How I Studied Korean So Far

If you are someone interested in language learning, I am sure you have seen a blog post or a video title like this:

"How I learned X Language in Y amount of time"

These titles always annoy me. These kinds of posts always get a ton of comments from fellow annoyed people saying that no one can learn a language in such a short time. I don't think that these people feel that they have learned the language but it still is annoying to see.

My title for this post is therefore "How I Studied Korean So Far" which is much more accurate. I did not even bother to put the word 'learned'. I don't know if all that I studied stayed in my head so studied is a better word. In other posts I may go back to using the word 'learned' but for now I will say 'studied'. And of course you may want to know when I began. I seriously started my studying in 2012.

My first exposure to the Korean language was through *drumroll* Kdrama. After hearing the language I decided to learn it. I liked how it sounded and it was probably attractive to me because it was very different from English.

1. Learning Hangul a Basic Phrases

For this I first used Talk to Me in Korean's Learn to Read and Write Hangul but they didn't finish this series so I just found some random page to learn Hangul. To supplement that, I used Professor Oh's hangul videos and her KWOW episodes to learn some phrases. I was soooo addicted to KWOW back then. 

2. More Basic Words and Phrases

My first Korean Book was Read and Speak Korean for Beginners. I will never forget the day I received this book. At that time Jewel in the Palace was airing on local television. My whole family (after making fun of me for watching Kdramas) used to look forward to watching it every week. I got good grades in my exams so my mother bought it for me. My little cousin came to me with the book tied up in a cloth and gave me a big bow and presented me with the book. It was so cute.

Anyhow, the book itself was pretty good. In my opinion it was a typical beginners book with vocab like pets, family, directions, jobs and that sort of thing. It also came with an audio CD which was a good thing. There were a few mistakes in the book but nothing major. You would not believe how good I felt to actually realize that there were mistakes.

3. Basic Grammar

After this I went on to using Talk To Me In Korean's grammar series. TTMIK provides extremely helpful content, especially for beginners. I used TTMIK for levels 1-3. They really provided a good foundation. 

4. E-Textbooks

I was so fortunate to come across the Korean textbook series by Monash University called My Korean. They are available for free on the university's website. I went through both of these books. I really liked the layout of these two books. There was a comic at the beginning of each chapter on which the lessons would be based. I learned a lot of useful vocabulary and cultural notes and the grammar explanations were extremely clear. There are listening and writing exercises but I never did any. I only did the comprehension exercises from time to time.

5. More Textbooks

There was a time when I used to get up early to study and so I used to listen to Arirang Radio's Catch the Wave with Adrien Lee. TTMIK had a segment where you could send in an audio clip of you speaking Korean to win a prize. I decided to give it a try and I won!!! Lol. I got Magic Korean 1 as a prize. I really liked this book. There were a lot of jokes in it and the drawings were really cute. Grammar wise it was mostly a review for me but I learned a lot of words related to different aspects of Korean culture.

I then moved on to Intermediate College Korean. There is an online version but I bought the physical book. I like studying grammar and so I enjoyed the grammar sections. The explanations were concise but good. At first the content was interesting but for me it became a bit boring further down in the book so I started skipping some dialogues. If you like history then this would be a good book for you. The recordings of the dialogues were good for listening practice.

6. Listening to Podcasts

As a 2016 New Years resolution, I decided to listen to one of TTMIK's Iyagi podcasts everyday during every meal. At first it worked out well but as you know, resolutions are made to be broken (I only got through about 50 episodes). I think that listening to the same thing repeatedly is a good method. At first you may not know some words but you can look them up or simply guess their meaning from context. The second time around anticipate when they will come and pay more attention to them helping you to learn them. I only regret not taking better notes of the new vocabulary I came across. I only stored a few of then in my Wordbook on Naver dictionary.

Other

Besides using these kinds of resources I was constantly watching Kdramas (Viki/Dramafever). I have watched so many it is ridiculous. Watching the dramas, even though I used subtitles, I tried to listen as closely as I could and make a mental note when there was a word or phrase that I recognized. After hearing the word or phrase I would just repeat it once or twice in my mind.

I have also interacted with native speakers using various websites and apps. I met my first Korean friend through a site called HiPenpal. We wrote several letters to each other and still do. I also used Lang-8 for writing correction but I am not really interested in writing so I didn't use it much. I guess Lang-8 would be more helpful for people who are preparing for TOPIK or something. I found my first speaking partner on Italki. She was extremely nice. We spoke at least once a week for about six months. During that period of time my speaking skills really improved. I also use Hello Talk language exchange app for chatting mainly via text.



Even though I have been studying for this long my skills are really not that great. I always watch videos of other Korean learners and their proficiency is much higher than mine after studying for a lot shorter a time period. I know that comparing myself to others is a bad habit, but from doing it I know that I need to put in a lot more time and effort or find better methods. As I go forward I will try to do these two things to improve.