The Benefits of Failing at French

There's actually a great list of resources here.

http://www.reddit.com/r/korean

and more specifically here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Korean/comments/rq3th/the_ultimate_b...

Right now I'm using Ankidroid and Anki for Windows and OS X (all free and they sync with Ankiweb, Anki for iOS is some small fee) for vocabulary. There's tons of "decks" (all free) available through Anki. I'm currently grinding through the "Korean 1000 most common words" deck since it also has a vocal pronunciation for each word for me to practice against.

You have to be a little disciplined with it: for each card, listen, practice the pronunciation and then when you flip the card the for the meaning score your result honestly for the SRS system to work right. You only ever get 20 new words a day, but it adds up really fast.

Right now I do a morning session (or I break it up into two 15 minute sessions), and then in the afternoons I use Ankidroid to generate a list of words I keep forgetting to practice against. I do this every day.

I'm using this textbook at the moment. http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/korean/my-korean-1/

It's free, and I just upload it to my google play books account and read it on my tablet. I'm also entering every sentence and vocabulary word from this book into a new Anki deck so I can practice more as well as get some time learning how to type in Korean.

I don't have a Korean keyboard, so I took a screen shot of this one (http://www.branah.com/korean) and printed it out and just stick it on top of my cheapo $5 Logitech keyboard to help me. It's slow, but I'm getting steadily faster.

About once a week, I'll do an extended study session and sit down for a few hours and try to write all of the vocabulary I'm learning and what it means. This is giving me practice actually writing Hangul, which will help me later in reading people's messy handwriting. I'll probably start doing this as well to improve my handwriting since figuring out how to fit different syllables in a square is still a challenge for me. http://koreanvitamin.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/how-to-practic...

I've tried and struggled a lot with memorizing vocabulary in the past which is why I've put it off for so many years, so I can't say enough good things about Anki. If I have a criticism, it's that I'm much better now at remembering Korean->English than I am going from English->Korean. There's some decks that cover that as well though, and I'm planning on making a "1000 most common words in English to Korean" deck at some point when my Korean and typing gets better.

There's also a deck of every TOPIK vocabulary word I'm planning on moving to next. It's almost 8,000 words.

For videos, I'm not as much into those yet. But I'm planning on moving to start that in a few months to build listening comprehension. My goal is not academic/formal Korean, but more conversational/colloquial. So I'm thinking of shows like Running Man on www.dramafever.com might be good to watch, at least if you get tired studying you can be entertained.

There's also quite a few youtube channels at various levels of complexity. The people who make the videos usually put quite a bit of effort into them to make them at least entertaining.

In my queue for future studying:

https://www.youtube.com/user/talktomeinkorean

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg-p3lQIqmhh7gHpyaOmOiQ (he puts subtitles everywhere in Korean and English so it's super helpful to pause on each sentence and work them out)

https://www.youtube.com/user/sweetandtasty/videos - mostly English, but she provides lots of entertaining background stuff and nouns for things

- Based on my readings from other people and what to expect, I'm expecting to get up to very basic conversational level in 6-9 months and be able to handle most typical daily conversational needs somewhere between 1-2 years of study. Korean is a very hard language for English speakers to learn (as I'm finding out).

I am well aware of the treatment you get as an English speaker in Quebec. If they think you're non-Canadian, they are super friendly. If they think you're Anglophone Canadian, watch out!

Me personally, I took up basketball and thought that I could be like LeBron dunking on everybody, then I realized that I was short and Asian and have no leaping ability; then I shifted my goal a little bit to aim to be like Allen Iverson to try to cross and drive, then I realized that I wasn't fast nor agile and had no crafty finishing moves around the rim, so I settled on being Jason Kidd before he could shoot, a point guard who passes the ball but I enjoy throwing my teammates good passes at the right time for the bucket so they can finish.

I took up guitar and thought I could be like Jimmi Hendrix, soloing and have women throw panties at me up on stage. Then I realized that I had little finger strength nor dexterity to play sixteenth-notes, bends, and vibratos. So I settled on just trying to mime the part and playing with emotions like when you're doing a bend or a vibrato, contorting your face with wistful wrinkles and tilting your head rhythmically like Santana would behind his sunglasses. But I enjoy playing music esp. when it's heavily distorted so that no one can hear properly the poor tone and timing of my playing.

Finally I also took up daytrading and thought I could be like George Soros and play a game of chicken with the British treasury and make a killin'! Then I realized that I had little to no understanding of the dynamics of the option pricing model and had no discipline except that I was overwhelmed with greed and ego when the market is riding high and conversely with fear like a chicken when the market goes against me. So I settled on keeping trading and accepting to give my broker and hedge funds my money, but trying to preserve my capital for as much as possible and taking small losses - so I can extend giving of my money to Wall Street for as long as possible.

Would love to hear what you guys' failures and success stories at learning a different craft and your insights gained.