I started learning Korean in the summer of 2019. I was too lazy to keep a record of the experience, and now I finally decided to write about the experience.
The Beginning: Where to Start
(It’s been quite a while ago, so the memory may be 100% accurate.)
Once I made up my mind to learn Korean, the first challenge was to find the starting material (since I was already out of school, I couldn’t just enroll in a class). So I just started Googling, and a few results caught my attention (I got NO commission from any of those):
- Koreanclass101: they have different “pathways” (like “getting started” or “pronunciation guide”), which looks ideal for an absolute beginner. I tried a few lessons from several pathways, and had a positive experience.
- Talk to me in Korean: they provide many different “levels” (1-9 back then, and level 10 came in 2020). However, the podcast style lessons didn’t appeal to me.
- How to study Korean: they also have different “units”, but are text heavy instead of audio/video oriented.
- I heard quite some negative comments about Duolingo that it’s too fragmented, so I just skipped it.
- There were also a bunch other results, but with texts like “90 days” or “3 months” in the name, and I had a bias against those numbers.
So after some trial, I decided to first stick with Koreanclass101.
Early Learning
Probably the same for all language learning, I spent the first month or so learning the basics: pronunciation, basic grammar and some simple dialogue such as “what’s your name” or “what do you like to eat”.
There were lots of contents that appeared unclear, such as why a verb was in a certain form or what’s the suffix after a word. Trying to figure everything out would only overwhelm me, so I just tried to memorize as much as possible.
And I didn’t get much encouragement from the real world either. I could barely understand some greetings from shows/programs, and reading/writing was simply impossible.
But I persisted through this early stage, and then it came to the time to learn something more systematic.
Alternating between Achievement and Frustration
After some exploration, I chose the particle course from Koreanclass101.
For the first 10 lessons or so, nothing special happened. Each lesson took at least a few hours, and I kept forgetting what I just learned. The only sense of achievement came from the moment when I could understand a sentence or two from one episode of a show or the title of a new article.
Then I first experienced vividly “non-linear progress”. Suddenly, while some lessons still seemed difficult, some lessons were easy enough so that I can just skim through the notes and be done with them. At the same time, I started learning another lower beginner course for simple daily dialogues. I found that for most lessons I can understand most of the sentences and only need to memorize some words or phrases.
But the real world experience was mixed. If some conversation/article happened to be directly related to some topic I already learned, I can understand parts of it. Otherwise, it still seemed I hadn’t learned the language at all. I can write down some sentences, but can’t speak out a sentence without deliberate thought.
The First Plateau
After finishing particles and lower beginner dialogues, I had stagnated for a while. I tried a few other courses, but they were either too advanced or too trivial. And I kind of felt my bottleneck was poor vocabulary.
At that moment, I decided to take a look of other sources as well. After a while I encountered the weekly vocabulary course from Talk to me In Korean, where they provide 20 sentences loosely around a topic for each lesson. Looked like a perfect fit.
For the first half of the course, I felt nothing fundamentally changed. I could still only understand parts of the conversation only if it directly related to topics I already learned, but the portion of such conversations seemed to have grown by a bit. And I could make sentences a bit more fluently.
Meanwhile, one drawback of this course was that it didn’t explain grammar points in detail. So I often have to Google myself. For most of the points, How to Study Korean turned out to be an excellent reference. Gradually, I mastered some advanced structures, such as conjugation (i.e., the different forms of verbs), determiners, quoting rules, etc.
And only at this point did I understand why lots of people say you need to have multiple sources during learning. Each source is good for certain aspects that would become the most relevant depending on your progress.
What’s more, I started to learn basic Hanja, and frequently looked up words here. Being a native Chinese speaker turned out to be advantageous when learning Korean.
Steady Progress and Becoming “Intermediate”
It came to the summer / autumn of 2020. I finished more than 2/3 of the vocabulary course, and I experienced non-linear progress yet another time.
I started watching the TV Drama The Lonely Shining God – Goblin, and I couldn’t even believe how much I could understand (though some times with the help of English subtitles). And I can finally somehow follow live broadcasts (such as the comeback live or blueroom live).
And time for a new start in the new year.
What’s Next
I’ve already decided to focus more on conversation and reading. So I purchased a few books and chose a few courses, and will continue the journey from here.
And I stumbled upon this reddit thread. It confirmed my thought, i.e., right now it brings marginal value to memorize more words or grammar points, but rather it’s time for more language exposure. Probably later 2021 I’ll find a tutor to practice conversation further.
Some Random Thoughts
Not mentioned earlier, but the most important factor is to have motivation. I’ve thought about learning Japanese or Spanish in the past, but never got started. In late 2018, I became a fan of BlackPink, and the desire to appreciate their lyrics and one day interact with them was the biggest drive to overcome the static friction. And there are so many good Korean dramas and shows out there, so getting exposure is straightforward.