Love your bingo card!
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This is the best I can do:
Things are on the internet, but in apps. Since apps are both accessing the internet but also an app, both feel ok…?
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update: el bingo va sobre ruedas
- Podcast
I really have been in a podcast mood lately! - Write a diary entry
Intenté resumir la historia del libro que estoy leyendo, 긴긴밤, lo cual fue bastante más fácil de lo que esperaba ya que al final el vocabulario que necesito se repite tanto en el libro que está teniendo un efecto SRS. Quiero escribir más! - Workbook
I LOVE my workbook. - Crosswords
No es lo que más me atrae últimamente pero sí que hice un par de páginas. Debería tomarlo más en serio, porque hay palabras que no conozco, y podría añadirlas a mi lista de SRS. - Listening 7 days in a row
No apunté nada en el listening challenge para el día 2, pero estoy viendo en mi actividad de natively que sí que hice algo, así que… Just to be sure, esperaré a mañana para contarlo. - Finish a novel
Estoy muy cerca de acabar 긴긴밤 | L22, which is turning out to be as heartbreaking as promised. - Study sessions
Esto está yendo mucho mejor de lo que esperaba, llevo toda la semana estudiando casi todos los días. Hurray for consistency! De hecho me apetece mucho más estudiar coreano que japonés, tengo 0 ganas de estudiar japonés… - Memrise
Hice un par de sesiones pero aún no llego a 0. Y el memrise japonés ni lo toqué… En cuanto a encontrar una alternativa (porque los cursos personalizados de memrise dejarán de ser operativos a final de año), acabé descargando Anki, a ver cómo me va… Aún no he añadido palabras. No quiero dejar memrise, es perfecto para lo que necesito
- Italki
Tuve mi primera clase el martes!! Fue bastante bien, el tutor me dijo que tenía muy buena pronunciación, y un nivel B1 approx. Esto ya lo sabía. Lo que no me esperaba fue cuando me hizo unas preguntas sobre los días de la semana, y de repente empecé a confundirlos todos
Dijo que seguramente sería por el estrés, pero que aún así en las siguientes clases me haría un pop quiz de vez en cuando para interiorizarlo mejor.
Conclusión: compré un paquete de 5 lecciones
El martes que viene tengo otra clase con otro tutor, por ver otra metodología. - Finish a manga
He abandonado 숲속의 담 6 | L18. No estoy en el mood para mangas
Puede que vuelva a ello antes de fin de mes, puede que no. - Find a show I enjoy
No creo que lo consiga este mes, ni siquiera lo estoy intentando. No quiero ver cosas difíciles, no quiero estar buscando palabras y pausando a cada rato, así que me quedaré solo con los podcasts! - JP
Mmmmmmh no hice nada, ni tengo intención de hacer nada por ahora. No me atrae nada, quiero dedicar todo el tiempo que pueda al coreano. - Watch a movie
Quiero ver Totoro este mes para ver si los vídeos de nivel 20 son factibles para mí. - FREE SPACE
Estoy pensando en hacer algo que me hizo hacer mi tutor de italki el martes: traducir un texto del inglés al coreano, ya sea hablando, sobre la marcha; o escribiendo. Me resultó bastante difícil y creo que me ayudaría mucho a la hora de producir frases yo misma.
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Like this phrase! New one for me.
Glad it went well. A really fun way to develop your skills, and helps highlight some of your hidden weaknesses.
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This is a place to log important things, and so important things I shall log:
Dear diary,
Today both G-Dragon and Im Siwan were mentionned in the book I’m reading. I felt so happy catching a pop culture reference.
Look at him, freshly moved into the worst apartment of his life. How could you not mention him any chance you get?
Back to the book now, I spent too long looking for a gif.
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update: dejo de lado las cosas que no me motivan, y retomo la escritura
el bingo quedó así, y no creo que cambie mucho de aquí a fin de mes:
-
Memrise: creo que lo voy a abandonar this time for real, no lo estoy usando, me da pereza, y sobre todo, en mi último test de vocabulario a final de junio, vi que el número de palabras que conozco seguía aumentando igual sin usar ningún SRS que con Memrise. Supongo que el leer tanto ayuda. Así que todas las casillas de Memrise: fuera.
-
Japonés: I am NOT motivated to study Japanese. Esperaré a septiembre que empiece el curso, y me dejaré llevar. Casillas de japonés: fuera.
-
Find a show I enjoy: sigo sin ganas de ver series coreanas, de hecho empecé a ver algunas series en otros idiomas, so not for language learning, y lo disfruté mucho más. Así que dejaré los k-dramas por ahora, y me centraré en podcasts para mi listening.
-
Watch a movie: I still vaguely would like to watch Totoro in Korean and see if the level is right for me, but I don’t really want to watch it. I just want to know if I could understand it.
-
Finish a manga: Again, not in the mood for mangas. I guess I’m a mood reader, as well as a mood learner
-
FREE SPACE: this is actually very exciting to me: Recopilé todos los “diarios” que escribí a lo largo de los últimos 2 años en coreano en un mismo cuaderno, para empezar por fin a tomar la escritura más en serio.
A veces paso por fases en las que digo “ok, para mejorar lo que tengo que hacer es escribir un diario en coreano”, me dura un par de semanas en las que escribo párrafos cortitos todos los días, y luego lo dejo. Pues bien, quería agrupar todos estos párrafos en un cuaderno, no tenerlos en papeles sueltos o en 10 libretas distintas, y así poder ver la evolución.
Encontré cosas que escribí antes de siquiera empezar a estudiar coreano, cada palabra era nueva, cada verbo era un reto, los pronombres completamente aleatorios (though there was a point where I started being consistent, in that I only ever used 나는 for some reason; 저는? 제가? 내가? not for me thank you). También cogí los diarios que nos hacían escribir mis profes, corregidos por ellas, algunos libres, otros en los que tenía que usar la gramática que acabábamos de aprender. Una vez lo tuve todo en un mismo sitio, escribí un par de páginas, y espero poder seguir con una página por semana o así.
In other, non-bingo-related news, I am zooooming through 세계를 건너 너에게 갈게 | L23. What a fun book!
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update: tengo memrise al día?? hola???
I am sick of saying it in my head everyday, so I’ll say it here and maybe I’ll be able to move on at last: I need to increase my vocabulary.
In that spirit:
Por fin encontré otro sistema de SRS que podría funcionar - drumroll - ANKI (groundbreaking for a language learner, I know).
Hasta ahora me daba un poco de miedo usar Anki por todo lo que había leído de los que aprenden japonés - lo difícil que es crear tarjetas, modificar los parámetros, subir audios, imágenes, etc, pero resulta que es bastante fácil de usar cuando sólo quieres una tarjeta con un lado en coreano, un lado en inglés, sin archivos mutimedia ni nada del estilo. El único parámetro que modifiqué fue que tengo que escribir la palabra en coreano. Y boom, un SRS funcional muy parecido a Memrise.
Así que a partir de ahora, el plan para aumentar mi vocabulario va a ser muy sencillo:
- continuar con el input (lectura, escucha)
- aumentar el output (clases de conversación, redacción de textos en coreano)
- mantenerme al día de los repasos de memrise hasta finales de diciembre, cuando se supone que los cursos de la comunidad serán ya definitivamente borrados.
- cualquier palabra nueva que quiera añadir la añadiré a Anki, siendo mucho más selectiva que antes. No quiero tener un volumen de repasos diarios agobiantes.
EN
Up until now I was a bit wary about using Anki because of everything I’d read from Japanese learners, about how difficult it is to create cards, change the parameters, upload audio files, images, etc, but it turns out it’s not that bad when all you need is a card with one side in Korean and one side in English, no medias or anything extra. I only changed it so that I have to type the Korean words, and voilà, a Memrise alternative in due form.
So the plan for vocab growth starting
today:sparkles: is going to be very simple:
- keep up with input (reading & listening)
- up output (conversation classes, and writing things in Korean)
- keep up with memrise reviews until December, when the community courses should no longer be supported.
- any new word I want to add to an SRS will be added to Anki instead, and I’ll make sure to be pickier so not to end up with overwhelming daily reviews.
El primer paso para ello era ponerme al día de Memrise, y repasar las 200 (?) y pico palabras que tenía pendientes. Eso ya está hecho 
Ahora solo es mantenerlo cada día.
Y gracias a todo esto, 2 nuevos bingos!
- Memrise: hecho
- Find a show I enjoy: hecho también, sorprendentemente. 천국보다 아름다운 Limited Series | L30??
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The challenge I always had with Anki in Japanese is that there were three “sides” to my cards - word in kanji, word reading in Japanese, and English definition.
I presume in Korean that’s more straightforward and you just need two sides to your cards?
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Yes, since it uses an alphabet the reading is the spelling 
wait, how do you have 3 sides? Is it like wanikani where it asks you the meaning then the reading?
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oh if you’re getting into flashcard mining then worth checking out kimchi reader if you haven’t already. https://kimchi-reader.app/ you can use it to autocreate anki cards from text/video. (paid tool but at €45/yr it’s really good value for money imo) makes flashcard creation an absolute breeze
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Also be sure to check out the Anki Korean shared decks in case there’s anything handy there. Lots of people will tell you it’s best to create your own flashcards (and I do agree with them), but sometimes you just want a core 6k deck or whatever without having to put it together yourself.
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I’ve heard only good things!! For now I’m looking to stick to free ressources for vocab mining, and since anki doesn’t seem to be too much of a hassle I’ll wait on paying for Kimchi reader 
Oh thanks, I will have a look! I usually create my own decks, but there are a few on there that look interesting, I’m seeing a few dedicated to hanjas or to specific shows that I wouldn’t be uninterested in 
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So a physical flash card can only have two sides but a virtual flash card can have as many sides as you like! I guess 3 fields might be better terminology.
So the basic setup for me would be to setup the cards so I get shown the kanji and have to give the reading and meaning. But I might use the same deck to also have a card that shows me reading or meaning, and I have to give the other fields.
That’s where Korean sounds a lot easier - you only need 2 sides to each card. 
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update: resumen de agosto
no need to wait until the end of the day as I will not include my final page number (I should, because it is really much higher than I thought, but this month is all about the bingo.) (Still, you’ll be happy to hear I once again managed to read every single day.)
5 bingos! No blackout though, because 1. they took Totoro out of Netflix, literally how dare they? and just when I had decided to watch it too, that’s sabotage. 2. I decided to drop Japanese for now, as I have maybe never been more motivated to study Korean, and I want to spend all my available time on it. 3. I just don’t feel like reading mangas, idk what to tell you
- Podcast
Ninguna sorpresa aquí, escuché Didi와 정태웅의 한국생활 요모조모 (I might have a crush on both of them) (in the most aromantic way possible), & Didi의 한국문화 팟캐스트 - Write a diary entry
Escribí 7 en total, algunas sobre mi día a día, otras sobre temas concretos. I wrote 7 of them. - Workbook
Hice las 10 primeras lecciones, así como un repaso de todas ellas a fin de mes. Al hacer el repaso me di cuenta que ya me había medio olvidado de algunas de ellas… hmmmm… Tendré que usarlas más a menudo hasta que me entren en la cabeza. Did 10 lessons and a final review that showed me I really need to use the grammar I learn more often to cement it into my memory. - Crosswords
Hice algunas páginas a principio de mes, luego lo dejé un poco de lado. No pasa nada, el día que quiera volver a ello, allí estará, esperándome. I’ll do it from times to times when the fancy strikes. - Listening 7 days in a row
Hice 8 días seguidos, luego otros 7 Is it time for a 30-day challenge?? No, no it’s not. - Finish a novel
Acabé 2! 긴긴밤 | L22 y 세계를 건너 너에게 갈게 | L25. Los 2 me hicieron llorar of course. Finished 2 novels that both made me cry, that’s what I get for reading books that have reviews saying they made people cry. - Study sessions
Yup!! Este mes me dio un subidón, sólo quería estudiar! Y lo hice Like I said, I have been REALLY motivated to study Korean this month. - Memrise
Alternativa a Memrise
Anki
0 reviews me relajé un poco estos últimos días, pero no voy mal. - Italki
Tuve 3 clases, con 2 tutores distintos. Los dos me gustaron, y pienso seguir con ellos hasta sentirme más cómoda hablando (los dos ofrecen sesiones de conversación). Más adelante me gustaría incorporar clases de gramática. I had 3 classes with 2 different tutors. I’ll stick to conversation classes for now, and at some point will look into grammar classes. - Find a show I enjoy
Sigo sin ser muy motivada para ver series, pero vi 4 capítulos de 천국보다 아름다운 Limited Series | L30??, y no está yendo mal. Me gusta que la protagonista sea una mujer mayor (y que el protagonista sea Son Suk-ku 
). Estoy aprendiendo más palabras religiosas de lo que esperaba, pero ahora que lo pienso me va a venir bien porque el libro que acabo de empezar (너만 모르는 진실 | L24) está ambientado en una escuela privada católica. I started watching a show that has 1. an elderly woman as the FL 2. Son Suk-ku as the ML 3. quite a bit of catholic vocab, which will probably come in handy with the new book I’m reading. - FREE SPACE
I already mentionned this, but I compiled all of the diary entries I ever wrote (well, the ones I could find) into one single notebook, and I really love that I did that!! Nothing better to feel progress than to see progress.
Allow me to ramble about my diaries:
January 2023: I had been “studying” Korean by doing Duolingo everyday for about 3 to 4 months, so I knew close to nothing, could barely write hangul. But I would try my best to write a very simple sentence, feed it to google translate, see the changes it made, and if I could understand it, I would write it down. The highlighted words would go on a vocab list that I never once looked back on, but hey, my heart was in the right place.
(What is that about a woman giving me a gift?? Who is that woman? What was the gift for? Shoutout to her for giving me a gift so important I had to write about it.)
December 2023: A year later, I had taken a hangul course, as well as 1,5 courses (we were about half-way through our second textbook). This is when I hit peak handwriting I believe. I love how my letters look here. This was written as part of an assignment to practice honorifics
August 2025: This is one of my latest entries, and you can really see the handwriting has gone downhill. On the other hand, hey, I can write more interesting stuff now! It is cut short because it actually was a diary entry where I was trying to tell a funny story that had happened, and even though I tried to make it anonymous with Friend A and Friend B, I’ll leave the rest out 
Yes, I still write in 아/어요 form, because I haven’t actually taken the time to learn how to use the one you’re supposed to use in diaries… Maybe I should get on that, actually. I’d have good practice. Also maybe I sould stop referring to myself in the humble form when writing a diary… Ah, so much to learn. The next diary update should be as different from this entry as this one is to the first one
That’s it for August!
september
As you can probably tell by the bingo card, I love bingo cards! Though for September I didn’t do a bingo card, I also didn’t not do a bingo card. It really is just a weekly checklist, but made so that my brain thinks it is checking boxes on a bingo.
See you on the other side!
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update: me costó arrancar, pero la semana está completa
I didn’t do much for the first few days of the week, but once I got into it, well, I was into it.
Also I’ll resume my reading updates, because I like seeing how much progress I make!
libros / vocabulario
Sólo estoy leyendo un libro a la vez, principalmente porque no me apetece leer mangas últimamente, así que intento leer una novela al mes. Para el mes de septiembre, la novela es:
Primeras impresiones: los últimos 3 libros que leí estaban escritos en primera persona, y casi 100% en 반말 (casual speech). Este en cambio está en 3era persona, y todo en forma respetuosa y/o honorífica y/o narrativa.
Dicho esto, en cuanto a gramática no está siendo particularmente difícil, lo que me mata es el vocabulario. Tanto en 당연하게도 나는 너를 como en 세계를 건너 너에게 갈게 tuve que buscar muchas palabras, pero me parece que en este libro aún más. Siempre que creo que estoy mejorando me da la sensación de que sigo en el mismo punto.
EN
I am only reading 1 book at a time, and strive to complete one novel a month.
First impressions of my current read: the last 3 books I read were all written in first person and in 반말 (casual speech), whereas this one is third person and honorific / formal speech / narrative style. Not a problem, just a marked difference.
The grammar isn’t too bad, but the vocab, ugh. I have to look up so many words. If only it was just words related to the few specific topics of the book, but no, I also look up sooo many adjectives and adverbs that are not genre-specific, and it is
WHICH IS WHY:
I have decided to start mining sentences from the book, and actually start learning high frequency words that I still don’t know. I noticed, apart from theme-specific vocab (like this book is about a (1) catholic (2) school and (3) TW suicide so lots of words pop up related to those 3 lexical fields), I still have to look up TONS of adverbs and adjectives. And those are not specific to a theme, so they can randomly come up in any book regardless of genre.
So my experiment to not SRS so many words and see if my vocab still goes up comes to an end after 5 (?) months. I’m not mad about it, I think I was over it at the beginning of the year, but now that I’ve taken a break I am enjoying it again. Anki is really not as bad as I’d imagined.
series
Vi casi la mitad de 천국보다 아름다운 Limited Series | L31??, pero creo que lo voy a dejar. Se está volviendo demasiado religioso para mi gusto, y muy moralizante.
차렷!
I started taking taekwondo lessons this week: exciting because I am currently not in great shape, but also because we actually use Korean in class! So I now have to learn new words from that lexical field, and that will be done through oral immersion which is a first for me! I’ve learned words through written immersion, I’ve learned words through SRS, but hearing a word so often that you internalise it? … Well now that I think about it, it probably happened all the time when I was taking in-person lessons. But oh well, I’m still excited.
Also, funnily enough, the day after my first lesson I listened to the new Didi’s podcast episode, and the theme was taekwondo.
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I wasn’t going to do an update this week because I didn’t do much, but I just had an italki lesson with a new tutor and I am confused?? Maybe someone has had a similar experience and can explain?
I booked a 30-min trial lesson last month with this tutor, which ended up lasting for an hour. When I asked him why, he said he usually does 1-hour long trial lessons just to have more time to get a feel for the level of the student. That made a lot of sense to me, so I didn’t think much of it, and booked a package for 5 30-min lessons. Well I had my first proper lesson today, and we ended up talking for 1h45?? Is that normal?
I’m not complaining because I never thought I would be able to just chat in Korean for 1h45 and it was a nice experience, but is this man just… working for free? On a Sunday? I feel bad now because if I had known I would be fine with longer sessions I would have booked 1h lessons, but what can I do now?
I didn’t ask why he kept the lesson going because I was a bit baffled and didn’t know how to phrase it without sounding rude. Should I send a message and ask? Or thank him for taking the time??
This has been me processing in real time, thank you for your attention. Here’s a checklist card for your troubles:
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I’ve only had one Japanese tutor on italki and we always started and stopped on the dot. I think once we ran over a few mins when we were busy talking and lost track of time.
I always had one hour lessons and like you was thrilled that I could speak Japanese for an hour to someone!
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I haven’t used iTalki but I have had the same experience with Preply tutors. Only one has kept to the time slot unless they had another lesson straight after. Most over ran at least 15-30m.
I think it depends on the tutor and how they feel about it.
Depends on how you feel about it. I have apologized to them for lessons over running and thanked them for their time and leave it up to them, though I have at some points stopped the lesson if I found it was going over time.
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Look who asked for advice and promptly forgot to reply!
That was my experience so far, but I guess this tutor was in a chatty mood? In retrospect it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, it’s not like I made him keep the lesson going, I was ready to wrap up after 30 min.
Ok that’s good to know! I have another lesson with that same tutor next week, I’ll see how it goes. If he’s happy with longer lessons I won’t be the one to complain Speaking practice!! 
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On another note, if you look at the date I think you’ll find it’s readathon day!
Similar to my previous readathon, I won’t be posting on wanikani because I’m reading in Korean, but I will post my own little updates here in this post and then see how I fared!
monace 2025 Autumn Equinox Korean Readathon
Reading materials & goals 
너만 모르는 진실 | L24 : a week’s worth of reading, i.e 56 pages. STRETCH GOAL: 80 pages
기분 좋아지는 책 | L21 : read for 1 hour. STRETCH GOAL: finish
6 hours total of reading. STRETCH GOAL: 8h
pre-readathon thoughts
I set myself both page goals and time goals. Do I know how long reading 56 pages of my novel usually takes me? No clue. But do I know it roughly takes 5h, so reading 56 pages + 1h of my other book would sum up to my 6-hour goal? Again, no clue. I might be way off 10 pages / hour seems both slow and too fast at the same time. We shall see.
Updates 
9h17 - 10h15: 너만 모르는 진실
Read from page 160 to 173. My brain isn’t fully awake, and I have yet to have breakfast & coffee, so after a bit of stretching, to the café we go!
10h50 - 11h50: 너만 모르는 진실
Page 173 to 185
During our never-ending lesson last week, my tutor and I talked about café culture in Korea, and how they don’t really have outdoor seating areas over there. And he asked, completely seriously, “why would you want to sit outside?” 
Excuse me?? Why would you not??
Anyway, my outdoor café session went very well, I am now fully awake and ready to keep going.
12h15 - 13h12: 기분 좋아지는 책
Page 105 to 185
Getting really close to the end here!
This is a strange read, because on the one hand there are not that many words on each page, on the other hand I have to look up maybe 60% of those words. I’m not sure how I’ll grade it once I’m done.
14h13 - 15h27: 너만 모르는 진실
Page 185 to 204
Reading is fun! I love reading! My brain is fried!
I’ll take a break to do house chores (maybe buy snacks), and get back to it later this evening. I haven’t kept up with the updates over on wanikani, maybe now’s the time
17h50 - 18h50: 너만 모르는 진실
Page 204 to 215
I can’t tell if the book is getting harder or if it’s mental fatigue… Probably a mix of both.
Things are getting intense as we near the end of the story - and I mean intense plot-wise and vocab-wise. I wouldn’t have understood that sentence even if I hadn’t spent the entire day reading already:
성직자의 의무인 고해 성사 시간에도 → Even at the time of confession, which is the duty of the clergy.
Needless to say, I won’t be SRSing any of these words 
20h34 update: it is too hot to read 
Musical interlude
20h38 - 21h24: 너만 모르는 진실
Page 215 to 223
Nevermind the previous update, the heart works in mysterious ways. The moment I complain about not being able to do something is the moment I finally start doing the thing.
My e-reader just died on me, so I think that’s a sign to stop reading that book for today. I am on page 223 so I did reach my goal of doing a week’s worth of reading in a day Also I reached my 6-hour goal I’m five minutes short 
nvm, I do plan on reading a bit more of 기분 좋아지는 책 before going to bed.
23h16 - 23h32: 기분 좋아지는 책
Page 185 to 208
Finished!! That was not the easy read I was expecting, but it was really cute and uplifting, and relatable, I loved it.
And now, to bed I go! I doubt I’ll do any more reading tomorrow morning, but I will post the final results.
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