#korean resources
Resources
Quizlet flashcards decks made by me
Vocabulary (+6k words)
Websites/books
Happy learning! ^^
Only two more days until the TOPIK test now and I’m absolutely terrified! I definitely don’t know as much as I’d like to, even though I studied so much. I wanted to share with you all some of the free resources that I’ve found really useful as I’ve been studying, and hopefully they can help you all if you ever decide to take the TOPIK exam!
Min’s Korean Language Class
Min is a certified Korean teacher and her Youtube channel is dedicated to helping people through the TOPIK exams. I found her overviews of all the grammar for TOPIK 1andTOPIK 2 really useful and have been going over them non stop the past few days to make sure that I’m completely covered on the grammar side of the exam.
The TOPIK Guide’s Essential Grammar Notes
The TOPIK Guide provides a list similar to Min’s of all the 150 most important grammar forms to learn for the TOPIK exam. These are moreso for the TOPIK 2, as it covers intermediate and advanced grammar as well, which is unnecessary for the TOPIK 1. What’s really useful about this list is the ‘similar phrases’ column, as this helps to prepare you for the ‘closest meaning’ questions where you are asked to switch out grammar forms.
How To Study Korean
If you’re learning Korean then I’m sure that this site is quite familiar to you. It provides comprehensive guides on most of the grammar forms that are included in the TOPIK exams along with example sentences and audio to make it easier to understand.
Say Hi Korean
This site is less well known than How to Study Korean, but provides the same guidance on grammar forms. Many of the forms that aren’t included on How to Study Korean are available here.
Go! Billy Livestreams and Abridged Lives
Go! Billy is a youtuber who has been studying Korean since 2005 and has dedicated his time to helping other people learn. He has a range of informative videos on his channel, as well as his own textbooks, and a collaboration with Talk To Me In Korean. I find his livestreams really useful, as he makes learning fun and answers questions to make sure that everyone is following along. Patreon members get added perks like like lesson worksheets and priority grammar submissions.
Memrise
Memrise is kind of similar to quizlet but is made specifically for language learners. It has official courses for different languages at different levels, and you can make your own courses too if you prefer to study your own grammar. There are a few quizes that you can take including ‘learn new words’, ‘speed review’, and ‘classic review’, and you can track how many words are in your long term memory too. I really like the leaderboard feature, since it uses my competitiveness to encourage me to learn more.
TOPIK 1 Essential Vocab on Memrise
Technically this is probably copyrighted material, but onemillionlove has shared a list of the essential vocab for TOPIK 1 to learn on Memrise. This list is really useful to make sure that you have the vocabulary side of the exam covered. It only covers the first test, but there’s a useful resource for the TOPIK 2 vocab that I’ll share in my next post.
HiNative
This site is a discussion board where you can ask questions about your target language and get feedback or explanations from native speakers. They’ve changed the site so that some of the question types are restricted for paying users, but honestly I just put those questions awkwardly into the free question posts and I still get answers on them.
I’ve known about Forest as a browser extension, but I recently tried the app version and it’s so much better. You can plant a tree, set an amount of time and as long as you stay focused on your app your tree will grow. The app is really good because you can see your forest, change plants, get achievements, and they also have a new TinyTan feature for BTS fans. There’s also an option to plant a real tree. I’d really recommend getting the paid version of the app, since you can get access to more plants, but the free version is great as well. Side note, but my friend code is 4G84KCVSG if you want to add me on Forest!
Hi guys! Happy New Year (lol its January 6th - I’m so late). I hope that everyone who was celebrating had a really lovely festive season and that all of you had a nice start to the new year. Wishing you all health, happiness and huge language gains for the year ahead (haha! very important).
Before I get back to the regular type of posts for this year, I just wanted to let you all know about the Korean Book Club that I have joined. It is an initiative that was set up by someone wonderful that I follow on Instagram (ID: clickystudies) as an effort to keep all of us active with our reading goals for the year.
Here’s how it goes:
- There is one common book that all of us will read throughout the whole year. [TITLE: 1일 1페이지, 세상에서 가장 짧은 교양 수업 365] (you can buy it on Google Play Store for around $6-7 or something - link here and image below) - it is a book with 365 articles so there is one text piece for every day of the year! NEAT. The articles are about a whole bunch of varied worldtopics and was only published in 2019 so it is super relevant still. The level is probably around Intermediate+ levels but a bunch of Beginners learners are also finding the text really useful for vocabulary learning so far!
- If you wish to, you could post your progress using the hashtag #2021KoreanBookClub on whatever social media platform you like to use.
- You can join the Discord group where each day we share notes, vocabulary lists, help each other to understand the text better, and just generally chat. If you want to be a part of the Discord group, please message clickystudies on Instagram and ask if you can join the Book Club - they will walk you through the process of joining.
I only just joined yesterday actually, so I have 6 days of reading to catch up with, but each article is distinct and standalone, so even if you are joining us late, you can just catch up in your own time - no rush at all and no pressure to read the past texts either.
The book club is a pretty social thing, but if you don’t want to join the Discord group, you could always work through the 365 book on your own, at your own pace (you don’t even need to do one a day!). Choose whatever works for you, but personally - I find the Discord channel motivating and it reminds me to read my chapter if I still haven’t read it for the day.
There are a few other books in this 365 series - one on Famous people and one on Modern Culture (both published in 2020, so super current info!), which you could also check out if you like! I guess I’ll tackle those in subsequent years. My reading list is sorted until January 2024 (hahah!!)
If you decide to join the book club, let me know! I’m @jeilylanguage on the Discord (that’s my IG name). Or if you’re going to work through the book on your own, drop me a comment or a message and let me know how you find the book! Enjoy all and good luck with your Korean reading for the year!
I have been discussing resources with a few people on private message and have been thinking a bit about what resources were the best on my journey…. so here’s my final (maybe) compilation of resources for the year that will hopefully be helpful for anyone who is looking at resources between the beginners and upper intermediate levels.
NB. This list is based off materials I have used in the past and is not an exhaustive list of ALL the resources I have used - it is just a selection of some of my favourite. There are so many Korean resources out there so there might be some that work more for you that I haven’t even looked at.
CourseTexts
In my opinion, the perfect course text isn’t going to teach you everything you need to know, but a good course text will at least give you a clear framework to chunk up and guide your studies. I have used a few but the most user friendly one is definitely:
- Talk To Me In Korean -they set things out clearly so nothing feels overwhelming and provide a sensible framework to follow for self-study. Other course books tend to be better suited for in-class settings and not great for self-study.
Grammar
The course texts will teach you about grammar but I think they don’t teach you how the grammar structures are related to each other. So I think it is key to look at one or more of these books:
The above series is incredible and a serious MUST for all Korean learners. They clearly and concisely set out the grammar points and show how they are all related to each other. There is an Advanced book as well which I have yet to use and will teach quite complex structures.
- Basic Korean: A Grammar and Workbook (I have linked the forthcoming version being released in Dec 2020!)
- Intermediate Korean: A Grammar and Workbook
The above Routledge series is great for its workbook feature. The layout is a little academic so it’s not super appealing but the way they explain grammar is clear and relatively detailed. The number of examples included in the workbook is fantastic, providing a lot of opportunity to practice. I haven’t used the Basic book but if it is anything like the Intermediate, it will be a winner.
Vocabulary
The part that people often miss out when learning Korean is vocabulary, because it can be so easy to just follow course texts and grammar books, but those will never teach enough words. To learn more vocab, it is really important to read around. There are so many Korean language books that you can pick up, but here are some books and resources that are catered specifically for language learners that I have loved:
- Korean Culture in 100 Keywords-they give a paragraph on different cultural aspects of Korea in both Korean and English and highlight all the new vocabulary for you. The texts are graded from easy to more difficult.
- News in Korean-lots of short news stories with translations in English and comprehension questions. Might be targeted more at intermediate learners
- Mind Map TOPIK VOCA 2300-this book sorts vocabulary into categories and shows them as mindmaps. It also gives readers sentences in context and has mini quizzes, HOWEVER it is written in 98% Korean so this is a book that is definitely more pitched at upper intermediate levels and above and teaches vocabulary that is a little less common
- Anki-my most used resource. Everyone has their own favourite for flashcards and this is mine. Anki do spaced repetition meaning that it will constantly test your knowledge on vocabulary, spacing the quizzes/tests depending on how difficult you find the word. It is more efficient than other flashcard platforms, but it is a little tricky to get started and create your own cards. If you want to download pre-made decks, you can, but this works best when you add the words you have learned yourself so that you get decks that are full of vocab that is relevant for you
- Beelinguapp-This is an app that has some story books written in both Korean and English. It also has an audio function so you can listen to someone reading the stories in Korean. This is neat for pronunciation and listening, and also identifying new words, however the range of stories are limited.
- Gloss-Gloss have a set of online lessons pitched at different levels which takes you through articles or texts (or audio and video), then asks a lot of comprehension questions. It follows a lesson format so it is far more engaging than your regular book, however it is a little on the difficult side.
- [EXTRA] Your First Hanja Guide-you might not want to learn vocabulary this way and it is absolutely NOT an essential, but for me it is helpful to visualise the Hanja character when seeing the relationship between words, so if you like learning words like that, then this is the book for you
Listening/Watching
Like with reading, there are multiple resources that you can use to listen to native Korean, but here are some that are specifically targeted at learners
- 여보세요-this app/website has a few short video clips and goes through slowly to examine the meaning and new words, then has a number of test quizzes through multiple choice or through speaking (via microphone). There are different clips graded by levels and the app tracks your progress and gives progress reports.
- Real Life Korean Conversations: Beginners/Intermediate -this IS a book, but it is best used in conjunction with the audio files. The book gives the script, as well as the vocabulary, and also looks at key grammar points and structures used in the conversations
Speaking
There aren’t many resources that I find great for self-studying speaking - generally you need someone else to do that with you, but here is one that I thought was quite neat:
- Teuida- I just did a very quick run through this app as it is definitely pitched at beginners, but I thought that it was a smart way of learning some basic conversational Korean. It teaches you phrases and you have to repeat them back through the microphone feedback function. Then to test your retention, they take you through a mock situation and you have to speak your answers - there is quite a strong focus on getting pronunciation correct. My biggest downsides of this app are that the free sections are really limited, AND they seem to have geared the lessons towards the idea of dating, which I just find so awkward and embarrassing hahaha!
Writing
I’m in the market to buy some writing books and have my eye on some but am waiting until I have the time to work on them, but this book is quite neat for learning different sentence structures and how to construct meaningful answers:
- Korean Q&A Sentence Patterns- this book poses a question and looks at different ways of answering it. It also shows variations of the question, then examines form. It gives an example long answer and prompts you to think about how to construct your own response using the grammar and vocabulary given
I have updated my Hanja Anki deck yet again, now including all 7급 characters! You might notice that I’m going from version 2 to version 4, but I did have a version 3! I just didn’t post it on here, though it did make its way to a Discord server. In the end, it’s a good thing that I didn’t post version 3 widely because that version, which is the same character set as the current version, had an error in it that I only found when I was doing my Anki reviews with the deck. So, I fixed the erroneous card up and re-exported the set to make my (hopefully error-free) version 4.
For some reason I can’t get an in-text link to work, so just copy and paste this into your brower: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lLhd4xa1lnZFFwDEopP-jU_5raaIkT3e/view
Happy studying~
Hello again, everyone! I’m slowly making progress digitizing my Hanja cards into an Anki deck. Today I have ver.2 of the set for you, which includes 8급 just like the last set, and 7급II. I also edited the image for one of the 8급 cards because, when reviewing, I realized that I had written it incorrectly! Oops!
Anyway, here’s the set! Just click here, download the set, and import it into Anki
Each of the levels is individually tagged in the overall deck, so if you just want to isolate one of the levels, you should be able to do so fairly easily.
If you want more information about the fields on the cards, you can read the first flashcard post here.
Please do tell me if you find any errors on any of the cards so I can update the set ASAP.
As always, happy studying!
Hello everyone! I’ve been keeping up with my Korean and Mandarin study, and generally keeping busy in this last month of the year.
As the title of this post suggests, I have some flashcards for you all! I am slowly digitizing my paper hanja cards into an Anki deck, and I want to share it with you guys. So far, I have only added my 8급 cards to the deck.
The current deck can be found by clicking this sentence!
I imagine that it will take quite a while to finish digitizing my complete sets. Here are all of the hanja cards I have made so far:
As you can see… I have a lot of cards! When I completely add a new level (next one is 7급II, of course) I will share the deck again.
Now a little info about the cards:
Each card has four fields, two of which are hidden until you click to open them. The main fields are the front field, which has the 훈음 (character meaning and reading); and the back field, which has a photo of the paper card I made. I marked stroke order when I wrote the cards, so there’s that!
The first of the two special fields is “Extra Information”, which has info about what level the character is in both reading and writing, and the radical. This field can be revealed by clicking a link on the front side. The second special field is “Sample words”, which shows words that use that character written out in hanja only. This can be accessed from the back side of the card.
Each card has a normal and reverse, so there are 100 cards in the current deck to represent the 50 8급 hanja.
I hope some of you find this useful! Please let me know if you do :)
As always, happy studying~
Visit the link to see my Quizlet vocabulary setfor these words and memorize the words quickly and easily!
Korean Vocab’s Korean Language Exchange
I want to make a language exchange group for those of us wanting to message In Korean.
In order to participate you have to be at least an advanced beginner. Meaning, you can read and reply to simple sentences and have a light conversation.
If you are interested reblog this post with your kakao ID and speaking level
Advanced beginner (a good amount of basic vocabulary memorized)
Intermediate (more advanced but common words memorized ex: cold freezing versus cold)
Advanced (you know some technical words)
Hey Korean Langblrs,
Can you give a complete beginner some good resources (pref free but I’ll consider paid) to learn with
tyty
Get all you need to learn Korean in 2019:
How to learn Korean alphabet (ㄱ, ㄴ, ㄷ, ㅏ, ㅐ, ㅔ…)
Do you need to learn Hanja? (Korean Chinese characters)
Korean keyboard layout (for PC, iOS, Android…)
Choosebest (or cutest) Korean keyboard stickers
Learn to Type Korean with all 10 fingers
Awesome Korean keyboard for Android
How to change keyboard language in Windows 10 to Korean
Get organized: Plan learning Korean language
Korean emoticons ^ㅂ^ ㅡㅅㅡ
Korean notebooks for writing Hanja
Why having fun while learning Korean is important
Korean romance ->
-> How to say “My love,” “I love you,” “boyfriend,“ "I miss you”… in Korean
K-pop:How to learn Korean vocabulary with Kpop
10 best ways to learn Korean vocabulary, part 1
10 best ways to learn Korean vocabulary, part 2
Two quick Memrise tips to boost Korean vocabulary learning
What does oppamean? (and how to use it properly!)
3best Korean pronunciation books
Tuttle ‘Elementary Korean’ textbook review
‘Useful Chinese Characters for Learners of Korean’textbook review
Sharing a good resource to study KOREAN!
I found a really good resource to learn the word or phrase with context! It’s called Contextual Dictionary. Some of you may already know but still I share on my blog! You can simply search what you are curious about on the searching engine.
Or you have these suggestions below which are popularly searched.
If you search something, this dictionary shows all the examples so you can compare these and learn the context. It also show a simple translation by each word.
You can switch the searching language like kr-eng, eng-kr or even many other languages. I hope this helps your study and HERE’s the link. TRY IT! :)
https://www.contextualdictionary.com/korean-english/
Korean Langblr / Studyblr Group Chat!
Hello guys! although I’m not always so active in posting on here I created a group chat for anyone who studies Korean(especially those of us who like kpop) to join!!
it’s on kakao and here is the link and please reblog so others can join
