I read 50 Korean books in 2021

Last year I made a post called 'I read 61 Korean books in 2020' in which I covered which books I read, my thoughts on reading for language learning and what I was expecting would happen over the next year. Overall I am definitely impressed with what I've achieved and I will cover that later, as you may notice the quantity of books is slightly lower this year.

Year, books, highlighted words, characters(in 10 thousands)

7 Korean Netflix Show Recommendations

The video above is a little outdated, with this list I will try to keep it updated as I continue to watch more shows and movies that are provided worldwide through Netflix. Personally I prefer movies to to a drama, usually because of the length. I still have a lot to catch up on, so I will only be including shows and movies that I have watched from start to finish.

Netflix has a great line up of international tv shows and movies and this extends to Korean. The content mentioned in this article should be available in every region, so no VPN required. They also all have audio description(음성 설명) and closed captions, which means you can make the most of your time watching.

For each entry I'll try to give a descrpition about the premise and who might enjoy it. You can see the full list of Korean audio content here. and a full list of content with audio description here. I'll start with TV shows first and remember to share your favourites below so others can find content they might enjoy.

Can You Learn Korean from Kpop?

If you're asking this question, then at least you may have some interest in learning Korean, which is a great start, or maybe you're just interesting in finding an answer to the question. Hopefully I will be able to answer both of these.  If you're new to my blog or language learning, it may be worth reading through these three articles when you have finish this post:

• Korean Fluency Path
• Should You Learn Korean?
• Realistically How Long Does it Take to Learn a Language?

There are a few glaringly obvious advantages and disadvantages to using Kpop and by extension music to learn a language. Advantages such as repetitive language, easy to listen repeatedly, enjoyable to listen to. Sadly a lot of these advantages are negated by any lack of effort to search the meaning of the words or effort to learn the language.

In my article 'The Role of Listening in Language Learning', I explain how listening plays two roles. The first to get sounds into your head regardless of whether you know the meaning or not and the second to act as a review to strengthen your memory of words you already know.

We all have movie lines stuck in our head, even ones from childhood. It's very common for humans to repetitively read, watch or listen to content they find enjoyable. There is a sense of comfort, especially for children, who you will find will want to watch the same movie every night or want you to read them the same story over and over.

7 Korean Fantasy Webtoons You Should Read in 2021

If you're not learning Korean and are just looking for webtoon recommendations, I will leave the English names, feel free to skip the intro.

Webtoons are great for those first starting out reading or those that want something more relaxed than walls of text. The biggest advantage is that they are a lot more comprehensible due to the drawings giving you information about what is happening in the plot.

Obviously due to the lower density of the text, vocabulary acquisition will be lower. For me I can cover much more content in a book than I can with webtoons, most likely due to the need to constantly scroll to get to the text, where as with a large walls of text there is no distraction from the text.

An understated advantage of webtoons is that because they are solely spoken text and less descriptive vocabulary they are a great way to get to speaking earlier. If your main aim is to speak then it might be a good idea to spend most of your reading time on webtoons instead of texts that are less conversational.

I read 61 Korean books in 2020

If you have read any of my previous articles, you may already know that I am a big proponent of reading for foreign language acquisition. I started reading proper Korean books some time around March 2019, around 6 months into learning, which when I think about it is too late and one of my biggest regrets is not reading earlier.

Initially, I found a very nice series of history books aimed at a younger audience, 그림으로 보는 세계사, that just so happened to be on Ridiselect. Seeing as it was cheaper to use Ridiselect than to pay for each book individually I subscribed to the service, which was back then $6.99 per month. As they were the first books I read, it took me a while to get through them. 

Once I finished them, I looked at what else was available through Ridiselect and stumbled upon a few books that were so far beyond my level that I could only pick up bits. However my main aim when reading them was to read them to see the words in context and try to pick up as many as I could. I spent a few months reading these before deciding to come back down to lower level books.

Using Audio Description for Language Learning

You may have noticed while changing the language or subtitles on netflix, an option called 'audio description' or even on television programmes, a symbol that says AD which represents that audio description is available. Generally audio description will only be available in the language the TV show was produced in although there may be some exceptions.

The intended use of audio description is to allow blind or visually impaired individuals to understand more of what is happening during the silent and action oriented parts of a show or movie. When this setting is active, a narrator will describe the actions that are taking place, such as 'man with scruffy hair walks down a long corridor.'

Audio description logo on UK television

Realistically How Long Does it Take to Learn a Language?

A classic but very loaded question with almost infinite answers. At best we can only make an estimate based on specific parameters. We can take a look at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) study which is based around class hours but still that is not very accurate to the individuals circumstances and doesn't state what their level was at by the end of the programme.

So what are the major factors in the time it takes to become proficient in a language:

• Time spent with the language
• Language distance
• Learner's motivation
• Resources available.
  

Let's take a deeper look at these factors and how you can use them to benefit you.

FSI estimates for English native speakers

The Role of Grammar Study in Language Learning

If you have ever taken a look at my fluency path you may notice that the focus on grammar quickly dwindles after the beginning stages. Many education institutions tend to put a focus on grammar instruction and focus on using that information for output. This partly contributes to a lot of students feeling like they make no progress due to not being able to spit out constructed sentences on the fly or people telling them they say things weirdly. This is even more evident in languages that are distant because ideas are expressed in completely different ways and words rarely overlap in exact us

In institutions and self teaching the focus has to be shifted from learning grammar to, output to using grammar for understanding content. Using this mindset we can take the stress off of trying to remember 100 grammar points by brute force and instead acquire them from content we consume making it much easier to output by way of copying native speakers instead of making up language by ourselves. There are many times where the meaning of grammar makes more sense when you pay attention to the intonation and tone in which it is said.

Useless grammar tests

The Role of Listening in Language Learning

Being one our main methods of receiving information being able to correctly hear and understand what other speakers are saying is invaluable to human survival. As a language learner, the majority of your time with your target language will likely be through the audio component and if your aim is to have meaningful conversations with natives and other speakers, then you will want to be as good as you can be.

Our listening ability is affected by many factors that we can improve to make listening easier, yet in the end we still need to expose ourselves to thousands of hours. Throughout or time learning a new language the experience of listening will change drastically from sentences sounding like incoherent noise to having instant understanding and even predicted the next noise that is about to come out of someones mouth. 

The time taken to go through these stages is highly dependent on the languages you know and the sounds it uses. I am also highly convinced some languages due to phonology take longer to be able to distinguish sounds, languages ending in mostly vowel sounds such as Italian and Japanese make it a bit easier to tell where word boundaries are. 

There are other variables such as information speed, information density and total number of sounds. Although I could not find any studies based on whether certain languages are objectively harder to hear over others so if you come across such please let me know.

It is highly recommended that you spend a lot of time listening to your target language, just to increase your hours spent with the language. It's very easy to spend a lot of your day listening even if you consider yourself a 'very busy' person, unless you constantly have to talk to someone or be spoke to then you can fit some time in to listen. 

15+ Nintendo Switch Games to play in Korean

Switching up your immersion

Playing videogames has become the hobby of choice for many individuals and if you're like me has been a large part of your life since a very young age. Any serious learner will know, while trying to learn a language we have to make many sacrifices on how we spend our time, sometimes forgoing our regular hobbies to spend time on improving our language skills

The following games will be a great way to spend your time when you want a change of pace, they have varying levels of difficulty and text density. Sadly as of yet there are not any Korean dubs for Nintendo games which is a fine choice for some as they have no audio or their characters speak gibberish but if it were available it would enhance the immersion quality of a lot of them.

5 Korean Movies Based on Real Life Events

Korean Kino

With a thriving movie industry and the popularity of 봉준호 (Bong Jun-ho)'s 기생충 (Parasite), many people may be left wondering what else the world of Korean cinema has to offer. Although the emotions of a fictional movie with developed characters can be quite high, nothing quite hit's home like a movie based on events that took place in the real world with actual people and real consequences. I have only included movies that I have watched myself, they are listed in order of their abundance of emotion. If you have any recommendations please comment below

Should We Learn Hanja(한자)[漢字]?

Check out the related video:

What are 한자(漢字)?

Shortly after you begin studying you may come across the statistic that 70%  words used in the Korean language are of Chinese origin. These were originally represented by Chinese characters. This logo graphic writing system was invented thousands of years ago and have continuously developed as more concepts needed to be expressed.

Initially only used by the higher classes due to lack of public education. In the current age it is easy for many in the developed world to spend time on learning the characters due to an abundance of information and resources available via the internet.