Who's Learning Korean?

i will start classes in the fall@a local commnity college.

Classes are overrated. Learn the writing script (for Korean you can do this in a week easily), after that it's time to start learning simple sentences (don't memorize words, instead memorize sentences). And LISTEN to as much Korean as you possibly can. Learning a language is easy, the hard part is not giving up. If you surrounded yourself with Korean everyday, time will do the rest. You need to find material that you think is fun and interesting, the moment it becomes boring or difficult you will quit. For learning material try to use native material, anything made for foreigners learning a language sucks (anyone who has taught ESL knows this). It's not easy finding learning material for Korean, but it's out there. Also, don't make excuses for yourself, either learn it or don't waste your time. It will never be the right time, you're always too old or too young or too busy or too poor or too rich or too fat or too ugly so just do it anyway.

muanyata wrote: Classes are overrated. Learn the writing script (for Korean you can do this in a week easily), after that it's time to start learning simple sentences (don't memorize words, instead memorize sentences). And LISTEN to as much Korean as you possibly can. Learning a language is easy, the hard part is not giving up. If you surrounded yourself with Korean everyday, time will do the rest. You need to find material that you think is fun and interesting, the moment it becomes boring or difficult you will quit.

For learning material try to use native material, anything made for foreigners learning a language sucks (anyone who has taught ESL knows this).

It's not easy finding learning material for Korean, but it's out there. Also, don't make excuses for yourself, either learn it or don't waste your time. It will never be the right time, you're always too old or too young or too busy or too poor or too rich or too fat or too ugly so just do it anyway.

Lol, you just wrote all my perfect excuses for putting off my Korean lessons till "tomorrow"!

muanyata wrote: It all boils down to 2 things.

Method - how you are studying.
Motivation - why you are studying.

You need to examine both of these things deeply if you feel you aren't making any progress.

Then I think I have a problem with both method and motivation :) But I'll take your advice and try learning from native stuff, maybe that'll help.

think movitation is key to learning anything :) I keep telling myself I'll start tomorrow I'll start tomorrow but I have just no motivation :( but I'm definitely going to start tomorrow.....

I reall really wanted to learn Korean a few years ago. I taught myself Hangeul in like 2 hours and after that I was so frustrated that I knew how to read it but didn't understand what I was reading that I stopped trying. I still know how to read and write Hangeul and now I want to learn how to talk, learn words and sentences, etc. The problem is that due to work and my son I have no free time for lessons, so I need some really good books / ebooks / homepages / programs for learning it. I guess I'll search through the other thread and try to find some. I'm not a native English speaker, so I guess I'm at an adventage? But German is extremely different from Korean, too. I'm just lucky I'm good at learning new languages. And even though I prefer Japanese dramas, I'm definitely going to watch more korean ones in the future. Especially "easy" romcoms and maybe some shows for children. Maybe I'll let my son watch it with me and see who understands it first. xD I'm looking forward to learning it. :)

YumiRuri wrote: Just in case everyone doesn't already know, http://www.talktomeinkorean.com/ is a great site for learning Korean. You can just put the lessons on your ipod-- free-- and learn at your convenience. Each lesson is less than 15 minutes on average, and it takes you through various levels of difficulty as you become better with the Korean language. :)

Sounds good, I'll try that as soon as I get home. :)