i’m seeeeriously considering taking up korean but i have no resources except for dl/lingodeer and some blogs on here. any favourites those of you learning korean could recommend?
I use;
– the app Memrise (free for ios, I don’t know about andriod).
– the book “Korean for Beginners” by Park and Amen (My brother got the book for me as a gift so I can’t attest to it’s price, but it’s good for grammar rules etc.) comes with a cd of a gazillion native pronounciations for vocab and a lot of culture notes!
– if you follow the Tumblr tag ‘random korean vocab’ you’ll get a lot of new words nearly every time you open tumblr. I pick a few a week on top of my regular study just to get some extra words to use.
YouTube channels:
– JOLLY. the premise is a somewhat native speaker (who lived in korea for an extended period of time / got married to a korean lady) teaches his friend the language etc. very comedic and not too fast paced. I like to follow the lesson and make notes of my own, as things are usually repeated several times and it really feels like you’re being taught one on one.
– 영국남자. mostly food, not gonna lie. but very interesting. run by the same people as JOLLY. will make you cry laughing 10/10 times. (plus both channels include subtitles for English and Korean. (It really helps me personally to see the Hangul while hearing it.)
good luck! I’m sorry I couldn’t link anything, I’m on mobile, but a quick search of the titles should give you what you want.
youtubes: sweetandtastyTV (KWOW series), korean unnie 한국언니, 데이브 world of dave, solfa, 린디 lindie botes
other: (wordpress blogs): hangukdrama, sydneytoseoul. (sites): quick korean, talk to me in korean, oh my korean, howtostudykorean
Expressions for TOPIK writing:
53번 문제는 도표(그래프, 자료, 그림)에 대한 설명하는 글을 씁니다.
3가지 유형: 장단점 비교 유형 그래프 분석, 비교 유형/원인과 현황 분석 유형 분류 유형
TOPIK II 쓰기 (책)
Expressions for the TOPIK writing test:
Image 1) 51번 문제는 초대글, 게시글, 편지글, 모집글과 같은 생활문을 읽고 ( ) 안에 문장을 써야 합니다. Image 2) 52번 문제는 주장글 (’칭찬의 역할, 사회와 개인의 관계, 기회의 역할, 어려운 일 앞에서의 두 가지 태도’ 등)
TOPIK II 쓰기 (책)
Magazine app Issuu has a selection of korean textbooks, plus korean magazines and books about korean cooking, culture, etc. Just search “Korean” in the scratch bar, i guess they might have the same for other languages as well 🤗
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.
I’m not good at reviewing books but I’m going to try and write my impression about this book. I don’t really like memorizing and even though I have two voca books which I bought for TOPIK prep, I just didn’t get to use them (another reason is that the translation sucks). The first time I saw 마인맵으로 배우는 토픽 어휘 2300 at the bookstore, I remember being impressed by it.
The words are grouped by topic. One chapter a day consists of 1-3 topics. It has 80 chapters which mean 80 days.
As you can see on the image above they use ‘mind-mapping’. The main topic is divided into sub-topics and each of them is categorized.
Each word has English, Chinese and Japanese meaning underneath them. Examples are also given and I love that they don’t have any translation.
I also love this part! There are words that originated from Chinese (한자어). The words which have the same 한자 are introduced and grouped together at the end of each chapter.
Each chapter has practice questions.
And every two weeks, there’s a review test.
This book consists 47 topics. Practical words that you can use on a daily conversation are introduced. It consists 2300 words. There’s also synonyms and antonyms.
Overall, I think this is the best voca book I’ve seen so far. I like the idea of mind-map. This will be really useful for those who are having a hard time with vocabulary.^^ I recommend this if you’re an intermediate learner.
Price: 22,000won ISBN 978-89-5518-764-9
If you’re in Korea you can get this for 19,800won on Aladin. HangulPark (한글파크) in 신촌 will also give you a discount^^ For international shipping the only site I know is TwoChois.
To keep in mind for when I attempt level 6 next year.
The “Korean Grammar in Use” series is one of the resources I recommend the most when people ask me which resources they should (or shouldn’t) use to study Korean. That is not to say that it’s flawless, but it’s solid for sure. If you want to start diving into advanced grammar or are looking for something to supplement your other advanced grammar resources, here are a few good and bad things about “Korean Grammar in Use (Advanced).”
NOTE: A lot of what I say here, especially in regards to the formatting of the book, will be applicable to “Korean Grammar in Use (Intermediate)” as well since the books follow the same format. I imagine that this also holds true for the beginner edition as well, but I can’t say for sure since I’ve never actually read a copy.
Pros:
One of the good things about the KGIU series is that it is available not only in English but also in other languages like Mandarin and Japanese. If you’re a native speaker of one of those languages and would like a more comfortable read, or if you’re learning one of those languages and would like to tackle learning Korean through one of your second languages, this could be really beneficial! A lot of Korean grammar resources are printed in just one language, so having editions in multiple languages is a plus.
As for the content, I find that KGIU’s explanations are fairly clearly written and easy to understand in both Korean and English. The initial description of the main function(s) of each grammar point is succinctly introduced and is usually accompanied by a table showing you how to conjugate the grammar point properly. Any specific limitations, extra usages of the grammar, or just other important things to know or remember then appear in the “더 알아볼까요?” section. After all is read and done (har har har), you’ll have quite a bit of information to work with! Compared to other sources I have used, I would say that “Korean Grammar in Use (Advanced)” is usually the most detailed when describing the usage of each grammar point, but the way in which that information is introduced and formatted doesn’t leave the reader feeling like they’re being barraged with too much at the same time.
Within the “더 알아볼까요?” section is another sub-section that I think is worthy of its own special mention. In the “비교해 볼까요?” sub-section, KGIU shows and breaks down grammar points that either look similar to the target grammar or have similar meanings (or both) and explains how each is similar and different with the target grammar. While other sources that I’ve used will usually mention things like “This grammar form can be switched with X form” as necessary, they don’t tend to have comparisons like KGIU does. Another excellent feature and a reason why I recommend this series~
Wrapping up the positives for this book is the amount of practice questions. Each grammar form has at least two pages of practice questions accompanying it, which is more than other books I have used. The exercises are fairly simple but effective, usually involving choosing the appropriate word for a sentence from a word bank and using it with the target grammar to complete the sentence, or changing or combining sentences using the target grammar. At the end of each section—the book is divided into sections of grammar with similar meanings and/or usages—there are also some extra multiple choice questions to check if you have properly understood the differences between the forms.
Finally, on to some things that are specific to “KGIU (Advanced)” and not the series as a whole!
(Okay, this isn’t really specific to the advanced edition, but this is almost certainly a non-issue for intermediate and beginner learners, so…) A lot of advanced grammar resources are written purely in Korean, whereas “KGIU (Advanced)” uses first Korean and then English for its grammar explanations and example sentences. Depending on how you look at it, this could be a good thing or a bad thing. If you are working on removing English totally from your studies, and think having the English translations right there might be too distracting, this might not be the book for you. However, if you aren’t quite yet comfortable reading grammar explanations in Korean but want to give it a shot and be able to check yourself, this is excellent. Depends on what you’re looking for!
Another thing to be aware of—and this really applies to all advanced Korean grammar study materials—is that you will often find yourself questioning the usefulness of grammar you encounter. Once you get up to that level, the remaining grammar left to learn is largely grammar that crops up in mostly literature or more formal settings like news and business presentations, etc. More than once I have asked a friend or coworker to help clarify a grammar point only to be met by “Why are you learning that?? I don’t think I’ve ever personally used that in my life!” Of course, they still know what it means, so while you might not find yourself using some of these grammar forms much, you still might encounter them and need to know what they mean. This isn’t really a good thing or a bad thing; just how it is!
Overall, I’m a big fan of the KGIU series, and I would wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone looking for a strong source for learning Korean grammar 🙂
Sutdy-Korean 