If you ever want to swim, you should probably jump in.

Recently I've been digging my way through the scholarship application process for studying in Korea for the 2016 Spring semester (March - June) and the process has ended up being more stressful than I expected. I'm nearly at the end of the process and it will be a relief to put it behind me.

As I was going through the above process I thought about the difficulties I will inevitably be facing next year. Going by my current level of Korean I know just enough to be able to scrape past the minimum enrollment requirements for foreign students but I still wouldn't be able to survive a university course load in Korean just yet and so I have a lot of studying left ahead of me.

One of the advantages of using a Flash card program (e.g. Anki) to study vocabulary is that at any moment I can tell how many Korean words I know. 104 Days ago I reached 3000 words and currently I'm at 3743 words, I'll have to pick up the pace by quite a bit if I want to make any serious progress before next year. But the reason I'm telling you this is because you notice some odd things that come out of these statistics.

For context one of the reasons I started learning Korean was my love for the game Starcraft 2. Due to their strong work ethic and training house infrastructure all the best Starcraft players are Koreans and so it follows that there's a lot of tournaments that are broadcasted in Korean.

And I watch every single one.

While on the off season it's possible for me to go several days without watching Starcraft when the season is in full bloom I can expect to watch about 15 hours over the week and if there's a few weekend tournaments as well I'll be watching upwards of 25 hours in a single week.

While there's a lot of useful words to be learnt from listening to starcraft commentary there's just as many that aren't so useful. For example I only learned the word for 'warrior' (전사) this week but I've known the word for zealot (광전사) for over a year, the simple reason for this is that 'Zealot' is a word used in Starcraft but 'Warrior' isn't.

That's not the end of my problems either, it was only 2 weeks ago (after I had already been learning Korean for 15 months) that I first learned how to say the basic math operations of plus, minus, divide and times (더하기, 빼기, 나누기, 곱하기) I had known all these verbs individually but until 2 weeks ago I wouldn't have been able to transfer them into a mathematical expression.

So now that my Starcraft lingo is well above what it needs to be, while my maths and physics vocabulary is well below what it needs to be I'll have to start sculpting my study to fill in the holes. Recently I've been watching some physics tutorials aimed at Middle School students and some of the new vocabulary seems to be sticking well.

I guess this was a detoured way of saying that you reap what you sow. If you look at a marathon runner's training schedule you'll see a lot of running and not much else. If you just want to be able to watch Starcraft in Korean, then just go ahead and watch some Korean Starcraft. It's almost too obvious to bother saying but sometimes its good to ground yourself and find your bearings before you move too quickly in the wrong direction.

A Korean friend who's learning English recently asked me if she should read children's books for practice, it's not a bad way of practicing but if that's your main resource just be warned that you might end up just like me and learn the word for 'queen' (the name of a special starcraft unit) before you learn the word for 'kitchen'.

So when you're studying a new language, no matter how far down the track you are, make sure you're facing the direction you want to go before you start moving too quickly.

Personal list of recommended Korean resources

Big list of Korean Stuff

There are a lot of ways to learn a language but all the best methods are enjoyable in someway. So here's a list of all the enjoyable ways of learned Korean, they're not ranked on any particular formula but I weight each item according to its usefulness for learning and its entertainment value.


Apps:
1.Anki (The core of my Korean, I haven't missed a day of studying with Anki since I started 440 days ago)
2.Kakao Talk
3.Lang-8/Naver Blog
4.Hello Talk

Textbooks:
1.Korean Grammar in Use (best textbook for learning just grammar)
2.Modern Korean an Intermediate Reader (best intermediate textbook, has grammar and vocab drills)
3.My Korean 1 (released by Monash university, much closer to a traditional university textbook, best resource for learning Hangeul)
4. EPS Topik textbook


Webtoons: (http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/weekday.nhn)
1.모두에게 완자가
2.Penguin Loves Mev
3.아이들은 즐겁다
4.대학일기

Podcasts: (most Korean podcasts are at http://www.podbbang.com/)
1.Talk to me in Korean (Grammar aimed at beginners)
2.과학과 사람들
3.
4.

Youtube channels:
1. 세바시 (TED style talks)
2. MasterTOPIK (TOPIK practice, aimed at intermediate learners)
3. KBS World TV (subbed episodes of KBS shows)
4. CODEnMEDIA

Movies:
1. Sunny
2. Old Boy
3. Sympathy for Mrs, Vengeance
4.달콤한 인생

Variety shows:
1.비정상회담
2.Running Man
3.마녀사냥
4.Hello Counselor

Dramas:
1.미생
2.응급남녀
3.
4.

Books:
1.나는 아직 어른이 되려면 멀었다 (Mature themes, simple language, short chapters. Ideal for someone trying to read their first real Korean book)
2.
3.
4.

Albums:
1. Lucia - Light and Shade (clear pronunciation, slow pace, not pop)
2. The lime - 어떡하면 될까요 (same as above)
3. Pinodyne - Her (EP)
4.


Other:
Dictionary: http://endic.naver.com/?sLn=en
Korean learning forum: http://www.reddit.com/r/korean
Culture blog: http://thesawon.blogspot.com.au/

Last updated: 29/3/2015

About Me

여러분 안녕하십니까 !

매튜라고 합니다 현재는 물리와 교육이 되는 복수전공을 하면서 틈틈이에 한국말 공부하는데요. 여기에 여러 가지 내용 알려드리겠어서 많이 기대해주세요.

Hey Everyone!

My name is Matthew, I'm currently studying a bachelor of education with a bachelor of science (physics major), in my free time I study Korean. I'll be writing about a lot of different things so stay tuned.