How to self-study Korean?

Let me start with a little story of how I started on learning Korean:

At the very beginning, I fell in love with the k-pop group Super Junior. I basically watched all of the variety shows that they’ve been on. After a period of time, I slowly realized that I can somewhat understand what they were talking about in the shows. At that time, I couldn’t read any hangul, which is the Korean script. So, I decided to start learning Korean officially. At first, I watched a lot of YouTube videos or read a lot of blogs, then I took 2 semesters of Korean classes at university. I also took the Korean proficiency exam (TOPIK), and got level 5 out of 6 levels. To further my study in Korean (or I just really wanted to go to Korea), I went to Korea and studied at a language school for 3 months. At that time, I spent way more time of experimenting different things and had all the delicious food than studying. I really enjoyed the freedom I got from living alone in a foreign country.

Back to the present time, I have no issues with listening and writing, but I feel like my proficiency in Korean is still in the daily conversation level. If you want me to write an essay in Korean, I will have no idea how to even start. Therefore, I want to go one step forward and learn Korean that is more suitable for a formal setting.

My recent study schedule: Mon, Wed, Fri — Japanese; Tues, Thurs — French and Korean. Comparing to studying 8 hours straight on one day, I prefer studying 1 hour every day. I think this is more helpful in retaining all the information as I will be actively recalling them.

3 things I do: learn vocabularies on Memrise, read a passage, do TOPIK past papers

1. Memrise — I quite like this platform. (This is not an ad!) I’ve used Duolingo before, but I think that’s more suitable for beginners. Also, their method is more like repeating the same thing over and over again until you get it, which is not really for me. There are different levels on Memrise, so it’s good for different people with different background. I mostly learn vocabularies on this platform, and I will write the words down, especially those that I’ve never seen, or ones that are useful in writing. For some words that I already know, I will still write them down if they’re less common. Hopefully by doing this, I’m able to expand my vocabulary bank.
2. Read a passage — I’m now reading from the 읽기 book that I got from the Yonsei Language Institute back when I was studying in Korea. I will read one passage at a time, and mark the words or grammar that I’m not familiar with. Sometimes, I will read the news as well. Normally, I will read the entertainment or headline as they are usually more approachable. If I want to challenge myself, I will go for Business or Politics news. Reading a book or the news are both fine, I just want to improve my ability to read in Korean. I hope to read faster and also getting the message accurately. Actually, I want to read Korean that is more well-written and formal. (Read too many internet slangs XD)
3. Do TOPIK past papers — There are a lot of past papers on the TOPIK official website. I did a TOPIK exam before and I know that I did worse on the reading part than the listening part. I didn’t even have enough time to read all of the little passages. Therefore, I will spend more time doing the reading past exam papers than doing the listening past exam papers. I hope to really improve my reading ability in Korean. Sometimes, I will use the timer that they provided on the website. This is to let myself be prepared and ready for doing all of the reading in the allotted time. From time to time, I will ignore the timer and really read all of the passages and questions in great detail and mark down words and grammar structures that I do not know. This allows me to go back later and review the parts.

These are some of my personal experiences with learning Korean. Hope this will encourage you or give you some new inspirations for study methods. If you are self-learning Korean or other languages, feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what your study method and schedule are. Let’s continue to walk this journey together!