Happy Since Christmas

I don't have New Year resolution and don't really have the habit of writing one.

But I can give an update of what I have done for the past two months.

Have been growing seeds on off for the past one year and so far all the seeds that I have sowed died off after 1 month even though it did sprout and grew to about 5 cm.

After gathering some advice, I have decided to change the location of the pot and to increase the success rate, I planted more seeds than before. Instead of one, I would use 2/3.

The first few weeks when the first shoot appeared, I crossed my fingers hoping 'this time it would work'. And so after like one month, it seems like not only did it work but I had over succeed. I mean the saplings are now a bit more sturdy and independent, but.. somehow the number of plants seems to doubled!

I remember clearly where I have planted the seeds and even though I did put in more of them, it wasn't this many!! So I guess it most those seeds that I have planted before which I thought they had failed (because they didn't sprout after a few weeks) and had now grow because of my supposed increased concern. Didn't know seeds can hibernate that long. Let's just hope this batch would work. I am already making plans to move some of the older ones out of the nursery and into its own pot.

Meanwhile, somehow I became more popular in the tutoring industry. I had received more calls and queries about the fee and timing. I know some are referred by my existing tutee's parents while others are from no where or referred by parents who I don't even know. 

So you can say, I have lots of assignments on my hands now and I even have to reject some of the assignments because I just couldn't commit no matter how much I want to. 

But no matter how I try, the income earned just don't seem to exceed a certain threshold. Hmm.. which I really want to. 

I guess I had made quite a reputation of myself however, I wouldn't know if this reputation is good or bad and will it benefit as it does now.

There are quite a lot of changes I had made during these two months, and those above two were just few of them. 

I had also managed to successfully pass my TOPIK Level 2!! Hooray?

Honestly, the score wasn't that fantastic so I didn't show but I'm glad I sat for it. It means that I am a bit more closer to what I want to achieve- fluency in Korean. So far I'm only in beginner level, which is a bit upsetting since I had learnt for almost three years now on off. Therefore, my friend suggested going for Topik 3/4 this coming April. And they are changing the format really soon and we are still in the midst of learning. So strike the iron while its hot. 

I guess its pretty much like this for now.

But I have several plans in line now and hopefully I get to realise them. And if I'm done, I will blog. :)

Korean School Experience PART 1 (edited)

And so I have successfully enrolled myself into another Korean school after stopping for around half-a-year while waiting for my friend.

After months of careful examination and tons of emails + replies. We or should I say I, settled on Singapore Korean School. Friend was a bit reluctant to join because of the pricing but I told her I decided on this school and won't settle for any less. She - with no other choice- (I'm sorry), she decided to enroll too, of course not without the whines of the pricing and pulling a really disheartened face.

I'm only there for three lessons, so I really can't make good substantiated reviews but I will just say what I feel about the lessons so far.

This is just a very simple contrast between the two schools that I have attended so far.

Word of caution: These are all my perspective. I have not sit for Topik yet so some of these comments may seem unsubstantiated to you guys. Take it with a pinch of salt.

Syllabus
SKS
I know many are concerned with the syllabus taught. Whether they are enough for you to go for the TOPIK Basic Test 1. I have looked through the test paper. And from the point of view of a SKS student, there is a possibility of passing the paper. The grammar tested in that level are all taught, perhaps one or two may seem unfamiliar but passing is obtainable. For the writing component, this would be a bit hard. Because in SKS , the focus is more on conversational skills and reading skills. There is few practicing students have of writing. Therefore, this section may seems a bit more challenging. Plus, vocabulary exposed in SKS are restrained in a fixed context. Thus, may find it rigid and hard to find words taught to express yourself.

Hanok
If you have completed Basic 4, there is higher chance of you passing Topik 1 as compared to SKS. Why? Because unlike SKS, the teacher made speak in Korean during lessons and have dictation every end of lessons. She will scribble English sentences and have you translate them. Of course, these words are all taught and in the textbook. Therefore, being made to write, students were already comfortable in writing Korean words and are better able to express themselves. Plus with the richer range of vocabularies, Hanok students wouldn't find writing component much of a pain.

Pace
SKS
SKS proceed at a faster pace. Each lesson, there is a fix topic that the teacher has to finish. However, because the content isn't really a lot, it is suitable for even slow pace learner. As long as you make your revision every week. I don't seem to think it will be overbearing.

Hanok
Hanok's pacing would be a bit slower. One topic maybe separated into two lessons in order to be finished. This is due to the wider vocabulary words and to revise previous grammar points taught. So for example, on lesson 8, she will teach present tense + past tense+ some vocab, then on lesson 9, she will go through these again + more vocab and maybe future tense.

Teaching
Now, here is the most important part I want to emphasis. Teaching. Most Korean schools here have lessons are conducted by native korean. The reason why I want to address this issue is because I think this is a important factor to consider when choosing a school.  Many of us have a common but understandable perception about the correlation between quality of teaching and nationality of the teacher. Of course, I would agree that a native would be a not more suitable person to teach its own language to foreigners. Being grown up in that community for over 20+ years, naturally the native teacher would be more familiar with their own culture and its tradition.

But I would like to say that LOCAL/NON-NATIVE teachers are equally good as well. The important key factor to pay attention to is NOT the Nationality but the way the teacher teach and communicate. Many native teachers here are not well-verse in English, and this becomes a huge problem because instructions are not properly communicate. It will become a common thing to constantly guess and lean in to figure out what the teacher is trying to convey. Subsequently, it becomes tiring and you start to lose interest. Therefore, don't discriminate local teachers. If they have good language background plus good teaching skills, try them out. I'm sure they won't lose out to the natives. Of course, if your teacher is a native and has good command of English, then that will be a bonus!

I will not compare the teachers in both schools yet because Hanok only has one teacher while SKS has plenty of them. Therefore I won't be playing fair.

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Hope I answer your questions~
If you have any more queries you can always drop me a comment!

Finished Exams

Finished my exams, didn't want to talk much about it. But not only did I finished my exams, I have also finished my last lesson of my Korean Class. Today, if as usual, I would be heading for my Korean class but I'm not! And suddenly, I feel soo empty.

I have been going for Korean Class at the same date for almost 8 consecutive months and suddenly to not go feels completely weird.

As this is the last class, my classmates decided to buy a cake (only a slice though!) and a card where we all wrote our wishes on it- in Korean! To prevent myself from making a mistake and saving teacher the hassle of correcting it,  I have already drafted out my message and post in on lang-8.com to have it corrected.

Even though I have already changed my mistakes, teacher still managed to find ONE small error. Strange though. I got it corrected by a native Korean. Guess even natives made mistakes huh.

Anyway, our Teacher was very happy when she saw the card was filled with Koreans. I guess that's the kind of satisfaction you'll get, like watching your baby walking after many practices.

Our teacher was kind too, she bought as some Korean delicacies from the shopping mall just beside. Honestly, I am not a big fan of Korean food. I have tried them all and the only one that I super like is barbecued pork- (Samgyeopsal)

Taken from somewhere

So I can't say I enjoy the food but I did eat and I found a new love! Kimchi fried rice!

taken from somewhere

I don't like kimchi but kimchi fried rice was okay. She also bought as bibim ramen and beef bibimbap. Each table was two set of meals so we just share it among ourselves.

We don't eat beef so we just eat the rice. It was nice. Hee hee and we took lots of pictures- for keepsake

Sorry if the picture is blur. Can't be help. No matter how hard we all tried to take the photo , it's just blur.

I guess I will really miss teacher, her lessons and the classmates I have made in these wonderful lessons. Since she won't be teaching higher levels, we all have to source for other alternatives to further our studies. I have a pool of resources right now and I didn't know which to choose. I guess have to sort things out quickly before our Korean deteriorates.

So anyone who have good recommendations please leave a comment!

My bad attitude

Oh man , exams are really nearing just when I have more ideas on what to blog. Crappy !!!!!
I haven't been studying lately.. Bad girl! But wasn't exactly slacking off.. okay I'm contridicting myself. Been blogging these past few days and I run into this fabulous blog which focuses on langauges.

Creativity Japanese

She ( I believe) , is a Singaporean like the previous blog I mentioned. She mentioned a lot on her translation work, how she improve both her Korean and Japanese and recently she hightlighted some key points of languages. Her blog inspires me to learn my languages more dilligently. Let me explain my personality. As I have a little japanese background and a little korean knowledge, I realised that I have always learn these two languages with a lazy attitude. How so? Well, after my classes, I would not touch my textbook again until the next lesson or perhaps I would do a little revision before or after my lessons. Therefore, sometimes I would forget some of the grammer, words and the rules on sentence structure.

This blog kinds of stirred up some of my guilt. I have always felt a bit apologetic to myself. Being a Singaporean Chinese, my first language is English. And as you all know, English has become (arguably) a global language. In our soceity, English is more vastly used as the official language than our remaining three, Malay, Indian and Chinese.  We used English as a medium to learn Mathematics and other subjects; write legal/formal documents and converse in English. Therefore, I tend to focus more on English than my Mandarin yet , I am ashmaded to say that even though I practises my English on a more frequent basis, my English is still not up to standard, as you all can see from my writtings. But you know, life just don't work out the way you expect it to be. If you are not talented at it, there is just a ceiling you can reach.

Anyway, as I was saying, because I channeled more of my time in learning English, I neglected my Mandarin. So I have always thought that "Woah, why do I spend so much time learning Korean and Japanese but totally neglected my Mandarin, what's more is that I am a Chinese!" I did stocked up on some books that I was going to read but I never did so because of my lazy personality. So this blog kinda like pushes me to do what I had planned to do. And I am going to do it! Well.. after the exams.

I have also decided to change my learning attitude as learning a language , not to say two, is a tedious work. It requires LOTS of efforts and hardwork! I don't know whether I will succeed but I am going to give it a shot!