How to REALLY Start Learning Korean

Can you tell me right now what level of Korean you would like to speak in one year from now? How about two years or even six months? Do you also know where you are right now exactly and how you would like to reach your desired Korean fluency? Whether you just recently became interested in learning to speak Korean or you have studied before but have been feeling like you are stuck at the same level for a while, I will help you put everything into perspective and see what you really need to do in order to really learn to speak Korean so that you can watch your Korean shows without translated subtitles, listen to your favorite artists' songs and fully understand the lyrics, have more opportunities to actually speak Korean on your next trip to Korea, or do any other activity you would like to do in Korean. So first of all, what is the best way to learn a language? What seems to be the most popular learning method or learning app these days? You probably have some idea, right? But I would like to argue that the method doesn't matter as much as the amount of time you put into learning the language. Time. How much time do you or are you willing to actually invest into learning Korean? If this, which is time, is vague and undecided from the beginning, before you realize six months, three months will have already passed somehow without you making any real progress in Korean or any other language you've been wanting to learn. So that's the first argument that I would like to make in this video. You need to invest time. And the point that I want to also make in this video for you is how you need to spend that time. Let's say you have secured one hour a day, two hours a day, or even 30 minutes a day. Just spending all of the time on Netflix alone won't make you fluent in Korean or even understand a lot of Korean. So let's say this is the total amount of time that you need to spend on Korean learning, okay? And it should be divided into three main categories. If you neglect any of these three, that's going to be the reason that you feel stuck. The first category here is studying. And yes, as babies, we learned our native languages differently through a lot of absorption, pure acquisition without really studying. But as an adult, without really studying, you can learn, but it takes much longer because you don't have any structure. And even if you are completely team acquisition, there's no real reason to avoid studying, right? Studying with a good curriculum, good books, good courses will provide very solid guidance for you. So what do you study with? Well, from the aspect of trying to spend as much time as possible, invest more time into the Korean language, you need to learn with materials that make it easy for you to continue going. Whether it's books or courses, everything is to be easy to follow with clear explanations, a gradual increase of difficulty, structured curriculum, and a lot of exercises. And that is exactly what we have built into our online curriculum and our books. And speaking of courses, we've just revamped and released our updated level one beginner course. We recorded our first level one lessons in audio 16 years ago, and we've rebuilt them in video format. Easier to understand, shorter, and more effective. It's available right now, so you can start studying with it for free. We've also uploaded our full course on Hangul, the Korean writing system, and it's completely free to watch. It takes only one hour, and by the end of it, you will be able to read Korean. For absolute beginners, that will be a great place to start. So you study, but you still feel like you are not improving. Why is that? My answer to that is our second category of how you should spend your Korean learning time, which is input. So when you don't have enough input, even when you do a lot of studying, you don't have a sufficient amount of vocabulary expressions and usage data in your head. So when you want to speak Korean in a real-life situation, it's quite challenging to express your own thoughts. We do try to design our courses so that a lot of natural input happens through our lessons too, but you still need to separately allocate time for input. And yes, I'm telling you to watch more Korean dramas and movies. Good news, right? But on one condition. Do not turn on translated subtitles. Watch your Korean shows without subtitles from the start, or if that's too hard, just with Korean subtitles. Having your English subtitles on the screen prevents you from doing any language learning related thinking. You're hardly doing any work there. You have no challenge, hardly any stimulation. It's just too comfortable for your brain to really learn anything. So input is important, so make sure to set aside time for it in addition to studying. If the Korean shows and movies are too difficult for you to watch like that, and the regular books are too difficult for you to read and understand the story without translation, we actually have solutions for that too. Watch or listen to our hundreds of Korean-only conversations between native speakers all on our website, or Talk To Me In Korean Stories. That's our graded reading and listening app. There you can read and listen to short stories that match your current level. And finally, you might wonder, what's the third category? I'm sure you guessed it, but it's actually active output. Active output. No matter how much time you spend without active output practice, Korean fluency will forever be out of reach. It's like reading all about breakdancing, which I love, and watching tutorials about it, but never practicing actual moves. Before you can perform on stage or go to dance battles, you need to train and rehearse. Before you can have full conversations in Korean, you need to practice saying small portions and practice forming your own sentences when nobody is listening to you. And how do you actually practice output? Well, a lot of people seem to think that they need a one-on-one tutor or dozens of Korean friends in order to do so, but you can do plenty of output practice. I actually did that myself when I was learning English and other languages. Let me give you five specific methods you can use starting from today. Number one, keep a journal in Korean. Write about what you did today, what you are going to do tomorrow. Random thoughts that occur to you are fine too. Just express your thoughts in Korean on paper. I personally prefer writing in paper notebooks and typing on a computer, but you choose your own style. Number two, you can express the same kind of thoughts in your own Korean sentences in spoken words instead of in your journal. Just yourself. You know, talking to yourself is a great way to practice saying things out loud. Number three, record yourself saying those sentences. You don't have to listen to yourself after each recording, but just consciously trying to sound better, clearer, and more logical will force you to use more of your language learning brain to train for fluency. Number four, watch or listen to something that is not too difficult for you and repeat after each line. Choose a blog, a movie, or TV show, or even a news report. Just anything, as long as you can understand most of it, and then imitate each sentence like you are the one speaking in that video. Number five, if you want a more conversation-like practice, you can also download our Korean speaking app, Seyo. We made it so that you can do a ton of Korean speaking practice through our units based on our Talk To Me In Korean curriculum, and you can also have freestyle conversations with AI. That link is also going to be down below. So now you have the big picture. You know that just wanting to speak Korean fluently is never going to be enough. You need to know where you are currently, and where you want to go, and exactly how you will get there. And how will you get there? Only by investing enough time through studying input and active output. You don't need to do this perfectly every single time you study. You just have to keep doing it consistently every day, every other day, every week, with the right tools and mindset. And most importantly, you are not alone in this. We've helped millions of learners around the world to follow this path, and now it's your turn. So if you're really ready to really start learning Korean, let's do this together. We've prepared a simple checklist for your Korean learning roadmap, so you can check it out. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next video, or on our website.