I got level 6 and reached my goal of getting +90 on listening and reading.
So glad I’m done with it. My writing is surprisingly high, I didn’t have time to proofread anything (which my dyslexic brain needs to do multiple times in any language), and didn’t give the first 2 questions a second thought, my essay was 150~characters too short. Also I’m never bothering with this again unless they come up with a computer based version.
I don’t think it says that much, but I feel like, you can be mediocre at Korean and get level 6 but you can’t be good and not get at least level 4~5? With language tests they might make the error of overestimating your skills, but they can only underestimate you so much. In a weird way it kind of helps with my imposter syndrome.
It’s a bit annoying that their writing exam is so non representative, since my writing does need to improve, but being able to write more or less exactly 700 character essays isn’t a skill I want to acquire. I guess I should start up my naver blog again?
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.
well first i would advise you print out at least one of the past tests (they have them on the website) just so you know the main structure of the test. i wouldn’t print out a bunch because honestly they’re boring and you might not be able to get through that many (i wouldn’t lol).
get through one, see how you feel, and then get on memrise and search for topik sets (like this one) and use memrise every day. i did this, got through about 300 words (don’t forget 속담 cause those are important!) in about two weeks, and it helped a lot, and wasn’t painful at all.
personally i didn’t study grammar since i took the intermediate topik a couple years ago (that was the old topik which featured much more grammar) but memorize at least 10 or 15 of the more ‘advanced’ grammars (the kind you wouldn’t normally use) in addition to all the basics because it will help you get a higher score on the 쓰기 section (even if you’re essay is perfectly readable and free of mistakes, it needs a little bit of the more ‘advanced’ grammar to get a high score, or so i’ve heard.)
So I took my first practice tests for TOPIK II here. It was much harder than I expected, especially reading! I’m kinda shocked I did better with listening than reading because listening has always been my weakest point, but maybe this past year of living in Korea but not studying or reading anything other than Kakaotalk channel pages has changed that. I got 64 in listening and 58 in reading, I have no idea how to test my writing skills myself but if I estimate another 50 points I guess I’d get around a level 4. No way! I know I can do better than that! I’m really not used to taking exams and the main thing I felt whilst taking the practice tests is that I need to increase my vocabulary a lot. So, time to start actually studying!
Started planning my Korean study this week. This is my first time reading a Korean book and I just picked one from my boyfriend’s bookshelf. There’s lots of vocab I don’t know but i get the jist most of the time. Also met a new language exchange partner and took the topik listening practice test, I’m planning to take the other practice tests next week to get an idea of what level I’m at and what i need to improve on.
So I’m reading 성균관 유생들의 나날 once again from the top because 1) I haven’t actually read a novel word for word (without skimming) since 우행시 and 2) holy shite I’m coming across all this TOPIK II grammar and I’m less than 100 pages in, so finally, here’s all the glorious ~context~ for the grammar that I need to learn. No more excuses.
*** TOPIK II grammar encountered so far:
p.30 처음에 못 본 척, 못 들은 척하고 오는데, 계속 앞에서 알짱거리면서 내가 먼저 말 걸게끔 유도를 하더라고.
p. 33 그럼에도 불구하고 어머니가 수모를 당해 가면서까지 친가나 외가 쪽에 인사 다니는 이유는 단 하나, 아비를 일찍 여읜 자식들을 위해서였다.
p. 69 성균과의 비천당과는 달리 예조의 나무들은 앙상하기그지없어 일산이 큰 영향을 주었다.
Oops, bought more books… thanks to @nocturnalinseoul for the 빈도별 토픽 recommendation! That was the only book I was actually looking for, but while I was searching for it on the shelves, my boyfriend picked up the idiomatic expressions book, flipped through it, and said that it actually had a ton of really good expressions that he and other Koreans use frequently. Sometimes it’s hard to know when certain phrases like that are up-to-date and actually well used or not, but this book got his seal of approval, so I just had to buy it as well 🙂 I’ll do reviews for both of these once I dig into them a bit~
Sutdy-Korean 