When You’re Not Sure If You Locked The Doors At Home

 

Have an idea for another “When You…” post? Visit the Contact Me page! -Sage 🙂

Journey to Fluency: Korean

 

First off I’d like to say, Welcome to my blog! This is my very first blog post on SagedandConfused, If you haven’t read my about me page (or Philiosophia—Love of Sage page) you don’t know this, but I love K-culture. When I say K-culture I mean things pertaining to K-pop and K-dramas. I‘ve developed such a fondness to it that I’ve decided to learn the Korean language and chronicle it on this blog among other things. I will conquer this feat using free online services (I shall post said services later on in the post). Though I will be practicing everyday, I plan to post to this once a week giving progress and things that I have figured out and can hopefully explain to you guys. It is said that to learn any language you need to have a solid foundation for why you are doing it and a passion for the language. I believe I have that but, we’ll see. 

Why I Want to Learn the Language

Professor Oh, from sweetandtastyTV on youtube, posts videos every Wednesday to teach  popular Korean words through a segment called KWOW: Korean Word of the Week (say it with a whisper)

I started watching her videos a while ago and thought immediately she was… unique. Maybe it was her many characters. Her style of teaching is different, to say the least, and I won’t lie—I didn’t finish the video and did not visit her again for a few months. But when I did happen to come across one of her videos again, I finished it and found the information that she was giving to be very helpful. I continued to watch her videos and found that she was not weird, but entertaining and her material was useful. In the corner of her videos I saw that she had a blog: sweetandtasyTV.com and in the description she posts links to said blog and after a few videos of noticing it I finally clicked on it. On the home page I saw an article from guest host Jason Yu from Green Tea Graffiti on learning Korean for newcomers. To put it in a few words, the post was very inspiring and this along with the music and Dramas I watch was what really made me want to learn Korean. Thus Journey to Fluency was born (this is where you clap and jump up and down for joy. I’m just kidding. Kind of.). (Link to Jason Yu’s guest post here)

Anyways, I’ve seen and watched a lot of videos and read a lot of articles on learning Korean and most of them are either scams, in my opinion, or don’t help much (an individual’s learning style for a lot of people is different so what I might find helpful you may not). After tons of research I narrowed it down to a few select people.

Korean Bloggers and Youtubers:

– Hyunwoo Sun and Associates at Talk to Me in Korean (TTMIK—he also has a youtube page here and TTMIK has a youtube page here)

– Professor Oh and Friends at sweetandtastyTV

– The good people at Korean Class 101 (Click here for a link to their youtube page) and

– Satish at TOPIKGUIDE (Test of Proficiency in Korea)

If the above list changes (if it is added to or taken away from) you will be informed. 🙂

What’s the Plan of Action?

This POA is based on the article on SweetandTastyTV’s blog (Warning: order may change later on, but then again it may not):

1. Learn the Korean alphabet (Hangul)
2. Learn basic Korean
   1. learn how to introduce myself
   2. learn how to greet in Korean
3. Learn the most commonly used verbs
4. Learn the most commonly used nouns
5. Learn the most commonly used adjectives
6. Learn how to form sentences

How I Will Go About My Plan of Action:

So here’s what’s going to happen: After learning the alphabet, I am going to start out using the lessons that are provided on talktomeinkorean.com for beginners. I will do two lessons a week, giving myself time to insert what I’ve learned into everyday conversations. I will watch videos, keep notes and listen to music to help keep me sharp.

So… ready to start on this sensational journey to fluency? I’m not! I’m just kidding, of course I am. OR am I? The world will never know. Or will it?

I have a few questions for you:

What was the first k-drama you’ve watched (if you watch them)? And what was the first k-pop song you listened to?

My answers:

First k-drama? Boys Over Flowers (or Boys Before Flowers)

First Kpop song i ever listened to? Girls Generation’s: The Boys!