If you read my review of Healer, you remember I gave an advice of learning Hangeul (the Korean alphapet) to help with pronouncing (even just in your head) actors names correctly. Therefore I thought I'd give you some advice on how to begin learning Korean! I've been studying Korean more or less seriously for roughly two years now. I learned the alphapet on my own after just starting to listen to BTS, just because I was curious about how their language worked. That was about seven months before I went to England. When I lived in Manchester I took a 10 weeks course in beginners Korean and after that I just continued loosely studying on my own. With the help of my Korean friends (I know, I keep mentioning them a lot but they're very relevant to this subject and they're very important to me) I've also learned a lot but on a much more intimit level, since I have a native to discuss with.
Here are some of my favorite websites and apps to learn Korean:
Duolingo has been a big part of my language learning ever since 6th grade when my Spanish teacher introduced the website to my class. I learned Spanish in school with occasional help from Duolingo for a total of 7 years. I'm a language lover as I've already mentioned, so out of boredom I also explored other languages a little. Korean became one of them about two months ago. Currently I have a +100 days streak on my Korean duolingo. The good thing with Duolingo is that it's free. Now adays they have a Plus version you have to pay for, but you get so much for the free version I don't see a reason to get Plus. You need an account to be able to save your progress, but all it requires is your email and a username. If I'm not wrong you can also choose to log in through Facebook or Google as well.
They have a great goal setting function which you can change however you'd like, if you want to do 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes a day of practice. They have several lessons with different levels to make sure you really learn or at least learn to recognize words. They store all your words in a vocabulary list where they also keep track of how active the usage of the words has been, meaning how strong your rememberance of the words is. There's reading, writing, paring together, fill in the blanks, listening and speaking excercises available. If you for any reason for example can't speak at that time, you can turn it off for the time being. It'll turn on again automatically after an hour. I have the speaking function turned off on my computer but turn on on my phone, so you're not locked to one device. Everything goes through your account. They also have check out points which you can test yourself on everything you've learn in the different levels. During your lessons you have infinite tries to do right or wrong and you also have help with all the words. During tests you do have three hearts and for every wrong you make you loose a heart, you also have no "cheat" help with the translated words. Expect to learn really strange sentances among the useful things, though. The only sentence I remember from the little while I tried Irish is "the lion eats the children"..... I'm not even joking with you! What the heck is that? XD Also be prepared to have a lot of the same sentences repeated after each other while you're unlocking levels of a lesson. It's good for the repetition though, so just keep going and you'll unlock new lessons for every new one you ace. It's accessable on both mobile device and computer.
90 Day Korean offers lessons to teach you how to hold a simple three minutes conversation in Korean within 90 days. I have not personally tried this course because it's a payed course. You can however join with your email for free and get access to free pdf files with for example the Korean number systems (yes, systemS - they have two and yes it's kinda hard to keep them apart while learning) as well as frequent automatic emails from the staff with weekly advice for travling in Korea, phrases, slangs, Konglish or short explainations about Korean traditions or how Korea celebrate international holidays. They also have a starter pdf where they help you break down and learn the Korean alphapet in 90 minutes. They are really thorough and well explained and they're also always availale to help explain more in detail either through mail, Youtube, their blog or other social medias. Here you can check out their Youtube site and here you can look at their Instagram. I've used 90 Day Korean a lot for "how do you say..." searches. I even have a folder on my computer with only direct links to 90 Day Korean blog post of things I frequently stumble upon and want to make sure I write/understand right. If you're a total beginner to the whole Korean culture I really recommened looking around on their blog. They explain the different level of speech, the different honorifics and a lot, lot more that is really good to know to understand more how the culture works. It also helps get plus points if you ever meet a Korean person to be able to introduce yourself and how to be the right amount of polite depending one how old you are. They have an app as well, where you can access the same things as on the online website. Another thing I really love about 90 Day Korean is that their teacher are a mix of both native Korean speakers as well as native English speakers who all can explain from different points of view or with different learning techniques in mind. Two thumbs up for this site! It's accessable on both mobile device and computer.
Talk to me in Korean is something I've started using more recently to listen to podcasts with native Korean speakers who explain certain areas of the Korean grammar in English and Korean. It's great to have playing in the background while cooking or mending about my room, because even if you don't think you're learning anything you are! Also, I realized that I'd picked up on more things grammatically than I thought by guessing in advance what they were going to talk about and being right. They go over everything from how to introduce yourself, how to have a small conversation for example about what you want to do, see or eat, grammar particals which are very specific parts of the Korean language which keeps the structure of what you're talking about and in what way and ways to be a little sassy or joking. They also have a podcast where you get to listen to short, simple and slow paces conversations between native speakers to practice listening exercises. It's important to do your best and keep all parts of the language in your learning: reading, writing, listening and speaking as well as cultural studies. If you don't have an opportunity to speak Korean, you can start with reading outloud to yourself. There are apps available where you can chat to native Korean speakers and ask for advice on how to polish your written grammar or spoken Korean, but I haven't used any of them myself and therefore don't feel like I can rightfully recommened any.
(The links in this part of the blog post are to Spotify)
K-drama
It's a real struggle yeah....
The whole point with my blog! K-DRAMAAAA~~~~
I have learned a lot of words through watch Korean drama. There are a lot of words and phrases which are used very frequently in dramas and thus, I've learned a lot of them. It's much more practical than a lot of people think to watch TV in the language you want to learn. You get to see how they interpret their own culture, how they use language and how the scenary sets. Hopefully I don't have to explain this point too much more, considering this blog exists at all :D
Stay tuned for new reviews! Several of them are coming soon~
What do you think is the best way to study a language? Leave a comment below!
Comments