I have a student that emailed me to say that she is going to teach herself Korean but doesn’t know where to begin. She wanted to know if she should try to learn words in a similar order to the one that we did in Spanish class. Not knowing anything about Korean–structure, vocabulary, nothing–I don’t really know how to answer her question. Also, she will be teaching herself using the computer…so she needs suggestions for sites that have good resources that will build her proficiency. Help!! Any insight that y’all can provided would be greatly appreciated by me and by her!
Hola! duolingo could be a good idea. I have not tried it yet, but a friend’s friend is the creator of the site and seems to be doing well. We are thinking on how to make it work for children at elementary school age.
“Talk to Me in Korean” is a good site to get some basic structures. Then I suggest Korean dramas. You listen and read English subtitles. This is how I am learning now. I have learned a lot. “dramabeans.com” is a site that gives ratings and recaps (written in English by two Korean Americans) for lots of dramas so she can pick good dramas. Viki.com is a free website that has the dramas subtitled. It is really fun because you are learning language and culture at the same time. Also Korean dramas are known to be very clean in subject matter in comparison to American soap operas. I don’t know how old you student is, but there are dramas for teens. I can give some recommendations for dramas if she is interested.
Wonderful!! I will pass on these sites!
Hey Martina! Tell her to look into Concordia Language Villages. They have language camps and Korean is one of them. I work at the Spanish one — there are 2 week programs and 4 week programs. The 4 week programs can get her one year of high school language credit! It may be too late to register, I’m not really sure. It’s also a little pricey but so worth it. It’s total immersion (linguistically and culturally).
Thank you!!
Mango Languages is a free software for learning languages, and is usually available on public libraries’ websites. It’s very user friendly and practices conversational languge.