What I’ve been studying update #1 | Korean Studying Resources (Jan 2017)

(Estimated reading time: 5 minutes)

I just thought, since this is a Korean study blog, it would only make sense to share other resources that I’m using as well.

First off… I’m not the typical Korean learner (or at least I think so) who uses purely online resources to study. I occasionally refer to TTMIK and HTSK when I’m unsure of grammar expressions. But most of my Korean proficiency is achieved through studying in a classroom. Even then, once a week is not enough. So I’m going to list down the studying resources I use from time to time. Hopefully, this will help you too!

Don’t worry, you won’t see TTMIK or HTSK on this list – why would you need me to tell you about resources that are already so popular? By the way, this would be a monthly thing and I would usually post this at the end of every month. Posting this early just for the first one because it’s an idea that suddenly struck me and I want to work on it immediately. Stay tuned for future updates!

I’ve previously written a short blog post about studying Korean in a school/classroom versus self-studying, so if you haven’t read that, be sure to check that blog post out!

Online Resources

1. Naver Webtoon 네이버 만화 | 웹툰 (Mid-intermediate and up)

I actually got this idea from browsing the Internet and asking around how other Korean learners study. Naver Webtoon is probably one of the most popular websites for (very well-drawn) comics. This is great for learning conversational Korean because, well, 90<% of the text are conversations. But I wouldn’t recommend reading webtoon to beginner learners because a lot of the grammar expressions are actually intermediate and up. Nevertheless, I’ve been spending a lot of my time reading a comic series 언터처블. It’s a story about a modern vampire that sucks spiritual energy instead of blood. Currently at episode 27.

2. Naver blogs 네이버 블로그 (High-intermediate and up)

If webtoon is good for conversational Korean, Naver blogs are good for written Korean. Although sometimes, some bloggers tend to add in colloquial expressions to sound cute (especially female bloggers, but they’re pretty… :P) and show 애교. I’m currently using the Naver blog app on my iPhone and honestly, I’ll recommend using the app over the web version because you’ll have your own feed of all the bloggers that you follow. But most of the blog posts are pretty high-intermediate or even advanced. I would usually need to look up a lot of vocabularies and spend a little more time on sentences with slang words in them.

Offline Resources

3. Yonsei University Textbook 3-1 연세 한국어 3-1

If you’ve been following the Speaking Practices series, you’ll realise that all the passages that I’ve recited are from Yonsei University Textbook 3-1. It’s a textbook that I’ve already covered at my language centre so this actually serves as a sort of revision in a way. If you’re interested in buying the book, you can get it here at twochois. I’m not sure if they ship to every single corner of the world but you can look at their shipping and return policies here. I’ve never bought any books from them but I think they’re one of the best around, apart from TTMIK’s My Korean Store. I’m not getting any commission from any purchases (yet :P) so… yeah.

4. Seoul University Student’s Book 3B 서울대 한국어 3B

I’m reading up on 3B now because I’m attending a class at Daehan in February 2017 and I’ll be studying Seoul Uni 4A then. I’ve been taking individual classes for almost a year before stopping for TOPIK preparations and TOPIK II exam. Now I’m continuing classes but going to do a group one because individual lessons are very expensive and I want to invest more money and time on this blog at the moment. Anyway, I realised that Seoul University’s books are more detailed (almost because it’s thicker) than Yonsei University’s. This is not to say that Yonsei Uni’s books are bad! I might do a review but generally speaking, I would prefer Seoul University’s books. Likewise, you can buy the book here, again at twochois.

Speaking Resource

5. iTalki (All levels)

I’ve officially booked my first lesson on iTalki! After much contemplation and consideration, I finally added US$10 ($15++ including processing fee) to my iTalki account and booked a lesson with a community tutor at US$6 for an hour-long lesson. I will write another blog post about my iTalki experience and how the whole thing work after 26 January (Thursday) 2017. Basically, the lesson will be conducted via Skype. It feels like paying someone to talk to you but I’ll come up with a set of questions and topics to converse so that I’m going to get the most out of it. I think iTalki lessons are great for all levels, especially if conversational Korean what you want to tackle. And yes… I want to get better at speaking so here I am.

Be sure to stay tuned for next month’s update!

EDIT: Posted the article! Read -> Some thoughts after taking an italki lesson

4 Comments

  1. Hi, I’m a beginner learner of Korean and am getting bored of my textbook’s reading material. Do you know where I can read something fun and relatively easy? I tried browsing websites but had no luck.

    I thought maybe you know of a blog or a webtoon I can use :).

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