So, I’ve decided to pick up my Korean again.
This time, however, I’m using the laddering method, using Japanese as my base.
How is it going, you ask. Here’s the answer.
I have immediately noticed a giant leap in comprehension, which is most likely a combination of:
- Decent level of Japanese
- Prior experience with Korean
- More familiarity with sentence structure because of Japanese study
Word lists/Dictionaries
To get on the more technical side of my study, I’m making cards with cloze deletions using a 200 word frequency list via this page. There is also a 1000 word frequency list on Quizlet, but that one does not include particles and is more verb heavy. I think I will move one to that one after I get through the first list I found, which is full of those “connectors” that are essential for comprehension. I look up each word in this handy Korean-Japanese Online Dictionary (with [TTS] audio for almost every word/example sentence).
Media
I still have a bunch of Korean shows from back in the day when I was “studying” hardcore, so I watch at least one episode of something a day. I also still have my korean music collection, the greatest hits from 4 years ago…. so pretty much all K-pop and Epik High.
Anki
I actually found a very nice plugin that automatically generates Text-to-Speech audio for cards. I had to change my card layouts a bit for it to work nicely, but I’m used to doing that now. Ideally, I would have a real person speaking, but TTS has made significant improvements since I last bothered using it. I’m finding that the TTS is very accurate with pronunciation rules, such as when the 파침changes the sounds and all that jazz I don’t remember or never studied. I was able to speak with my friends just fine without knowing, so I’m not worried about it.
I add 5 cards for each word in the frequency list mentioned above.
Thoughts/Improvements
Right now, my study consists of basically no reading outside of my cards. Reading was always my weakest skill in Korean. I find it amusing that it is my second strongest skill in Japanese. Anyways, I will definitely start reading after I get through my first 200 word list. The reason I’m making that the deadline is so that I can still focus on my Japanese for my remaining time in Japan(~2 months). At my current rate, I should be done with the list right around the time I return to America. I’m doing very little at a time to avoid burnout and neglecting日本語.
What do other Korean learners have to say about this? Any recommendations for dictionaries or word lists? Leave a comment sharing your favorite Korean learning resources!
