Tag: books

Hi! I love seeing your recommended news articles in Korean (I actually read and annotated the one about shoe sizes in Korea) however I am Upper beginner/ slowly creeping into intermediate and I wanted to know if you have any articles or tips to reading articles in a higher level if you’re in that area? Thanks ^^!

hwanghon:

Thank you for the love hahah!!!!

hm when I was around that level I read (and listened to) a lot talktomeinkorean material. I found their stuff to be really level appropriate and fun! They have a lot of news like material as well 🙂

News are by nature not very beginner/ lower intermediate level friendly, most foreign language classes start using news articles at upper intermediate level, but articles in the society/culture/weather section tend to be a lot easier, if you really want to read the news. 

I personally don’t see the point in starting to read the news at a super early level; sure there are some interesting articles, but all the texts that will take you a reasonable time to read will be fairly boring, and you’re not learning words and grammar structures that you can use in every day casual settings or in conversation, which is what you’ll be learning as a upper beginner/lower intermediate learner.

If you want to know what took my reading from high beginner to intermediate, it’s yonsei’s level 3 reading book. I know it’s not free, but it’s worth every cent. I’m fairly sure there are news like articles in there but most of the stories are everyday life oriented and very level appropriate, while still being engaging and challenging. 

Also, I hate being that person, but topik beginner 2/intermediate level reading texts are often based on recent news, while being level appropriate and short, so I recommend that. You can get past exams for free here.

I don’t have any specific tips, basically try engaging with the text until you feel confident that you can read it without looking up a word or grammar and to understand it. And if you come back to it in a week, that this will still be the case. That’s why them being fairly understandable and level appropriate is important to me. If I can’t understand 50% of the article already, I’d just leave it.

Note that not everybody has the same opinions on reading than me, I just like to read the text and not translate it word by word, so for me level appropriative-ness is very important. But not everybody thinks like that.

Went to the seoul international book fair and got new books to read once i finish 미움 받을 용기. Found 지적 대화를 위한 넓고 얕은 지식 thanks to the recommendations by @koreangrumblings and ttmik. I decided to get the second one because it includes philosophy and art, but not sure if that’s a good choice because the whole point of studying more is that i need to build vocab on subjects im Not interested not those that i already know. Ive only flipped through it but it looks like a challenging read. I hope its not too difficult. I know nothing about the other book i just picked it up because it looked interesting at the stall, ive been wanting to read some korean feminism, and i wanted the free bag they were giving away with it 👍

koreangrumblings:

koreangrumblings:

11 Korean books down, and the 12th is the first book-length non-fiction I’ve attempted to tackle. I love this podcast, so it follows that I would have to get my mits on the two books they’ve published. So far, this is exactly what I expect from these guys: an accessible, fun read!

Finished this on my bus ride to work. A definite recommendation for anyone looking to acquire the vocabulary to maintain one’s end of an intellectual conversation. Many of the points in this book I’d already studied during my school years, but the way they are presented here in such a fun, clear way was so refreshing, I felt like I was really learning them for the first time while also gaining insight on how these ideas are applied in Korean society. The author does an excellent job of connecting each section of the book to the next, making the book’s flow easy to follow and resulting in a grand culmination of ideas and a simple question: what kind of world do you want to create? Like I said, 강추 강추 강추~ Onto 2권!