Smartphone Apps for Learning Korean

 

When you think of or ask about language learning apps, the first thing to come up will likely be Duolingo. Sadly it has a lot of drawbacks, it's slow to update despite having ads and subscription options, the courses are community made and pretty low quality and overall it doesn't contain enough content to actually get anywhere in the language you're studying.

How to Type in Korean and How to Practice Typing Faster

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When learning a new language with a new writing system many people like to focus on how to write or type in the language. While writing is not strictly necessary unless you live in the country, typing will be very handy for when you need to look up a word, search for things or even have conversations. So how can we go from not having a clue where the keys are to touch typing. While this guide is aimed at Korean, the tips can be used for any language.

How to Spend as Much of Your Day as Possible Learning Korean

With the rise of immersion learning and 40 hour week challenges and such, I feel this might help those who want to push their time to it's limits. As someone who has been doing at a minimum 5 hours a day of Korean for the past 2 years, I started to value my time to the point where it will frustrate me if I feel someone is wasting my time.

I used to spend days not really achieving anything and wondering where the days have gone, I had zero plans for my days and just did things whenever I felt like it except for certain things like exercise that I would do at around the same time every day, which is pretty much what I applied to my language learning.

Watching Media and Using Subtitles to Learn a Language

Related video for extra viewing:

 

A lot of learners often ask questions around the use of subtitles and whether they should be using native subs, target language subs or just foregoing subs altogether. The answer can vary depending on your reasons for watching and also your level. Subtitles are a great resource for learning new words while being able to relax more than pure reading but also have the added visual queue in which to understand the words on screen. Let's go over a few different ways you might consider watching content in your target language

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 Monolingual Transition and How to Approach it

What is the monolingual transition?

For those who do not know, the monolingual transition, popularised by the Mass Immersion Approach, is the process of transitioning from learning via a known language to using the target language itself to learn the language. Many learners do not seem to grasp the reasons or the process behind the 'transition' even though it is in the name.

Often learners take to 'trying it' or simply brute forcing it and spend hours deep diving into the dictionary searching up every new word until they can finally understand one. Many also like to think, as with everything, that it is either or, you're either 100% monolingual or 100% using your native language.

Due to similarities of close languages you may never have to use a monolingual dictionary as the words have roughly the same meanings and usages although some words obviously stray from this the majority of words can be exchange 1:1 due to them stemming from the same origin and similar culture.

Monolingual dictionary showing multiple meanings and synonyms.