The Best Vocabulary Books for Korean

What seems to be an overlooked aspect by many language learners, whether they are using classroom methods or immersion methods, here I want to share some books where one can increase their understanding of the language very quickly with very little effort. At the end I will also share some apps that can help beyond the books shown.

You may have heard about study methods such as reading through a frequency list. The main problem with this advice is that frequency lists generally have no structure or example sentences. Some words also have multiple meanings which the frequency list does not usually separate. If you are interested in a frequency list then you can find one here on ko.wiktionary.org 

As you can see if you check the link, it is merely a list of words with no meaning or examples. The advantage of using the books I will recommend in this post is that they all contain much more information about every word and you can quickly go through them. Also I have created Anki decks for them meaning that once you have read them you can use an SRS to remember the vocabulary long term.

Although the Anki decks are free to use, I highly recommend purchasing a copy of the books not just to help support the creators but to give yourself more information about the words included. A quick read through before starting the decks will give you more of an advantage to remembering the words.

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.

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.

Korean Dictionary Symbols Explained

First look at the dictionary may be confusing. In this article I want to clear up some of the more confusing or overlooked parts that are super useful for learners. I think its very easy to overlook helpful information because it seems overwhelming.

Like all knowledge it becomes much easier to digest when we know about it before hand. So I just want to point out a few things that you can take into the future with you.

Personally there are only 2 dictionaries I use. Krdict and Naver dictionary. The first is my preference because it shows the description of the word and has some examples very clearly laid out. I tend to use Naver as a last resort for words that are not on Krdict.

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.