Phonetic training

For a while on this blog, my stunted listening ability has been mentioned here and then. In my most recent post, I mentioned a new targeted method for improvement: high-variability phonetic training (HVPT). To be honest, I can't really report on the results because I got sort of burnt out from the grind and stopped doing it consistently for a long time. I'm feeling ready to start up again, and I'm looking for more ways to actively target my phonetic training since I still completely suck at listening.

So on top of HVPT, I'm also trying:

1. A limited amount of (TL) subtitled listening per day. This goes against "common sense" in the AJATT community but there is some research to suggest that it can help. Obviously, you can over-do it and become too reliant on subtitles, but a limited amount may help. And I'm desperate to try any ways to improve my listening, since brute-force has obviously not brought the results I want.

2. Time-compressed listening. This one is kind of interesting. One struggle for me can simply be speed of speech. People like me who believe in comprehensible input may think slowly "ramping up" may be the solution, but the research suggests the opposite. You can try listening at 1.25x or 1.5x speed for a few minutes per day, and then see increased comprehension when going back to normal (1x) speed.

These ideas are both things I'm just trying out. Obviously, subtitled listening makes my in-the-moment comprehension great, the question is will those gains generalize to raw listening. As for time-compressed listening, it already feels like my comprehension is improving when switching to 1x speed, but it's hard to judge accurately.

I guess we'll see what happens down the line.

Hanja

I'm also studying the hanja again. I have a few reasons, but most importantly I just think having a rich education in Chinese characters is useful for advanced Korean comprehension.

I'm starting with recognition cards via Remembering the Hanzi (RTH). The last time I tried RTH, I quit simply because production cards were taking up way too much time per day that could have been spent listening to or reading actual Korean. I expect this method to be much faster. Down the line, I plan to learn production again.

I also bought some old prints, including this which is hopefully written in mixed-script, to give myself a reason/goal for learning them as well as a way to actually practice reading hanja. Since it's an old printing (1968) and I bought it online, I couldn't see any previews besides the table of contents which was in mixed-script, and the year gives a good chance of being mixed-script, but it's possible I end up with just a regular book with a cool cover and table of contents.

If it turns out I played myself here and the books are just plain hangul, at least I learned that the seller I got it from is actually a brick and mortar store near Seoul which focuses on old books. So next time I visit Korea I can try to find some mixed-script books in person.