Language Learning

Learning Korean Online?

December 29, 2010

Well, you should try it!

Learning Korean online is a great substitute to attending an inconvenient class to study material presented at an inconvenient pace. And many local schools and colleges don’t even have a class in Korean! When you choose your own program from the internet, you’ll be able to match the way the material is tutored with the way you learn.

But before you begin on learning Korean online, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, there are many levels of Korean, depending on how polite you want (and need) to be. For example, the standard greeting in English is hello, regardless of whether we’re speaking to our neighbor or the President. In Korea, it’s completely different. In Korean, the way you would greet a person is dependent on his social position, age, or his relationship to you. It’s a lot like the difference between “How do you do”, “Hello,” “Hi,” and “Wassup” – only more so! Clearly, when learning Korean online you should look for a course that explains the fine points of Korean culture; in this case, you can see that just learning to pronounce the words is not enough!

There’s another crucial difference between Korean and most languages familiar to English speakers. Korean has its own alphabet, known as Hangul or Hanguel. Visual learners, who are dependent on reading to learn new information, often have great difficulty learning a language they can’t read. Luckily, however, Korean can also be transcribed in a Romanized alphabet, and visual learners should look for this attribute when choosing a method of learning Korean online.

We hope that by now you’re ready to plunge into learning Korean online, and you’ve chosen a program that works for you – but is there anything you can do to speed up the process? Why not find some Korean-speaking friends? Some online language programs have student forums you can join, where people learning Korean can share problems and successes. These forums are often staffed by native Korean speakers who can help and advise you on any study-related troubles you may have. But just finding other people out on the net who are sharing your experience is often a boost to your own learning.

Hopefully, you now feel ready to tackle the job of learning Korean online. Are you up to the challenge?

Learning Korean online is easy if you use the correct course. I recommend you give Rocket Korean a try by reading my user review first.

Entry Filed under: korean. Tags: education, korean, korean language, languages, learn korean, learn korean online, learning korean, learning korean online, speak korean.