Monthly Archives: September 2013

How To Conjugate Korean Adjectives and Verbs With Nouns

Every Korean verb finish with ~다 (da) which shows its identity as a verb when you look for the word from dictionaries. We call it “dictionary form of verb”. However we do not use those dictionary forms in the actual conversation which means that we need to change it into certain forms to make it naturally fit into the conversation.

When you connect adjectives to noun, you should use / – (depends on whether the adjective stem has the final consonants or not). Here are some examples,

다small, 가방 bag                     작은 가방 a small bag

예쁘다pretty, 친구 friend         예쁜 친구 a pretty friend

When you connect verbs to noun, is attached to the verb stems no matter what (does not matter whether the verb stem has the final consonants or not). For example,

좋아하다 like, 색 colour              좋아하는 색 the colour that I like

싫어하다 dislike, 음식 food       싫어하는 음식 the food that I dislike

Please remember that if you could be freely use adjectives in the appropriate contexts, your Korean will be dramatically improved in no time! 한국어 공부 파이팅! :=)

 

Ashley (Korean teacher)

Design Your Korean Trip With Beautiful Maple Trees

“When is the best season for Korean trip?”

If you are a huge fan of skiing or snowboarding, you might like Korean winter that enables you to see unlimited snow almost every day. If you enjoy watching flowers and eating fresh fruits, you would love Korean spring.

For me, Korean autumn is quite attractive.

Did you know that approximately 70percent of South Korean mainland is mountainous terrain? As a result of the tough terrain and huge difference of minimum and maximum temperatures during autumn season, the autumn leaves in Korea are vividly colored. These beautiful maple leaves attract so many tourists to the major mountains in Korea such as mt. Seorak,  Odae, Naejang and Jiri for about 1.5months from late September until mid-October (The maple season starts from northern mountains sunch as Seoral and Odae and finishes its short journey at southern mountains like mt. Jiri).

If your trip is not enough to see those faraway mountains, you still can see them in Seoul. You can go hiking to Bukansan which is the mountain in Seoul. Although it might be a bit smaller than major mountains, the vivid colours of maple tree leaves would be the same.

**you can visit KTO (Korean Tourism Organisation) website for further information regarding the timetable, maps of the major mountains and etc.

Enjoy your 단풍 구경 (maple trip)!

 

Ashley (Korean teacher)

10 Most Helpful Tips for Achieving a Better Band Score in Writing

  • Read the questions very carefully. Often the question will ask you to do three or four different things, aside from the main question. Write them down and make sure you address all of them in your answer. The IELTS examiner will be checking for this.
  • Practice writing tasks within the given time limits. It really doesn’t matter if you can write a beautiful answer in two hours. Always recreate the conditions of the exam as closely as possible, when doing any kind of practice exercises.
  • Plan before you write. Even though you feel under pressure for time, spend the first few minutes planning your writing. Decide what you’re going to say and how you’ll expand on it. When you know what to write, you can concentrate on how to write it best. Experiment with the great variety of outlining and mind-mapping techniques to help you sketch out a plan quickly. I’d recommend allocating up to 5 minutes for planning your essay.
  • Write in an organized way. When you’ve planned in advance, you’ll end up with a more organized, logical piece of writing, which will earn you higher marks. There are many ways to be organised – linear, circular, etc. – but in the end the final product must be cohesive which means that there must be a clear flow from the introduction through the body to the conclusion.
  • Stay on topic. You will be penalised if you stray off topic. This is where the initial few minutes of planning can help you a great deal.
  • Divide your writing into paragraphs. It is confusing to be faced with a block of writing, with no divisions. You wouldn’t expect to read a magazine article or book like this. Always divide your writing into paragraphs. Depending on the essay type, two or three paragraphs for the body of your essay.
  • Write clearly. This is not the time or place to experiment with new vocabulary or idioms. Use simple, clear English to get your ideas across in a powerful way.
  • Write legibly. Though marks are not granted or taken away for poor or messy writing, the examiner should be able to read what you have written without undue difficulty.
  • Spell correctly. Yes, this does affect your score so avoid careless mistakes. A careless mistake is when you have spelt the same word in various ways in the same piece of writing or when you misspell a word which is already given in the exam topic and all you have to do is copy it correctly. That’s not okay. Watch for this when you’re practising and resolve to overcome it.
  • Edit your essay. This part is often neglected by students, but it can end up paying out for you. Make sure you don’t just randomly review your essay. Understand your weaknesses and check specifically for them.

10 Tips on How to Approach The IELTS Reading

  1. It would be not advisable to read the whole passage before looking at the questions. We do not enough have time to read the whole passage unless your English is so good and you can read 300 or more words a minute.
  2. Go to the questions first in order to find key words.
  3. Look for synonyms, or words with the same meaning, in the passage.
  4. It is better to do the questions one by one. The most important thing to consider is that the answers to most questions within one set questions will follow the order of the information given in the text, so you will gradually read the whole passage anyway as you find the answers.
  5. Make sure that you fully understand the question which is especially important with TRUE/FALSE/YES/NO/Not Given questions, as in this question type a seemingly insignificant word may determine the final answer.
  6. Once you have identified key words from a question, read around that part of the text properly in order to understand it and get the right answer.
  7. IELTS designers paraphrase certain parts of the passage in order to create the question In other words, they pick up a word or phrase from the passage that they want to test you on, and they make a question using words which have a similar meaning.
  8. Another piece of advice, especially if you understand that you running out of time, is to do easy questions first. In case you got stuck with a difficult question skip it and move on.
  9. Many students get the wrong answer because they think too much! They worry about small differences in meaning. Don’t think too hard about small differences in meanings.
  10. The General Training reading test is a bit different to the Academic test. However, the techniques you need to use to find the answers are the same.

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