Status for 22-28 December 2012:
Over the holidays I have been studying a couple of chapters in my Sogang books, but not as much as I wanted to… We have family visiting incl. a two-year old who has enough energy to run on the walls if you let him.
The most efficient study method seems to be to arm yourself with a cup of coffee and books the moment he agrees to sleep. That would be now… I better make the most of this opportunity. Talk to you later!
How do you remember hanja? When I learn a new word I try to look at the hanja to see if I can relate it to some other words I have already heard, but honestly I find it a bit difficult to remember all of those strokes so I tend to look more at the overall shape.
For instance the following hanja I think looks a bit like Piglet from Winnie the Pooh (yes, I suppose I’m a bit damaged by having 4 nephews).
質
Doesn’t it look a bit like that character has ears, stripes across the body and then little feet? Like Piglet! 😀
(picture found on disney.wikia.com via google images)
This is one of the “four character hanja”-words.
우유부단 ~ indecisiveness
우유부단하다 ~ to be indecisive, undetermined
우유부단한 사람 ~ an indecisive person, someone who cannot make up his/her mind.
As you know I have been meeting with a Korean girl twice a week this past semester to improve my Korean and to speak English with her.
Her flight back home was yesterday evening so I think she has arrived in Korea by now.
Looking at all of my notes and corrections I can see I have come a long way over the past few months, which wouldn’t otherwise have been possible so I thought she also deserves a public thank you here on the blog.
I have been “inherited” by one of her friends who is going to stay for one more semester so if you wonder how ‘she’ suddenly turned to ‘he’ when I refer to my language partner, there’s the explanation 🙂
열심히 공부하려고 해요! 😀
Merry Christmas everyone! 😀 I hope you all get to spend the holidays with your loved ones.
We’re celebrating Christmas on the 24th in the evening, so that would be now, but I’m taking a small break while my parents are clearing the table.
We just finished dinner: a 5.5kg goose with caramelised potatoes, red cabbage, prunes, apples, and gravy for the main course and a particular dessert that I really like but haven’t heard any other family eat for Christmas (my sister really dislikes the the porridge that the traditional dessert is made of so our family has found a different one). That’s an aweful lot of food, but there will be some left-overs for tomorrow’s biiig Christmas lunch 🙂
My sister-in-law found the whole almond in the dessert so she won the “almond present”. Again. I don’t know how she does it, she must have an almond-radar that leads her to it when she takes her portion 😀
In a moment we will walk around the Christmas tree and sing carols. And then it’s time for the presents, chocolates, home-made Christmas cookies, and home-made chocolates.
What are your Christmas traditions?
A brilliant way to justify watching dramas for an extended period of time in my home is to iron clothes while watching.
Yesterday I was re-watching an episode of City Hunter while ironing, realising that I understand a lot more than last time I watched it 🙂 That should also be the case, but it was still nice to experience that all of my studies have paid off even if I haven’t progressed as fast or much as I had hoped.
화이팅!
Status for 15-21 December 2012
제26회 (B)
15. December 2012 어휘 및 문법 ~ 50 points
15. December 2012 쓰기 (excl. essay ~ 30 points) ~ 34 points
15. December 2012 읽기 ~ 48 points
More info: I did this test while on a train.
Comments for the week
26th test: I would need a pretty high 듣기 score for that test to go well… Overall this test felt hard, but I’m not sure if that is due to the environment in which I did the test (train), lack of coffee, general lack of skill, or any combination of the above.
Other prep
After doing the 26th test I have not done more old papers, but focused only on the Sogang books to get a better grasp of grammar and vocabulary in general since I felt I was running my head against the wall using only old papers.
I think I will use the old papers as a way to check my progress rather than as my primary preparation.
I’m hoping to go through a looot of chapters over the holidays:-)
Since we’re on a roll with the words related to folktales, let’s take one more:
권선징악 ~ promotion of virtue and reproval of vice/rewarding the good and punishing the evil.
권선징악하다 ~ to encourage the good and punish the evil.
It can of course also be used it in other contexts, but it is often used when talking about folktales.
교훈 ~ moral, teachings (of a story)
This word came up when discussing fairytales/folktales.
판소리 ~ traditional Korean folk song/ a solo opera drama
Many of the Korean folktales originally come from stories told in 판소리.
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