Eat. Sleep. Study. Enjoy.

I took a few hours today to create a template for a weekly study planner. I created 12 different versions with different backgrounds and imported them into GoodNotes 5, so I can use them on a daily basis.

You can download the planner under these links:

PDF (highest quality)

PNG

JPEG (lowest quality)

What‘s the difference between the Korean 25 Intensive and Korean 15 Intensive course at Lexis Korea and therefore between the morning and afternoon classes?

Lexis Korea offers a variety of programs to learn Korean on both their campuses, such as TOPIK Preparation, Weekend classes, 1:1 lessons, as well as a Junior Program that aims for teenagers (13-17) that will learn Korean in the morning and get to know the area of Seoul with various activities in the afternoon.

Including myself, a lot of students that I know opted for the Intensive 25 or Intensive 15, where you have either 25 or 15 hours of Korean classes per week. In the morning, both courses of 25 and 15 take the same classes in the respective level.

In the morning, the classes are comprised of learning new grammar patterns that will be first explained by the teacher in Korean. I received a lot of questions if it was difficult to follow these explanations in the target language. In Beginner Levels, such as Korean Foundation (Level 1) and Beginner (Level 2), the teachers use hand gestures, body language and images to explain new grammar and vocabulary. If there is a need, teachers or your class mates might explain to you in English, but there is rarely a need for that in those two levels. For higher levels, students usually have the required vocabulary that is necessary in order to understand the explanations and follow the classes. If that’s not the case, the lesson in the weekly textbooks will always be self-explanatory and you can always resort to them :)

In my case this week, we’re learning 피동, passive verbs and expressions in Korean. There are three different forms of expressing passive sentences, so we focus on each pattern individually and the teachers differentiates between the patterns so that we don’t confuse one with another.

Afterwards, the newly learned grammar explanation will be practiced with different kinds of exercises that always aim to us using the particular pattern in different contexts. The level of these exercises will be increased slowly. We start with gap-filling exercises, so we get used to the particular verb conjugation etc. Afterwards, there might be exercises where the subject and object of a sentence will be suggested and the student‘s task is to connect these on his/her own using the grammar pattern. At the end, we‘re usually asked to create several example sentences on our own as we‘re now able to do so.

Lexis Korea manages to keep the classes relatively small. This creates a possibility for dialogues to arise between the teachers and the students. For example, last week in my level of Pre-Intermediate in Busan, we focused on household chores and the related vocabulary. My class was composed of 5 students, so between the exercises, each of us got the opportunity to practice speaking. The teacher would ask us to explain how we would divide chores between roommates, frame these as rules using Korean imperative, what our duties at home are, ...

After one hour of lunch break, students who opted for the 25 Intensive Korean course receive more Korean classes until 3:30pm. The content of the afternoon classes greatly depends on which level you‘re in. In Korean Foundation level, you practice reading Hangul and in a quiz with the newly learned vocabulary, the teacher guides the people to the right path in terms of pronunciation right from the start. The more you advance and the higher your level is, the greater the share of conversation and dialogue between the teacher and the students. In Beginner level, you practice a lot of the grammar you learned in the morning and in Pre-Intermediate and Intermediate here at Lexis Busan, the class is composed of nearly 100% conversation between the teacher and the students, covering various topics of Korean culture, such as Korean manners and so much more.

As a student of political science, philosophy (until now) and cultural anthropology (from the beginning of my next semester), the question I asked myself at the start of my first semester was, "How can I study 1000 pages of my summaries, of plain text consisting of facts, social coherences and philosophical theories?“

I was lost in the whirlpool for my first few weeks of the semester, but in the end I started writing my summaries for each exam and studied intensively using flashcards.

I write the definition, facts or any other form of information in bullet points on one side and on the other side, I write the keyword in the center and the number of bullet points in the lower right hand corner.

Then, I test myself using all the flash cards and assign the flash cards to categories. "Most Confident“, "Confident“ and "Least Confident/Not confident at all“ depending on the number of bullet points I knew. I go through the three piles until all flash cards are in the "Most confident“ category.

So many people asked me what color schemes I use when highlighting texts and taking notes. I started using these schemes in my history course in high school and they have been changed and refined a lot since then. As I'm studying Politics and Philosophy, these schemes are adjusted to the kind of articles/papers/books I have to read. You can adjust this scheme to your own reading material and assign different/more colors. :)

In addition to that, I like to get a quick overview of context, links, and correlations when skimming and scanning a text again to save time while studying and memorizing the content. For this, I use various form of arrows to display these elements. 

When taking notes, I usually split a page into two columns first and while reading through the text/article/paper/book section/..., I write down the most important information in bullet points and create graphs, charts, and diagrams. Afterward, I read through the notes again and highlight the most important information using the color scheme as described above.

It might take some time to fully internalize these strategies, but for me, it helps a lot when I try to see through complex text structures, identify logical relationships, sequences, and conclusion, and represent arguments in a simplified form.

I might upload more pictures below in the near future where I will show you how I used these strategies myself :)

How do you motivate yourself to study? 🌟

I receive this question at least twice a day and I ask myself this question more often than you might think. ☺️

Some people study to make their parents proud.

Some people study to get their degree, find a job and make a lot of money.

Some people try to find fulfillment in what they are doing.

And some people study because they search a role in society that fits their personality and their interests the best.

It might seem like I give greater weight to the last idea, but that’s not my point. 🙅‍♀️ What I’m trying to say is that you need to find a purpose behind what you’re doing. It might be a financial motivation or social motivation. Or something else.

Human beings were evolutionary not designed to wander restlessly, to work without a purpose behind it. We eat and drink because we need to obtain the energy that we need for our daily activities. We need a certain degree of safety and security in our lives to not feel constantly stressed. Simple psychology. Maslow's hierarchy of needs. 😉

What I’m trying to tell you is that you need to find your purpose in life. Look at other people’s stories. Exchange ideas. Travel. Read. But don’t let other people tell you what is good for you. Try to find your own way. Try to find something that makes you proud of yourself, something that makes you happy. It’s a long, even a lifelong process for some people, but in the end, it essentially is what gives meaning to life: to get to know oneself better and better every day. 😊