Like most self-studiers of Korean, "frustrated" is only the first of many words to describe the process of finding quality resources. The next thought is usually "... I should have picked Chinese or Japanese..." Fear not. I'm here to lend my personal advice. I am by no means an expert but I have bought and discarded far too many books and checked out entirely too many websites in search of Korean fluency. If I could tell young Matthew a few things, this is what I would tell him. Here are my tips in no particular order:
Stop buying phrasebooks. They are for reference after you have learned them from other places (ideally a formal class). Picking up skinny phrasebook after phrasebook at barnes and noble or amazon just because they are on sale is ultimately a waste of time. Korean is not a language which has a 1:1 English correspondence. Don't expect a book to tell you exactly to express one thought because it's not going to work. This was a hard lesson for me to learn. A phrasebook is a reference and nothing more.
If you haven't already, stop using romanization. Learn 한글. This seems a bit obvious but I resisted learning the Korean 'alphabet' for almost a year into casual studying. Waste of time. Romanization is sloppy no matter what system you use. Furthermore, English letters do not accurately correspond to the sounds in the Korean language so don't try to make a square peg fit in a round hole. Writing "kamsahamnida" instead of "감사합니다" is just lazy. Thankfully, 한글 is easy to pick up. It took me less than two days to be able to read and write all letters and that's considered to be longer than the normal student. Most pick it all up in one day. To learn from scratch,
start here for some suggestions.To type on your computer,
follow this link and take a
look at this photo. Then, buy some stickers and you're all set!
More advice on typing in Korean.
Don't use Rosetta Stone. It's garbage.
just my opinion. total waste of money. if you are going to pay for a program, then...
...instead, use KoreanClass101.com. I used it for about two years straight and it helped me immensely with my listening. The premium membership is totally worth it. There's almost three years of past material waiting to be downloaded for new members. It's quite newbie friendly. Great for commuters, exercising and any other small amount of time you can cram with your iPod. A great product.
Speak Korean. Do a language exchange. This sounds obvious but it's vital. In my case, I met. Scared? Nervous? Simply don't know how to conjucate verbs? Start small and get a penpal.
Hanlingo and
Lang-8 are great starting places. There are people willing to help you. If you're not the most tech-savvy person or prefer face-to-face (as I do) find a local Korean church, restaurant, what-have-you and be confident. Meet consistently and practice what you talked about in the last meeting. Don't expect the meetings alone to make you fluent. You;ll still have to self-study at home. But, you will be surprised how many people want this arrangement. You learn Korean and they learn English. Win-win. I did this for about a year-and-a-half in college and it was awesome. I met some wonderful people. 유정 누나 you were the best tutor!
Broke? Be resourceful. Don't be scared of free material. Take a look at
TalkToMeInKorean or any other link in my sidebar. All of them have helped me in some way. However, I would advise to avoid the often linked
Online Sogang Korean Course. Ever notice that the people who mention the free Sogang course can't speak a lick of Korean? There's a reason. It's worthless IMHO. Plenty of other helpful sites other than that outdated mess of a course.
Get into Korean entertainment. It helps. TV dramas, pop music, movies and the like really help to understand some of the culture and to hear natively spoken language. Who knows, you might actually
learn something from watching a drama or two. For more, take a look at
my movie recommendations as well as
ones to avoid. Here are
some dramas to to look out for.
DramaFever has English subtitled dramas. Lastly,
my music recommendations. Music has helped me; especially at 노래방. It's like read-singing practice that is actually fun to do with your friends.
Get a good self-study book or two. Or twelve. I like the KLEAR series published by the University of Hawaii. Look on Amazon for "Integrated Korean" and you'll not be disappointed. I've learned a lot from these textbooks. They are intuitively set up and really explain in plain English the intricacies that a native English speaker encounters when learning Korean. The accompanying workbooks are not bad, either. I actually learned 한글 that way.
Take the plunge. Take a formal language class. It's scary, expensive and most likely not available in your neighborhood. But if it does exist, take it. I'm from Texas and although there's a lot of 교포 living there, I couldn't find a university or academy class that had Korean language in my area. So in the summer of 2008, I went to Korea and took a three week intensive class at Ewha that changed my entire studying habits, understanding of Korean, and overall confidence.
Chart your progress. Remind yourself why you are studying. Start a study blog. It helps to make you accountable. Didn't study last week? The internet will get you... Otherwise, make reasonable and attainable goals. If you set a goal to be 100% fluent in five months in hopes to marry some celebrity, rethink why you're studying in the first place. In my case, my goal was to be able to speak to my parents-in-law. I always studied with that in mind - even before I met my fiancé. The idea was to study hard enough to make them comfortable with me taking care of their daughter. Although my Korean is nowhere I'd like it to be, this goal has been achieved. Further study is to make them even more at ease.
Ask questions. Make mistakes. Grow as a human being. Learning Korean has been an eye-opening experience that has made me discover my own culture by comparison. Be active in a community be it online or in real life. Don't be discouraged by someone else that speaks Korean better than you and has studied for less time. Know this: There will always be someone who speaks better than you. Trust me. I am always looking up to people only to find someone looking up to me. They aren't you and you aren't them. Comparing progress is only setting yourself up to be discouraged. Just do what you can, be diligent, study consistently, keep your goals in mind and you'll be surprised how well you do after a year or two. This time two years ago I couldn't even tell time. I'm amazed how far I've gotten thus far. Living in Korea has only reinforced that although I'm conversational, I have a long long way to go to fluency. But it's like my mother always says "Life is a journey". Always changing. Always moving. How I speak Korean today is nothing like it will be in four years let alone four months.
Anyways, I hope this is of some help. In the end, being pro-active and keeping a positive mind will help you out a lot.
