s a lot of grammar points that I already know from KGIU – Beginner (from right before I stopped using it as a main resource), so I think it will be easy for me, except for the vocabulary, that’s my weakness.  Here are some photos:

Ewha 1-2

Ewha 1-2 CD

Table of Contents

The main characters remain the same from the first book ^^

Sample exercise 🙂

Another sample exercise with images (and foooooooooood!)

Ewha 1-2 Workbook

Ewha 1-2 Workbook index

Ewha 1-2 CD

With my Ewha 1-2 + workbook, I bought 연세 한국어 읽이 1! I must admit that I got a bit afraid when I saw this book ㅋㅋㅋ It is BIG. I mean, It’s noticeable bigger than all my other books…

Comparing 연세 읽이 and 이화.

Can you notice how bigger 연세 읽이 is? 😮

연세 읽이 is also a bit thicker than 이화…

… and it has no English translations on it! It indeed has english/japanese/chinese translations for the vocabulary part, but all the instructions are in korean… I don’t really think it’s a bad thing, but I’m used to have and use books that have at least some kind of translation of the instructions so the student knows what he needs to do. I didn’t use 연세 읽이 that much yet (I just opened it and tried to read some random pages), I think I’ll need a dictionary in order to understand some things even though the exercises aren’t hard…

Overall, I liked 연세 읽이 1 and I think I won’t have any problem with this one. It’s full of drawings, the fonts used are in a good size, the paper is good, it has all the answers on the back of the book… The cons? It’s big and heavy. I don’t think I can carry it on my backpack everyday as I do with the Ewha ones, unfortunately 😦

연세 읽이 1 and its glossy and beautiful cover!

I really liked how they tried really hard to explain the sounds and how to differentiate them (even though I still get confused every single time)

The audio CD is really helpful. The voice is nice and good to hear and he/she talks normally and then a bit slower, so the student can try and repeat after him/her.

I love this section! It gives you hints on how to pronounce some words and examples of sentences using them. Useful, right? ㅋㅋㅋ

Vocabulary section and the English/Japanese/Chinese translations!

Vocabulary section and the English/Japanese/Chinese translations pt.2 (and I always get me wondering how I’m supposed to read/pronounce what is written in Japanese, lol)

I really like the drawings 🙂 (and you can see an exercise here. They’re not hard, as you can see)

Ah, I also received a free magazine!! It’s the June issue of 1st Look ♥ Did I say how much I love korean magazines? They’re BEAUTIFUL! I can’t understand much of what is written, but I like reading them and feeling happy for recognizing some words and understanding a few sentences ♥ The last one I bought has an interview with Beast and I don’t like them very much but I got really happy because I could read and understand some parts of an interview with them! Here are the photos of this one I received from TwoChois:

이동건 on the cover!

As far as I could understand he’s promoting his new (not so new by now, thanks to lazy me) movie called “우는 남자”. It seems good!

Some pictures…

… and some more pictures. 🙂

A random page about a party with a lot of famous people…

I really liked these “couple styles” they showed on this article. ;3; I want them all!!

Oh, here is my country! LOL

That’s it! 🙂 Thanks again to TwoChois and their amazing service! You’re awesome! ♥

안녕하세요!~

[.010] New schedule!

안녕하세요!

It’s been a while, right? ^^ Sorry, I’ve been really busy… I was having classes on saturdays, so I was getting really tired -___- But now I’m free! haha ❤

So, I’ve been trying to come out with a weekly schedule for me to follow… I feel that even though I’m learning with how I’m doing, I could use my free time better and learn more… I’m still struggling with vocabulary >_<

This is what I came up with now for weekdays:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Going to work/back home (1h every day)	Morning: TTMIK podcast Night: Anki (vocab)	Morning: TTMIK podcast Night: Anki (vocab)	Morning: TTMIK podcast Night: Anki (vocab)	Morning: TTMIK podcast Night: Anki (vocab)	Morning: TTMIK podcast Night: Anki (vocab)
Free time at home (+ or – 1h every day)	TTMIK lesson (level 2) Review of last lesson	Ewha lesson Story + worksheet from Fresh Korean	TTMIK lesson (level 2) Review of last lesson	Ewha lesson Reading little articles from korean magazines	TTMIK lesson (level 2) Review of last lesson

It’s slightly more focused on vocabulary, because I feel it’s my weakness >__<

Weekends:

	Saturday	Sunday
Afternoon (+or- 2 hours)	Sogang online Reading entertainment news on Naver	KGIU Reading little articles from korean magazines
Evening (+or- 2 hours)	KGIU Extended conversations from Fresh Korean	Review weekend lessons Basic Conversations from Fresh Korean

I have more free time on weekends, obviously, but I don’t want to “overwork” my mind… >_< I think + or – 4 hours every saturday and sunday is enough for now ^^

Anyway, it’s my first time trying to follow a schedule, so I don’t even know if it’s going to work. I’m sure it’ll need some adjusts here and there with time…

This week I’ve been using mostly Anki and TTMIK podcasts every free time I had… I feel that my vocabulary has improved a lot, so I got one of my magazines and tried to read an inteview…

Here are some random photos of the magazine I used, it’s the June issue of CéCi Korea ^^ The last photo is the first question from the interview with Beast that I’m reading ^^ I’m not a super Beast fan (actually, there were a time when I totally disliked them >__< now I’m kinda “relearning”to like them), but the interview is really interesting.

Ah, in this magazine I saw an ad for a new movie called “하이힐” (the 4th photo), went looking for it on the internet and found the teaser… I liked it! I’ll include it on my watchlist! 🙂

That’s it for today! ^^

[.005] TwoChois, 사랑해요!

Short post just to show you my second parcel from TwoChois that arrived today 🙂

Did I say already how much I love TwoChois?? They’re AMAZING! They’re the best online store I ever tried! If you haven’t bought from them yet, you’re now probably asking why the hell I love them… Here are some reasons:

~ If you have any problem or doubt, they’ll help you as much as possible. My experience: I had a problem with paypal so I couldn’t pay for my books, no matter how much I tried. I sent them an email and they replied me fast, even though in Korea was about midnight. I mean, which other store would reply your email at midnight and keep talking to you until about 1AM?

~ They have A LOT of good books with sample images, good description and very reasonable prices.

~ They ship your parcel really well-packed and fast, and they send a cute handwritten note with some kind of “cute gift” ❤ With my first buy, they sent me a cute notebook, with this last one, they sent me a cute bookmark ❤

~ They offer ~special orders~, which is great if you want something other than books that you can’t find easily on the internet, like clothes, some cds, etc…

Resuming all these reasons in one: They CARE about their customers, and this is great! I’ll surely buy more with them soon! ❤

Ewha 1-1 and 초등교과서 단어의 비밀 받아쓰기 1학년

My cute bookmark and a handwritten note from TwoChois ❤

This time I bought Ewha 1-1 with workbook and a book for children called 초등교과서 단어의 비밀 받아쓰기 1학년 (The Secret of Vocabulary in Elementary Textbook Level 1). I’ll write a review on this 초등교과서 단어의 비밀, but since it’s recomended to early intermediate level learners, it’ll take some time 😛 I think I won’t write a review for Ewha because there are a lot of great reviews about it on the internet already, here’s a good one as an example: [KOREAN TEXTBOOK REVIEW] EWHA KOREAN LEVEL 1 & 2 이화 한국어 – Hangukdrama 🙂 

I guess I’ll start working on Ewha tomorrow, but I have no idea on how I’m going to use it in combination with Korean Grammar in Use and TTMIK workbooks… Hmm, any ideas?

Well, that’s it! Thank you for reading! ♥
감사합니다! ~.^

[.003] My korean magazines!

안녕!

So, I decided to write a short post today about my magazines so I can continue studying and still keep this blog updated 🙂

My korean magazines ♥

These are my korean magazines! 😛 I bougth the “GEEK” one at eBay and the others at DVDHeaven. I haven’t read them all since I’m still a beginner *cries*, but I already tried reading some articles here and there. I can’t understand much of what’s written, but I can recognize a few words and even learn new ones. I think they’re quite useful to practice your reading, even if you’re a beginner like me. 🙂 Plus, with them I’m reading things related to my idols, so I probably won’t get bored. You’ll learn while having fun, what else could one want? 🙂

I bought these magazines because of a kpop group that I like, but I ended up liking the magazines themselves. I mean, their photos are AMAZING, their formats/diagramations are really well made and (except for the Bromide one, lol) their material are very good! They got me impressed, really! Even if I can’t understand what’s written, I really like looking at them.

I forgot to take pictures of the Junior & StarM one, sorry. hahaha

If you have a chance of buying any korean magazine, try it! I bet you won’t regret! ♥