Retro Learns Korean: Reading

Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts

How to Start Reading in Italian

If you aren't aware by now, but possibly if you found this post, then likely you have recently been enlightened, that reading is simply the best way to get a tonne of foreign language material into your brain in as little time as possible. Even having a habit of reading a tiny amount, whether it be a page a day or even a few lines, chances are you will improve significantly at Italian.

There is so much more variety of vocabulary and expressions that you would not come across if you are only to use audio as your main learning source. While there are other great resources for reading such as news articles, blog posts or even the YouTube comment section.

Reading long form books that have a fully fleshed narrative, that require us to remember key facts and even attempt to predict what may happen in the following chapters, increases our mental ability, general outlook on life and our overall happiness. On top of that when you have to look for new articles or reading content we lose time inbetween that could have been used for reading.

I have been reading a lot of books since I started learning Korean in 2019, moreso than I'd ever actually read in English. It also prompted me to visit books that I'd never read in English but didn't want to waste time reading them in English so I could kill two birds with one stone. I actually ended up reading Korean content that was created more recently and written by Koreans.

Korean doesn't have a huge classical literature library that spans from the 1800's and sometimes beyond, so Italian was a great place for me to pick up from there. Initially I will share a set of books for beginners that want to get into reading and then I will show you the great publisher Newton Compton Editori's fine selection of books that include Italian authored and worldwide authored classic books.

For Beginners

For any language learning starting off reading is going to be a struggle as they have mostly been raised to believe that it's impossible or very difficult to start reading. Personally I would like to argue that for Italian especially, there are enough cognates, that even a brief run over some grammar and a few hundred words will leave you able to read from week 1.

Luckily for us Olly Richards, has decided he would like to be the forerunner for providing reading content for beginners of many languages and has a whole set of books aimed at beginners written in many different languages.

Obviously the ones we want to focus on in this article are the two books:

The first book in the series is extremely simple, even cutting out some grammar concepts that will be used in the Intermediate book. These series are quite simple I believe that most people will be surprised that they can actually read and understand large portions of the beginner book even from the first week.

As per the instructions in the book, you may find it beneficial to read the stories multiple times before moving onto the intermediate book. I think you will surprised how strong the effect of reading is and how active your imagination will become, especially if you aren't a well versed reader in your native language.

I have a whole article on reading tips that may help those who are just starting out. Generally I would recommend, highlighting or writing down words that you don't know and looking them up after you finish each chapter or story as it will allow you to not worry about stopping and just try to reach the end. You may find that you will understand what some words mean without even having to look them up.

Reading actual novels

Despite what people think it's not actually that difficult to read a novel. Many language learners have this misconception that they need to be ready to read but actually this just holds them back. You can read from day 1 and as long as you are looking up words you will be more knowledgeable than you were the day before.

You learn words long term by encountering them hundreds of times over and over. Reading long form content such as novels will allow you to learn and remember easier and for much longer than just looking at word lists or doing flashcards. Doing those is a great way to deliberately expose yourself to a word but it's not useful over the long term.

As I mentioned before Italian has a great set of authors who have created many great works, Verga, Pirandello, Pavese to name a few. Luckily there is also an Italian publisher who is willing to publish these great works and even translate and compile works from other worldwide authors.

Newton Compton Editori have many different sets of classics but the two main ones I will be sharing are the Mammut and the MiniMammut. The Mammut set of books are generally very long books or compilations from great authors. The Minimammut set of books are just seperate novels for those that want to just buy a single title or a hardback copy of a book they love.

The beauty of this series is the price point. You can own a large library of books for a very miniscule price. If one book is going to last you many hours then the $2.99 price for the e-book versions is very enticing. I highly recommend this series of books for those that wish to get into reading in Italian. If you find that you have been learning for a long time and that your progress has stalled it may be worth purchasing one of these and seeing how you fare.

The main issue we come across is being able to differentiate between what is an easy book and what is a difficult book. To that I say, "it doesn't actually matter", even if you struggle to read a book, you will likely learn more from that book than you would an 'easy' book. Over time regardless of whether you read hard or easy books, the amount of words you look up will decrease and the amount of words that will be in your long term memory will increase.

I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura per ragazzi

For the value, I would first recommend purchasing one of the mammut series that combines various works for younger audiences such as:

Then for harder content move up to the ones that are based on authors from various countries:

Although I have linked to the Amazon versions they are actually available on Google and a few other providers if they are your preferred company of custom. If you actually managed to get through all of these you would find that your Italian has increased tenfold.

Hopefully this has lit the fire in some new language learners or sparked new inspiration for long time learners who have hit a plateau. Please check out my other content for more inspiration and I may make more content for Italian if the demand is there so please leave a comment.

For related posts please check out these pages:

Ridibooks Adult Verficiation Guide

If you're interested in gaining access to the 성인 titles available on Ridibooks then you'll have to send a picture to the team so that they can verify your age. It took me a while to figure out how to do this as the method is different for foreign nationals.

The method for Koreans involves downloading programmes and apps to verify your identity but the version for foreigners is much more simple and more akin to something like Amazon. There is a simple link you can click to take you to the page where you fill out your details here.

You can watch the video below or continue reading for some basic troubleshooting:

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)

Tuttle's Korean Stories for Language Learners Review

By far one of the most popular and recommended books for Korean learners, but does it live up to the hype? Hopefully with this review you can make a more informed decision as to whether this book is for you. The book has 222 pages, 42 stories of varying length and at the time of writing costs $14.53 via Amazon.

The book was initially published in 2018 and has gained huge traction in Korean learning circles due to the appeal of "folktales" and learning through stories being seen as the premier way to learn a language. On top of that it comes with an audio CD or alternatively a free audio download from their website if you purchase the digital version.

Tuttle Korean Stories for Language Learners Cover

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.

7 Reading Tips to Accelerate Your Korean Learning

There's a lot of fluff lists out there. "how to learn X language", "20 tips to become fluent in X" and 99% of the time they're all just generic advice that everyone already knew. Well this list aims to actually give you tips that you can actually use to make progress with Korean. There is no real order or priority to any of the tips but they will all benefit most people in some way.

As I have stated in previous posts, reading is simply the best way to make rapid progress in a language due to the amount of content you can cover and the large amount of vocabulary used. The tips will be useful for all levels including tips that beginners and advanced learners can use straight away.

If you found these tips helpful or have tips of your own you would like to share, let me know in the comments below. It's great to get a lot of different perspectives so that we can help future learners achieve their goals. There will likely be a part 2 so please return for that at a later date.

Below I will leave a playlist of video versions of similar tips and more.

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.

Lingo Mastery's Korean Short Stories for Beginners Review

Lingo Mastery have been making language learning content for a while now and finally have got round to stories for Korean learners. Hopefully this means that they will continue to make content and we can look forward to more Korean content from them. As you may know from my previous posts, I consider reading to be the best way to learn a language, so I am always interested in new reading and story content for Korean.

Previously I have reviewed Olly Richards' Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners and Billy Go's Korean Reading Made Simple. All of these books seem to offer different things for the learner and While reading through this book, I found out something about reading that I had not really considered the specifics of. If you would like to check out Lingo Mastery's full selection click here.

Lingo Mastery's Korean Short Stories for Beginners front cover

Billy Go's Korean Reading Made Simple Review

Billy Go, of YouTube fame, is very well known for providing Korean learners with grammar content and insights into the Korean language through is his various videos.. After using the Korean Made Simple grammar series, 2 years ago, I was interested to see what content he would create next. As I had a already passed Korean Made Simple 3 which covers up to most common grammar there was little need for a 4th book and google and dictionaries would suffice.

While my level continued to improve I found the power of reading. Reading is simply the best way to learn new words and experiences many different contexts very quickly. The hardest thing people find is being able to deal with the ambiguity of not understanding every single thing or the nuance of every single sentence. Sadly this is a part of language learning and it causes a lot of people to stick in the beginner stage re-reading grammar books for the 10th time to "nail down the grammar."

I was a little intrigued when Billy announced a reading book, as I had been reading for many months at the time it was announced but due to having so much content to read I had completely forgotten about it. To state before the review, I received this PDF copy from Billy himself, however the review will be as honest to the content as it is to the value.

Korean Reading Made Simple PDF Front Cover

Olly Richards' Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners Review

For the last year or so, I've had my eye on Olly Richards since I found his YouTube channel and sequentially his short story books. I thought it was a very interesting concept, as it was effectively the same approach that I was taking to learning Korean. I'd like to give a big thanks to Olly and Sarah for providing me with the review copy.

As for Olly, you may know him from his YouTube channel or perhaps even his blog. He has spent a lot of time in the past giving advice to language learners and even running a podcast sharing his own experiences in learning multiple languages and answering listeners questions. He still regularly posts videos and posts blog posts so go check them out.

I have been successful with and highly recommend reading for every aspiring language learner as it is simply the quickest way to gain vocabulary. It may be no surprise to those learning Korean, that there is a severe lack of graded readers and simple content in, which to build up your language ability. Thankfully we now have a competitor but can it take the spot of a recommended resource?

Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners front cover

How to Use Ridibooks(Korean Ebook Store)

Depending on where you live, it can be very difficult to get your hands on Korean books. Here in the UK I imagine there are only very specific areas in London that have a Korean populace selling their old books. This leaves us with the options of flying to Korea to pick up books and maxing out our luggage weight or doing the simpler and (sometimes) cheaper option of buying E-books.

How to Start Reading in a Foreign Language

Why we should read, especially in a foreign language

Reading, even in one's native language is a fantastic way to learn new words, expressions and even information. In modern times reading for pleasure has been long discarded and been replaced with reading to gain knowledge or to prove someone wrong. While this is great for have a broad knowledge of many subjects and being able to read deeply into a subject, this form of reading has it's disadvantages.

Many people have a diminishing passive vocabulary in their native language because let's face it, who wants to read something that's overly flowery or descriptive when we want the facts that we came to learn. On the opposite end of the spectrum, this can be a disadvantage of reading in a a foreign language because it is not so clear as to what is common language and what is overly flowery language that even natives may have trouble deciphering. This likely won't be too much of a problem as all the common words will be used far more often.

Reading in itself is simply the fastest way to pick up words for foreign language learners but also comes at the price of being quite tiring to do for long periods of time, which is why a lot of listening to and watching of content is highly recommended as they are a lot less intense and contain other advantages such as the sounds and inflection of the language.

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.