Study activities from Sept 21 (D-24)
Total(s):
~1 hour of listening
Almost the weekend 
it’s my first weekend with no plans in a while so I’m looking forward to getting in a lot of Korean!
Study activities from Sept 22, 23, 24 (D-19)
Total(s):
~9 hours of listening
~60 pages
It’s amazing what I can get in when I have some free time. It was a super fun and productive weekend and I especially had a good time revisiting 녹색전상 since I could see my Korean had improved a TON since I last read it. ahhh 성취감을 느끼다~
I haven’t updated my goals overview in a while but since I accomplished a few this weekend here’s how it’s looking now:
)
Finish the vocabulary textbook できる韓国語韓国語能力試験 必須単語集 (DONE 2400/2400)Get to 300 hours of listening (DONE 302/300)Read 30 newspaper articles (DONE 30/30 done)Almost there! I’m especially happy about hitting 300 hours of listening! I feel very solidly B2 in listening these days (in terms of the CEFR scale) and I think 300 is a good reference for hitting upper intermediate listening skillz.
I had some significant and unexpected things arise in my personal life this week, including news that about something that will make me unavailable on the weekend of the 90th TOPIK. 
So it’s with a heavy heart that I’ll be sitting out the test in two weeks. I’ve been consistently studying for it for around 5 months now so this is bummer, but all the progress and growth I’ve made is still there! It’s now time to shift my goals and enjoy all the knowledge I’ve gained from my hardcore studies and start building on it. 
I’ll try and take it in April during the next round instead.
I can feel I’m at the point where I am ready to really dive into immersion and start enjoying Korean content, so that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. I learned Korean for Korean literature and watching dramas so I’ll be setting goals around those for the rest of the year instead. 
I’m looking forward to getting back to having more books in my life especially and reading vs. just doing textbook studies!
New goals
This study log really kept me motivated for the last weeks but now that I’m focusing on immersion, I think I’m going to update it only on a weekly basis instead as I will have less log worthy content everyday.
앞으로도 잘 부탁드려요! 
It might be disappointing to postpone taking the TOPIK exam, but immersion will improve your understanding even more and you’ll get to enjoy all those books and dramas! 
Yeah for sure! I was just taking it as a fun personal challenge but all the additional immersion means I’ll absolutely smash it when I do get to take it. 
Dang, sorry to hear. 
I’m glad that it was just a personal goal and not some outside obligation, at least. Maybe it could be fun to take a practice exam now, and then one before you take the real exam next April to compare the two, see how much immersion really glued stuff into your head?
I think I definitely will try and take a practice test (at least for listening and reading since I’m not sure how I can grade writing accurately on my own, even with corrections)! I’ll make sure to report back with the results, of course. 
For science!
Mini progress update
I managed to find the time to take a reading and listening practice test and these were the results:
Reading: 88/100
Listening: 90/100
Total: 178/200
The threshold for passing level 6 is 230, so that means I would need at least 52 points on the writing which I think would be doable. Of course, some words might come up on the real test that I wouldn’t know causing me to get less points, but I think I am still solidly in very high level 5 or level 6 territory! Not bad for 22 months of studying!
I’m still a long way off from being able to understand nearly all content very well, but this has been a really fun experiment in using my language learning knowledge and experience from other languages I’ve studied to learn Korean fast and efficiently in my own way. 
In other news, I started watching 마스크걸 S1 | L30 and it is crazy?! Disturbed?! Depraved?!? And I’m kind of loving it so far! I’ve never seen a k-drama this dark before - it almost feels like a movie. Off to go binge the rest of the episodes. 
안녕!! 
I’m back with an immersion update. The last week or so has been busy with work and I’ve also been reading a lot in Japanese, but I still have a lot of Korean activities going on (ahem, mostly dramas but it’s good listening 
).
Here’s what I’ve been immersing with and some mini reviews:
A short story collection about female relationships. 
This has really surprised me so far because the scope of the relationships explored go beyond just familiar, everyday relationships such as mother and daughter, sister and sister, friend and friend. These stories also feature international relationships and some have sociopolitical events lurking in the background, showing how sometimes powers beyond our control change how we relate to others. I think that wide view is really cool and I’m appreciating it as I go along reading. 
As far as the language level, there are a lot of lookups and the occasional sentence I can’t parse very well, but it feels really appropriate for my level! I remember trying to read the first page of this book about a year ago and feeling like it was impossible so I’m really happy about my progress!
This ended up being a solid 3 out of 5 stars for me. I was really into the first few episodes and was blown away by the cinematography and how dark and fresh it felt, but then it fizzled out HARD by the last episodes (for me). 
The first few episodes had some really interesting twisted action, amazing acting, and made me think about beauty standards and how they affect men and women differently. The last few episodes unfortunately just felt like a different show and I didn’t really get the message or understand where things were going, so…solid meh for me. Too bad.
I’m watching this very slowly with English subs together with my husband, so I’m not really sure if it counts as proper immersion…but, I am loving this drama!!! Like, what were the writers even thinking when they came up with this?! It’s so silly and awesome without turning cringe or dumb. I look forward to when we watch the “butt touching” show every weekend. Solid recommendation so far and maybe my fav drama that I’ve watched all year!!! It’s really great for making sure the word 엉덩 gets burned into your memory.
I finished part 1 back in January and waited all the way until now to start part 2 — and boy am I glad I did!! Part 2 seems to be really unpopular with people since the FL actress changed, but enough time has passed that it doesn’t bother me + seeing all the familiar characters come on screen again was so nostalgic! Jang Uk! Seo Yul!!! 어머머!!
I absolutely loved part 1, so it feels really fun to come back to the same fictional universe. I hope all the children get a happy ending. (Can you tell I’m already having a lot of fun with this even though I only watched episode 1?!)
After studying so hard for such a long time, it feels awesome to just chill out and watch some dramas for fun now. Then to actually be able to understand the majority of them too… this is what I set out to do! I think I’m going to keep taking it easy like this until the end of 2023 and not put a strong focus on active vocabulary acquisition for the moment. Once 2024 begins I’ll think about how I want to ramp up my active immersion and studying again. 
Edit: the natively links wouldn’t automatically format when in a drop-down so I wrote the titles of stuff as plain unformatted text
쇼코의 미소 sounds interesting, I’ll have to add it to my wish list! 
I said what I said! That’s the premise of the drama! 
안녕! So, my plans have shuffled themselves around once again and I am suddenly available tomorrow, which means I’ll be able to go and take the 90th TOPIK exam!
Since I didn’t think I’d be able to go, I stopped practicing for the essay portion and feel a bit underprepared. I’m the type of person who loves being very organized and prepared or over prepared (ideally lol) for tests, but since 1) the TOPIK is held in my city, 2) I’ve already paid for it, and 3) I’ve studied 5 months for it and am prepared as I can be, I’m gonna go for it. Wish me luck! Even if I get a score in the high 5급 range I’ll be happy, so I’m going to relax and have fun taking it. Let’s go!
What am I doing to prepare?! I’m busy today and don’t really have time to cram, so my preparatory activities have been writing key phrases I can use for the writing portion on a few A5 notecards. My plan is to then study those on the subway heading to the test site haha.
If anyone is interested, I can share how the testing experience is and how it went tomorrow!
Please do! 잘 보기를 바랍니다! 화이팅!
고마워요! 꼭 할게요~
Good luck! I’m sure you’ll do great!
Good luck, bungakushoujo! You got this!
Hello hello My updates on what I’ve been up to this week:
Are you ready? Can I get a drumroll…for the biggest anticlimax ever? I don’t have any test taking experience to share because it turns out the TOPIK was yesterday?! 
Yes, yes it was! And I discovered that fact when checking my registration slip this morning! This is actually the first time in my life I’ve ever mixed up an important date, but I thought I wasn’t going to take it and my personal life has been very dynamic lately, so I guess I understand why it happened. Just lol though. The date Oct 15 was just really stuck in my head.
Anyways, I was slightly disappointed since I was all ready to go take it, but thank goodness I don’t need the scores for anything so this isn’t a huge deal. I will catch the next round in April and triple check the date. 
Now back to our regularly scheduled immersion programming! 
I finished season 2 of Alchemy of Souls extremely quickly! The second season was maybe not as great as the first, was a bit overly complicated and had a lot of fluff but it was still a really good watch. I would give it a really positive 3 out of 5 stars — some of the acting is fantastic and all the characters are charming and easy to get attached to, but it didn’t have quite the impact of the first season and some of the writing wasn’t the best. Still an enthusiastic recommendation though! Language- wise, I found myself understanding about 80-90% of the dialogue since I became really familiar with the vocabulary of the world over 30 total episodes. The biggest trip-ups were food names, proper nouns, and historical items.
I am also still slowly working my way through Behind Your Touch and still getting many laughs out of it.
I’m not sure what drama I want to watch next yet — maybe something historical? Alchemy of Souls totally put me in the mood for more!
I didn’t do a great about of reading this week besides catching up with the 책벌레의
하극상 book club. All the shiny Japanese book clubs have me distracted (and Alchemy of Souls had me hooked…). I will probably try and read a bit more in the upcoming week to get back into the habit, since reading is where the biggest language gains for me are.
Oh dang, sucks to hear! At least you don’t need the test for anything else. Man, you never think the date mix-up will happen to you until it does.
Haha it can happen to anyone! Really true!
It’s all good, though. I think this will end up becoming a funny memory for me. It also means tons of time to practice essays and get a very high score on the next round. 
I don’t remember where you posted about it recently, so I’ll just mention here: than you for the great recommendation about the proper nouns Anki deck! I downloaded it because I’m tired of being unable to read author’s names, and it feels really good to study place/people names specifically. Top notch rec. 
