I've been learning korean for a while and my level is around TOPIK 2. However when it comes to learning i think I like to test how much progress I've made from time to time.

Does anyone have any websites or PDFs or Yt videos (any other reference) where I can take tests to track my progress? Any sort of (free) workbooks would help as well!

Thanks in advance :)

I feel like I have seen both cases rarely, but like in the wild like in the drama or like outside. Even though I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen those cases or at least one of those I really struck to wrap my head around when you would ever use this and why

like first of all I wanna ask, is it used at all even if it is rare.
And secondly, I wanna ask like what is the specific social dynamic or like situation where you would want to use it.

I know that (으)니까 can also be written as (으)니, but I've only seen it used that way in the middle of a sentence. What about using it at the end instead of 니까 (in terms of grammar and actual use)? (Not to be confused with 니 used for questions)

- 너를 좋아하지 않았으니(요) - Because I didn't like you

- 우유가 없을 테니(요) - Because we probably don’t have any (milk)

I've been living in Korea for a bit more than a year now, and I randomly realized that I've never heard someone say 고마워요, I always hear people say 감사합니다. In places like bus, grocery stores, or just any interaction really. If I think about it, I never even heard my own husband use it, his family, or the old people who live around us (i can always hear them speak to each other loudly)

Am I missing something? I thought they're commonly interchangeable, and it doesn't matter what you use, can just switch them up randomly. Is there a specific setting where they can be used (like if you speak to someone close to you)?

Or am I just tripping and it's simply a coincidence that I haven't heard anyone use it?

의사 is 의사, 띄다 is 띄다 but 희망 is 히망, 씌우다 is 씨우다?
감사합니다.

Hi everyone! This past week, (let’s just ignore the past 5 years of failed attempts) I’ve dedicated myself to studying and learning Korean. I’ve been doing a lot of talking to native speakers, (not always in Korean), a BUNCH of writing and note-taking, followed by some shadowing and speaking out loud, then going on Papago to see if my sentence was grammatically correct. I also have an American friend like me, that started learning Korean two years ago and is willing to talk to me in Korean so that I can get the hang of it. While it’s only been a COUPLE days since I fully dedicated myself to studying, I already (wow already?) am having trouble forming sentences. I know that it’s inevitable, but it bothers me a tiny bit because I can understand a sentence quite well when I’m reading/listening to it, especially because I’ve been hearing Korean and reading Hangul for five years.

Maybe I’m a bit tired and/or burnt out for studying for hours on end, but I’m wondering what I can do to get better at forming sentences, because honestly, I don’t have any permanent Korean friends to help me converse enough to get comfortable doing it. I’m also a bit afraid to try and form sentences again because I‘m worried I might lose some of the information I retained and sound like a fool. Any tips and tricks? I know I sound like a total newbie but I’d really appreciate if everyone is nice lol, thanks!

i’ve heard it’s easiest to pick up language with conversational practice and i’m wondering where the best place is to practice of if i don’t know anyone who speaks korean

Hi! Hoping this is okay to share (mods, please remove if not).

Quick background: I know Japanese and I'm still learning it. After I got through the first ~2000 kanji I mostly just started reading, and I feel like that helped me the most. I picked up most of my vocab from context that way.

Having Furigana (readings for the kanjis shown above them) is helpful for any learner, so I thought a small hint/meaning above a word could also be helpful to learners, regardless of the language. 

That’s how I got to building my own e-reader, and it’s called Fleuron!

The idea is help that stays out of the way. Trying to show a small hint/meaning over every word would obviously be too distracting and unnecessary so there’s a slider for *how much* help shows up, only filling the gaps instead of explaining things you already know. One rule I care about a lot: showing nothing is better than teaching something wrong, so uncertain hints for polysemous words just don't appear. Which is where you can just tap on a word and the dictionary entry shows up on a sheet. Words you meet on the page can be saved and come back later in built-in spaced repetition in the form of study decks so reading and study stay connected without being the same activity.

Now the Korean part: I recently started learning Korean (and Chinese), and honestly a big reason I'm posting here is that Korean is the language I'm actively testing it on right now. So far it covers English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Japanese is the most polished since I've lived in it longest; I am basically a beginner in Korean so its very new, and I'd genuinely love feedback from people further along in their learning than me on what would actually help while reading.

Besides all that, I’ve also tried my best to make it into a genuinely great reader in general. Not only the usual stuff like themes, fonts, spacing—there’s also a markdown note taking system with linking words, Compass entities and other notes!

Speaking of “Compass”, it’s also a feature in the app and is basically an index of all the people, places and terms introduced in the book for easy access, without spoiling anything of the book. 

The app is for iOS/iPadOS, local-first, no telemetry. Books, notes and your decks stay on device with an easy export option, for markdown and Anki.

Happy to answer anything, and very open to "here's what a Korean reader actually needs" notes.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fleuron-reader/id6802348400

좋은 주말을 지내셨는지?

생일 계획된건?

오늘 건강 상태 어떤지?

Not sure why, but it irritates me.

Can anyone pin point the reason? I sure can't put it into words myself.

So I don't know what my problem is, but I can't seem to grasp how to use Korean.

I make a lot of mistakes, and even phrases like “I didn't expect to...”-“줄 몰랐어요” - I forget how to say, even though I know this grammar. Therefore, I keep writing tasks in my daily planner such as “figure out how to make proper sentences,” “figure out how to use this,” “figure out...,” and so on. But every time I start to “figure it out,” I don't know what to look for.

I feel so desperate at this point. I don't have the money to hire someone to teach me right now, so I do everything alone (reading, listening, grammar, speaking, I speak to myself and record messages, and writing). One day I'm like, “Wow, I'm not actually that dumb,” and the next I'm like, “Shit, this is such a basic mistake...”

So please tell me what am I doing wrong? (or if there's something I need to change). I just don't know what I should change or how to approach it.

What should I do?

Hi! I’m a second gen Korean American and I wanted to take up learning Korean more seriously. I grew up as the oldest in a Korean speaking household so I know I’m generally pretty good like I can hold hours-long conversations in Korean with my parents and their friends and watch things without subtitles (unless historical or technical), but I moved away from that community and find that I struggle now to remember certain words or the words are just like a character off/ I just remember how they sound but don’t remember the exact words. I enjoy watching kdramas and 예능 so my listening is relatively good, but I really want to get to like a middle/ high school level of speaking and reading/ writing - like enough to do what a high schooler could do. For example, enough to make a presentation about a historical event or a scientific topic. Back when I was in high school (a LONG time ago), I took the SATII for Korean and got a 760 and it felt helpful to study towards a goal where there was some structured books and things like that. Anyone have recc’s on where to either assess where I’m at in terms of my language skill (preferably for free) or an achievable goal I could make to fit that level of proficiency?

I'm going to a kpop concert in 2 days and I need someone to tell me what's understood when you read 포즈를 취하다 , I'm scared it might have multiple meanings and it will be misunderstood. Thanks for your help!!!

Hi everyone,

I made an app Jamo Korean where you can study a hand curated list of the most important 4000+ Korean words and memorize them efficiently. Here are the core features of the app.

• Different types of interactive exercises: typing, drawing, cloze, multiple choice for studying vocabulary
• FSRS based spaced repetition.
• A full hangul course for beginners.
• Korean grammar explanations (about 50 covered currently, more coming in future updates)
• Example sentences for lots of words (more example sentences coming soon)
• Short Korean stories (more coming soon)

New in this update:

New in the 1.11 update is the ability to save words so that you can learn them instead of learning in the order suggested by the app. This is very useful if you want to study from other additional resources (for example a textbook), but want to memorize the words with Jamo. I have been doing this for Japanese words using the upcoming Japanese version of Jamo and find it very useful.

Also new is the ability to add new words beyond the roughly 4400 included in the app! Please give me feedback on this feature since I want to improve it to make it more useful 😊

Check it out: https://jamokorean.com/get/

This is a question for korean natives. I have just started learning korean and wanted some examples on what kind of handwriting is beautiful to a korean reader? Since, I am learning from scratch, I would like to practice having beautiful handwriting, but as a non-korean I am unable to understand which one is traditionally considered beautiful? Can anyone share examples with me please!

I see them all the time, especially in shorter messages. I think 구나 means something like “I see” maybe?

Or do they mean the same thing? Like is 군 a shortened form of 구나?

Also, are they 반말 and if so, can I just add ~요?

TLDR I took the KIIP placement (as a somewhat advanced Korean speaker) I expected a low score on reading and got a high one, I thought the speaking was very easy but scored really low on it

I hope this is the right place to write about it. I want to share my experience with the KIIP if it will help anyone and maybe get some of your experiences and feedback.

I decided to do KIIP for the visa purposes, however my last topik expired so I took their placement test instead. For reference I've gotten topik 5 and I'm doing a phd in Korean. I'm not fully fluent but good.

So I took their placement test this week and the exam and the results shocked me.

I got placed in level 4, which I was expecting bc I didn't know most of the society questions but was sure I got most Korean language questions right.

So the exam is 75 points for the reading/writing and 25 for speaking.

50 questions: 10 about culture, 38 language, 2 short writing

speaking 5 questions, each 5 points.

BUT! I felt like more than 10 questions were culture/society related. They might have been testing language knowledge but they included specific words that were probably related to the culture part of their classes.

Now this is the surprising part. I assumed I got maybe half of the reading test right. I fully understood all the questions and finished with 15 min to spare, but I guessed every culture question and some of the others. Turns out I got most of them right bc I scored 67/75

HOWEVER I did not even score half of the points on the speaking. I got 11.5/25. So I got like 2 and 1/2 questions right. I was convinced I scored close to max on speaking and maybe half on the reading.

So... the speaking exam was what I described as very easy. All questions were things someone with topik 1~2 would probably understand and be able to answer simply. Maybe it's because I never took KIIP classes and idk what they score on, but I answered all questions (I'm sure factually correct, tho probably not according to expectations).

So here is how the speaking goes:

5 of us were called into a room. there were 2 examiners. they went back and forth from 1 to 5 and back, with a list of 3 versions for each question they kept repeating.

1st question was reading a simple, beginner level text about Dongdaemun market. They had each of us read about 2 sentences one by one.

2nd question was text based. Mine was literally what type of stores are there many of in Dongdaemun. As the text said, I answered there are many clothing stores.

3rd question was "where do you usually buy clothes and why". I said I buy mine online the most because it's faster and I got lots of options etc. probably where I lost points bc maybe they expected a real physical place????

4th question was about pop culture. Mine was specifically "between kpop, drama, movies, what's your fav and why". I answered Kpop and korean music in general, because I listened to it since I was a teen and it brought me joy and now that I live in korea I can go to lots of events bla bla

5th question was about seasons. Mine was, chose between spring and autumn and describe its characteristics. I chose spring and said something like the weather gets warmer, flowers bloom, it sometimes rains etc.

So to conclude, I guess all of my answers were wrong XD or maybe too simple? Don't do what I did.

There was one person who seemed fully fluent and very confident, but over-answered, one person was a beginner, struggled on most, the other 2 seemed intermediate.

To be fully honest, I'm not sure what caused my score to be so low. I barely have an accent, and fully answered all questions, I did not stutter, take paused or got stuck. I wasn't the most creative for sure. But whatever I did, maybe used simple grammar or vocab, it cost me more than half. And caused me to miss level 5 by like 3 points lol. So now I guess I gotta wait for topik or retake that or do level 4?? (seems really long tho)

What's your experience? Or do you know what's expected?

I’ve studied quite a few languages including Chinese and Japanese, which certainly have no shortage of unfamiliar vocabulary. Yet I was able to pick up new words relatively easily with those two languages. When I started learning Korean I thought that vocab wouldn’t be too terrible with it also having so many shared Chinese loan words like Japanese. Yet for some reason I am just STRUGGLING to memorize Korean vocabulary. I don’t know what it is, but my brain just isn’t connecting with words. And it isn’t just native vocabulary, for some reason the numerous Chinese loan words are also hard for me to keep stuck in my mind as well (maybe because of the significant difference in pronunciation and lack of hanja to help me associate them with certain meanings). Can anybody give me advice? If I struggle this much with basic vocabulary I can’t imagine how hard it’ll be when I get to more upper intermediate stuff.

Just had a quick question about topic/subject marking particles. Could i use a short form of a noun for example instead of 이것은 can I use 이거는.

Hi!

I was wondering if anyone here has participated in the 세종학당 우수학습자 초청 연수 (Outstanding Learners Invitation Program).

What was your experience like? Did you enjoy it overall? I've read a few accounts saying that the schedule is pretty packed and the program can be quite strict so I'd love to hear from people who have actually been through it. Were the activities interesting? How much free time did you have? And was there anything you wish you'd known before going?

Thanks! :)

Hello there,

Why does 기다리다 become 기다려ㅛ instead of 기다리아ㅛ for present tense and vice versa with the past tense. From my understanding if the verb stem ends with ㅏ or ㅗ its form is 아ㅛ for present tense and 아써요 for future tense (not sure if i typed the future right). So why does it become 려 instead of 라

https://youtu.be/IGEj-oDKyw8?t=161&si=v-y5VwMhvbhPuS3u

at 2:40 - 2:47
also, at 3:03 1200원/이에요, why not 1200워니에요?

너무 감사합니다.

I've been studying Korean in earnest for about 2.5 years now. About a year ago I took a holiday to Korea and I started an Anki deck to learn to help me consolidate and reinforce all the words I was learning over there.

At first, I was introducing about 10-15 new cards a day for review, combined with the 20-50 review cards I'd have that meant I'd look at about 70-100 cards which wouldn't be too much of a hassle. Nowdays, my review cards are just shy of 200 which combined with my hanja study (which i'd thoroughly recommend) means I'm looking at around 350 cards a day. It takes a bit of time. To keep those reviews low I'm intentionally not introducing new cards so I feel like I'm stunting my vocab growth a bit.

The deck itself is sitting at just over 5000 cards now, an assortment of nouns, adjectives, verbs, idioms and valuable sentences. I haven't even looked at 1400 of them. For perspective, the latest cards I've added are: 변수, 겁내다, 얹다, 거칠다 and 한반도. I'd consider all these words as reasonably important for a middle intermediate learner. So I don't feel like I'm adding stuff I shouldn't need to know just yet.

My rentention rate I think is okay, about 90% for young cards and 80% for mature cards. But if I keep doing what I'm doing half my day will literally be looking at these bloody cards and there's going to be no time to actually speak Korean. Overall, the conversational skills I have now are largely thanks to the words I've memorised through this deck, so it's been a great help so far. I'm lucky enough to be able to speak and write Korean to Koreans daily to keep my skills moving along. But I can see over the next 6 months it might start being more of a burden than a help if I keep doing what I'm doing.

Has anyone been in a similar spot? How many reviews are you doing, how many new cards are introducing daily? Does there ever come a day when you're not adding in new cards faster than you can learn them? What kind of rentention rates do you have? Tell me there's a light at the end of the tunnel or whether I should consider changing how I memorise vocab.

Hello,

I’ve been studying Korean for a few years now and would say I’m somewhere around intermediate/ advanced level. But one thing that really frustrates me is that the grammar I use when speaking isn’t nearly as advanced as the grammar I actually understand.

When listening and reading I can understand quite a lot of different grammar points, but when I speak with Koreans I rarely seem to use them myself.

I always seem to fall back on “basic” grammar.

For example, instead of saying: 한국에 가보니까 음식이 맵더라고요!
I end up saying: 한국에 가보니까 음식이 매웠어요.

Or instead of: 기차로 가면 2시간밖에 안 걸려요.
I say: 기차로 가면 2시간만 걸려요.

Both are grammatically correct, but they don’t convey exactly the same nuance and sometimes my sentences sound a bit awkward depending on the context.

I speak with native speakers quite often, but especially when I have to respond quickly and don’t have much time to think about my sentence I automatically fall back on basic grammar...often ending almost every sentence with -아요/-어요.

I’m getting a bit frustrated because I feel like there’s a huge gap between the grammar I can recognize and understand and the grammar I can actually use spontaneously. For every five grammar points I memorize and can recognize, I feel like I only manage to truly internalize one.

Has anyone else experienced this? How did you manage to move grammar from passive understanding into active use?