crossmr

Learning at an appropriate level

Using resources and materials appropriate for your level of learning is occasionally difficult for language learners of all languages.  People may be attracted to a language for a variety of reasons including things like music, movies, or TV. They may decided they want to learn the language and use those as the basis for the attempts at learning.

Many people forget that these media are written for fluent adults or teenagers and when they begin to learn the language they are much like a 2 year old child in terms of level of comprehension. While they might eventually gain some level of understanding of these through multiple listenings a much more natural approach of leveled learning will help them progress faster and easier.

Years ago when I taught myself to play the guitar I made this mistake. I took a complicated song from a band I liked and figured that would be what I would learn to play first. Only after some frustration did I realize I should start with things less complicated and work my way up to it.

I have a Korean friend who was using the American TV show "Prison Break" to help him with listening practice. Unfortunately the show was well beyond his level and he often had to watch it 15 times to pick up about 50% of the show.

When I decided to learn Korean I was doing it for a number of reasons, one to watch movies without subtitles, and two because I want to move there and teach English. I also wanted to be completely fluent, reading, writing and speaking. I knew that a quick tourist Korean class wouldn't cut it for me.  So I took a much more leveled approach.

Initially I taught myself using the Declan Korean language software (I highly recommend it) to read and write the letters. I still have a little trouble remembering the diphongs but it did a pretty good job. When I started my first language exchange in May, the Korean fellow was pretty impressed with how much I already knew. Through that language exchange we started with very basic grammar and worked up to more complicated things. Recently I also got the 가나다 series of Korean language learning books to help me learn, they also feature a leveled learning approach.  For reading practice I went to my local library which actually has a pretty large selection of Korean children's books. I imagine some adults would feel a bit silly reading children's books, but I think you just have to look at as part of the process.

So while it may be tempting to use very advanced levels of materials (such as movies) for your learning, try to stick to something thats good for your level. it'll get you to that advanced level much quicker. That's not to say you still can't watch those TV shows and movies, but don't use them as your primary learning source. I like to think of them as immersion tools. You might not understand the words, but it accustoms you to hearing the language and you slowly begin to pick up words in those shows.

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