This is my first attempt at learning a foreign language on my own, and I'll provide you with daily updates on how it goes! Here are my introduction and plan.

Feeling: good, but a bit lost

A tiny tiny update: everything went according to plan. That's all.

Now, to the interesting stuff. I tweaked my plan a bit to better suit my needs and goals.

I wanted to take my language learning a bit more seriously. Korean is still my hobby, and it always will be. There's no external pressure, I won't get anything extroardinary out of studying specifically Korean, so that's that. Anyway, the hobby part just means that I won't go crazy with studying (like memorizing 30+ words a day. I did this with my other languages😓).

But still, one day I want to bring my Korean comprehension to an intermidiate-ish level. Turns out, they can film a great fantasy series with bealivable special effects. So, I think I'll continue watching K-Dramas. I also found that they're a good way to slow down. The episodes are long [I can't binge it], there are no distructions like on Youtube [I feel in control], and I can easily pause in the middle of the episode and come back to it later. It's like reading a book. You're immersed in one storyline, it's not as addicting as jumping from one relatively short video to another. I hope it makes sense. And sorry for getting off track.

What were the issues?

I feel like I wasn't going anywhere, really. And it stems from the two following points.

• I LOVE grammar. I love breaking down sentences, researching every little detail there is to know about a specific structure, and just marvaling on how this all came about. And Korean made it worse. It's exactly like a puzzle! I mean, you just stick stuff together with little to no changes and - boom! - new meaning (I'm oversimplafying, this principle is prevelant in the language. It's very similar to how you conjugate verbs in Hebrew). I've always seen languages as a puzzle, as a code that you need to crack. I just... I don't have words to describe how much I love Korean grammar system. I'm insane, but we're all allowed to be crazy about something, right?

Why is this a problem? Well, I mentioned that instead of going through my beginner course, I would often go down the rabbit hole of reading about almost every grammar point that I encounter in my immersion. What woulden't I do? Practice it. And now I have a bunch of random grammar structures I have no idea what to do with. Most of them won't be useful in my simple baby sentences. On top of that, my study sessions are all over the place. My learning feels scattered. I don't see diraction, I don't feel progress.

• I HATE flashcards with a passion. The only reason I was able to reach a comfortable level in English is that I had a tutor standing over my head. I had to learn these words until the next lesson. Period. I didn't like English at that time, so I desided to make as little effort as possible and just memorized them. (Also, I thought that Ebbinghaus came up with the best learning stratagy ever).

But now I see how ineffective and boring flashcards are. It is useful, but in a very specific situations. Being a complete beginner in a language is that situation, but I believe there's a better way to learn vocabulary and don't die in the process. Again, doing flashcards all the time makes me feel like it's all meaningless.

This post turned out much longer than it needed to be. I'll do 2 parts.