Get over the "Intermediate Plateau" | Learn Korean
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2024
- Have you ever heard about the “Intermediate Plateau” for learning Korean? After finishing the basics, it’s common for people to feel like they’re stuck in limbo of never improving but always studying - this feeling can last for months or even years, depending on how a person is studying. It can feel like no matter how much you study, your Korean isn’t actually improving, and it can be extremely demotivating for learners to pass this point. I met up with SpongeMind TV and Motivate Korean to discuss what the plateau is, why it happens, and how to get over it.
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Thanks so much for making this happen man!
What should be the next topic we talk about?
@@GoBillyKorean Since we mentioned having a pen-pal or a language partner a few times here, why don't we talk about that? "How to get the best out of a language partner (or a Korean friend)". Perhaps with a less selfish-sounding title :-P
I think Johnson was spot on when he mentioned how we get so excited at the beginning from learning a few words to more then we loose that excitement somewhere along the way. I think it would be best to change your atmosphere where you study. This was a great video. Thanks Billy and Spongemind! Also, super awesome to see Spongemind when I just learned about their podcast from a Korean friend about a month ago.
I am sooo glad to hear that you are enjoying the podcast. 열공!!
This was really helpful. I’ve been feeling stuck in the intermediate plateau, maybe even decreasing in Korean skills, even though I’m living in Korea. I realized I’m not actually exposing myself to as much Korean as possible, tho, but most importantly I’m not studying. Just listening to things won’t help if I’m not putting in the work to learn more advanced grammar/drill vocab. Def gonna go to cafes and study after work from now on.
funnily enough, i’m not an intermediate (a beginner) but i feel like i’ve reached this point
burymyjam. I have a similar feeling.
Omg same, stuck at the beginners level
I think whenever you accomplish or conquer a level you start to feel the plateau, that's when you know you need to increase or study harder topics, things that in the past would've been too difficult now feel manageable
It's like exercising, really
@@adrianameyer1848 There is also a beginner plateau. That can often be caused by remaining with beginner-level materials too long. It can also be caused by not pushing yourself in all of the skill areas. How much reading are you doing, even with graded readers or LingQ or something easy? How much conversation practice are you getting (and on how many different topics)? How much listening or writing (either by hand or computer is fine) practice are you getting? Are you working to improve your pronunciation? I agree with @bluecandies .
Andy Roberts Thank you for your comment 😊I’m not really getting conversational practice, I just talk a lot to myself for pronunciation. I watch a lot of variety shows without subtitles and take notes. It’s the grammar that doesn’t really work, I’ve never followed an actual method but just watched videos. Now I know some more intermediate concepts while still missing some basic principles. It’s just that when opening a beginners theory book it’s like I’ve covered pretty much everything, but an intermediate level is still too much idk. But I for sure know my listening skill is so much better than my speaking skill. I can understand most of a conversation in variety shows and when I don’t know the exact meaning I still know by context, but when it comes to actually producing sentences I’m definetely a beginner.
선생님들 고맙습니다!! ㅠㅠ
저에겐 어휘를 외우는 게 가끔 어렵지만 앞으로 단어를 배울 때마다 문장을 만들어서 그렇게 한다면 될 것 같다 문법도 가끔씩 헷갈리게 하는데 (특히 고급문법ㅠ) 어쩔 수 없는데요ㅋ
최선을 해서 열심히 공부하겠습니다! 한번도 감사합니다 소중한 우리 선생님들!! ♡♡♡
This is really spot on for me - having finished uni and left Asia, I've plateaued and find it hard to study Korean back in the UK. And what you say is true - now I'm pretty fluent and can say what I want, I've been jollying around chatting to people rather than putting the book hours in. I really need to make a plan for myself and actually do it! Thanks for the motivation and advice Billy :)
With Spanish I've been around the same level for the past few years but since I've only been learning Korean for a little over a year, I'm just now starting to approach intermediate. As I've noticed, incorporating learning or doing something in the language your learning a little bit each day goes a long way (consistency > time spent studying). Its important to vary your activities relatively equally between speaking, writing, listening, and reading. Also I think doing it half with material that's meant for learning the language and half with just every day things (watching tv shows, reading articles, regular conversation or text messaging...) is good.
Well, if it isn't everyone's favourite Korean language-teaching trio! So great to see you all in the same frame 😊
My approach is a little bit different. I find that by the intermediate stage you understand the majority of what you read/hear, so sometimes the organic input approach lets the little things slip through the cracks.
For me, this is the time to get real nitpicky, to go back and focus on making small, specific, and targeted improvements. It's tedious and not nearly as rewarding as the progress you make as a beginner, but I truly believe it's the only way you'll ever get out of that decent-but-not-flawless plateau.
You built the house, you've lived in it for a while, now it's time to go back and do any fixing-up jobs that are needed here and there (보수공사). Or put another way, you've got the big picture, now it's time to 'zoom in' and pay meticulous attention to the details. It's about tweaking and toning rather than building per se.
I always love to hear your input. I think this is the kind of stuff I ended up doing in language exchanges rather than overt studying. I always ask very nitty gritty questions and ask for contextual information on words or grammar patterns I'm not yet comfortable with. How do you go about ironing out the wrinkles? Where are you at with your German now?
@@KoreanPatch Yeah, I've been teaching English to upper-intermediate and advanced learners for the first time this year and that's mostly what we end up doing, too, just getting real nitty gritty with grammar points, collocations, and teasing out the differences in nuance between similar words (that usually even share the same dictionary entry).
I've also found it a good time to go more in-depth into the less frequently-used idioms and phrasal verbs, as well as into deeper cultural references. My role has changed from being a teacher-teacher to more of a coach or spotter as there's only so much left that I can teach directly. The bulk of the work has to be done by the student through continued input... I guess this is why they call learners at this stage 'independent learners'!
As for my German, it's in need of some structural repairs to stabilise it before I can think of adding or tweaking anything else, to be honest. From lack of use, I've forgotten some really basic things such as the genders for basic nouns, some of the less common past participles, etc, but since I know that realistically, I don't have a whole lot of time to dedicate to German (and possibly never will?), I'm just going to play the long game and keep chipping away at it. 진도 나가는 데에 욕심을 내는 것보단, 끈을 놓지 않는 게 더 중요한 것 같아요! ㅎㅎ
Good to hear from you, and I hope all is well with you and your family. You must be really busy with little Baby Motivate Korean! 😆
Great observations! It's a pity we still haven't had a chance to make a video together for SpongeMind TV :-(
@@SpongeMindTV Yeah, I've been too busy to even make videos for my own channel, but I'm hoping to get back to RUclips in the coming months! How's your German going?
Fantastic video!
It would be so great if the three of you held a meetup somewhere in LA or Orange County someday. I'd love to meet my language heroes in person. ❤️
How does RUclips pull up just right videos that are a couple years old? Haha. Great conversation. I think I was feeling like this two weeks ago, but I've noticed I'll make progress and then have a week or two were everything feels hard and there's so far to go so then I just focus on things that are fun in Korean and the next week it's like I suddenly feel like I made a little leap. So this time I picked up a book with short fiction stories that was way too hard when I was a beginner this past summer, but now I understand about 95% of it on the second read. The handful of new words were often repeated a few times, making it easy to understand from context and remember. So I feel renewed again finding some things I can now do that previously were hard. I think I'm going to try writing summaries of things I read and listen to as a way to try and grow. And going to re-watch a drama without the English subs and see how it goes. Intermediate is an interesting place to be when you feel like you can do so much more, yet, there's so much you still can't quite figure out how to say or say naturally.
I've come here again and I've realised how much I miss hearing Jeremy's insights about learning Korean. I'm sad about him no longer being on RUclips 🌻
Perfect combination of people for this for sure!
So, a tip that might work for some people that you didn't mention was to take a break. A few days to a week of rest to re-spark the fire of being motivated. If you miss something you fight for it harder. I have done this all the time while learning a new skill of any type and I felt myself slow down. To set a target is another I think is great because when you try to absorb everything from all directions at once you definitely don't feel progress since you stand still to look everywhere. To put a spin on it since you mentioned cows... Let's create a saying! You can only graze the grass that's under your nose so walk to where you want to be. Learn where you want to learn. :) one bite at the time.
I think it's good to feel proud of accomplishments, celebrate the tiny victories, have bite sized goals, and maybe even look back memory lane of how far we have come. If we always chase goals without looking back it always feels like an endless climb. Oh and if anyone is a gamer with a gamer mind let me ask you this. If you were a character in a game, what would you do next to level up your skill? If you want to take it further you can rate yourself what level you are on now and make it a mindgame out of imagining getting XP from each exposure or study form you use. Maybe it makes you more motivated or adventurous. :)
Such a good point about taking breaks! I find that sometimes, taking a little break and coming back actually helps to solidify certain concepts I was struggling with. I also love the analogy of 'levelling up', that's a great way to look at it!
@@mandarinenzeittv860 Yes taking breaks helps me digest what I have been learning too, very good point!
I got the leveling up thought process once while I was beginning learning to draw and I said "it looks like a Sims lvl 1 drawing" and it just took off as a life philosophy after that. :)
@@AmbiCahira As a lifelong Simmer this gives me so much joy 😆
@@mandarinenzeittv860 Haha right? 😆 Just picture that you are a sim leveling a skill and you will likely have more humor and empathy about your struggles. :)
I feel like I am in some kind of advanced plateau where I know pretty much every vocab and grammar but I just stutter and overthink when i speak... and i speak a lot, daily, regardless of the country i am in :(
They invented asmr and didnt even know it
I laughed more at 5:19 than I should have, but your reactions were just too good :D
Great topic!
Yeah i love youtube channels where the person is actually teaching English BUT they are explaining it in Korean. Kind of a weird switcheroo but I find it really useful because that’s the kind of vocab/expression that I want to be able to imitate as well at the moment.
There's another channel called 라이브 아카데미 that I like even more. I think I forgot to mention it in the video. His sound quality is better than 영알남
@Motivate Korean thank you!! Will definitely check em out too!
@@KoreanPatch Yesss, I dare say 라이브 아카데미 is the best channel out there at the moment!
안녕하세요 Billy! So I know this video was talking about the intermediate plateau. Do you have any comments or recommendations on what I think could be called the beginner plateau? For example, with myself, I firstly learned hangeul, that is done. Then I followed your advice and began studying grammar. However, I know I guess you could say a good amount of grammar where I need to just start using it and learn more grammar along the way in practice and self-study. Would you recommend that now I study actively studying vocabularly? Cause I feel like it is difficult to keep improving my grammar study now without having new vocabulary to use it with. Thanks!
Also great video!!!
I’m right there! I feel like keeping and I know enough but when I started talking I am out of vocabularies. Which makes me feel like I know nothing at a same time. Learning Korean is getting harder with the increase of level. I’m in Intermediate level 2!
So me
Wow Jeremy is so calm, wow. I aspire his calmness lmao
Ive been full on studying Korean for a year now, and I can read and write really well, and make simple sentences. But when I get to longer/more detailed sentences, the complicated markers trips me up and it's so frustrating~ I keep trying to improve with it, but I feel like I'm going nowhere (plus I'm self taught, so figuring something like this out on my own barely helps anything all together). I know this most likely isn't an intermediate plateau, but I feel like I'm going nowhere with this💀
my problem is vocabulary acquisition. ive experimented with every method I could find but nailing down learning vocabulary consistently and efficiently is the biggest obstacle.
I had the same problem but I found an app called Quizlet and it seemes to have solved it for me almost completely!
Do you three take turns buying meals and drinks when you get together like korean culture often does?
Hey...Can someone link the
한글채널..그가 언급한
Eyy I’ve been to that cafe once last year 😃
How to go from intermediate to advanced level in English?
I am a huge nerd when it comes to anime. Are there any good Korean Anime anyone can suggest? For some reason I can't find any good ones and I have watched a ton of Dooly the dinosaur. I am looking for so more action.
Master Black well you could try watching anime with korean subs or you could watch KDRAMA! I suggest Netflix’s Meteor Garden, and One More Time.
@@insertsmileyfacec3005 Meteor garden is amazing but in Chinese not Korean. :)
Thank you guys. I appreciate the community here!!
I think Japanese is the language to learn if you wanna watch some bomb anime. That would be hard if you are just learning Korean though >.< 2100 Kanji and 3 scripts... , no thanks
After the intermediate plateau level, there is intermediate Plato, when you start to interviewing random person on Korean 시장
lol I'm definitely stuck in that plateau and I'm taking the Advanced level...
man i wish i was an intermediate
Sure sure Only the Korean Guy Know the Exact Math for How Many Hours and Days 4 Intermediate Level 😂😜😂🙏🏼👍🏼🇰🇷
in beginner intermediate if that's a thing lol