Let's learn Korean. Learning Korean - choosing a methodology, overcoming difficulties

Living, working or studying in South Korea requires knowledge of the language. The local dialect is difficult for Europeans to perceive, so it is best to study it here, in its homeland, immersing itself in the local culture. Almost anyone can do this today - free Korean courses are organized by many institutions with government support or on a voluntary basis.

Teacher-assisted language learning program

Even the initial course may seem very difficult to a beginner, so all classes are held with the active participation of the teacher. You will immediately have to get used to numerous features - for example, the construction of a sentence occurs not from the beginning, but from its end. Many expressions cannot be translated literally into European languages ​​- the volume of idiomatic phrases in Korean speech is colossal.

As a rule, free Korean language training is carried out with the participation of teachers from among local residents, which results in obvious advantages:

• Obtaining structured and holistic knowledge through an integrated approach.
• Skills in writing and reading business papers.
• Understanding of spoken language at a level sufficient for free communication and understanding of television programs.
• Self-confidence and ability to carry on a conversation.

To learn the Korean language for free, you first need a desire, since upon completion of some types of courses, a certificate is issued that exempts you from taking the exam when obtaining a residence permit in the country.

Where is free training organized?

You can start learning the Korean language for free at the embassy of your country - most of them have similar programs. After arriving in Korea, you have the opportunity to choose paid and free education. At the same time, the latter is not inferior in quality. The most famous and popular is the public association program with

These free Korean courses include five stages, and before the start of the lesson, those wishing to learn are tested to determine their current level of proficiency. In addition, it is worth mentioning three more organizations that allow you to learn or improve your language:

• « Seoul global center» - Seoul, phone 02-2075-7147
• « International Center» - Ansan, phone 1644-7111
• « Support Center» - Tegu, phone 053-654-9700

*For registration questions, please contact the international center directly at the above numbers. (Having an ID card is required, age: from 18 years old)

The educational departments of international centers do not issue invitations or provide assistance in obtaining an ID card. You can find out more about obtaining an ID card and types of visas

In addition, you can learn Korean for free at monasteries and temples. Currently in Seoul you can contact the Russian-Speaking Christian Community. Information about new courses regularly appears in the local press and on the Internet.

My first acquaintance with the Korean language took place almost 8 years ago, when my son Grisha entered the Oriental Studies department of the Faculty of International Relations at BSU and he learned the Korean language. I remember well how I tried to help him remember words. He wrote in Korean, I dictated in Russian. All the words were like hedgehogs, prickly and alien...

Only over time did we learn that in ancient times the Koreans did not have a written language and were forced to use Chinese characters to record the sounds of their native speech, which was inaccessible to most ordinary people. That is why in 1446, King Sejong, who ruled the state of Joseon, invented the Korean alphabet, which was originally called “Hunmin Jeongum” (Instruction to the People on Correct Pronunciation).

In October 1997, the book “Hongmin Jeongum Chaerebong” (Interpretation of Hongmin Jeongum), which explained the purpose of creating the Hangul script, the meaning of words and the rules for writing them, was included in the UNESCO World Memory Register. In honor of this invention in the educational system, UNESCO annually awards two prizes named after King Sejong. The prizes are funded by the Government of the Republic of Korea and are awarded to educational programs and projects.

More than five centuries have passed since the creation of Hangul, but only relatively recently have modern artists and designers of various styles begun to consider the possibility of using its potential as a leitmotif for their works.

Steel sculpture created by Kang Byung-in

shaped like the Korean word for "flower"

As for me, I can say that my interest in Korea, its people and language appeared only after Grisha brought home the Korean drama “The First Cafe Prince” in his second year. I looked in by chance while passing by the computer and... stayed until the end of the viewing. Sixteen days and sixteen episodes. I begged Grisha to translate at least something, but he said that he himself knew a little. So I looked at how they looked at painting and... fell in love with the sincerity coming at me from the screen. The story left a mark on my soul. Time passed and two years later Grisha obtained subtitles for this drama especially for me. It was a holiday!!! Day after day, my passion for Korean cinema led to a state of falling in love with the Korean language. I discovered the beauty of this language, but the desire to start learning it did not arise.

About a year ago, when I was visiting my son in Seoul, Grisha once told me: “Mom, it’s time for you to start learning Korean! There are museums where you can only go by bus. But I can’t let you go alone, but I'm working. If you just learn to read, I can let you go on the bus." Setting a mini-task at the beginning is his way of encouraging me to start something new. And it works! But, to be honest, the moment has already come when I wanted to go beyond the limits of 감사합니다 ( “Thank you.”) I easily agreed and we agreed to go buy me a textbook the next day.

We immediately headed to this display to find exactly the textbook that is considered one of the best for foreigners. And when we found what we were looking for, the receipt that we printed had all the necessary information: the sector in which the textbook was located and the route to it.

The author of the textbook (or maybe not the author, but that’s what I thought then) smiled at me enticingly, pointing her finger at the title, saying that learning Korean is easy! I brought him home happy. I opened it and found information about the author:

And then I finally realized: in this textbook everything is explained in English. But I’ve been learning English on my own from scratch for only two years; before that I studied German for many years, first at school and university, and then at the Goete-Institute. Grisha reassured me and suggested that I start studying right away, even though it was past midnight. And it was good! The first lesson with a teacher like Grisha freed me from fear. He was right! The textbook encourages learning by playing. The exercises are varied. EVERYONE has an audio recording. I did the exercises, but it didn’t feel like I was learning. Not overloaded with grammar. The rules are shown in examples, highlighted in font and color. And, of course, it is especially worth noting the design of the publication, which helps to immerse yourself in the element of language and learn with pleasure, as this probably only happens in early childhood.

A few days later I returned to Minsk and put off learning the Korean language, it just so happened. I learned a little of the alphabet and my enthusiasm faded.

The hour struck only with the appearance in our familyin the month of FebruaryJuho (주호), a student from Busan who came to gain experience at the Korean company "KOTRA".

• Then all the words written here. I became excited and, turning the package over, began to read everything that was written in small print. Having accidentally discovered in this way that I already stammer much less, from there I took into the dictionary, as it later turned out, several new words that were important to me. And it was this experience yesterday that helped me once again become convinced that a great mood is the main key to success! In such an unexpected way, I replenished my vocabulary with 25 new words, but at the same time I was not pierced by the thought “Oh, studying again! When will this end and it will be possible to rest?”
• Errors. They accompany me, nothing can be done. One of the most common is that I always try to make one of the syllables stressed, and the peculiarity of the Korean language is that all syllables are equally stressed. And only when I ask do I highlight the last syllable. When Grisha told me about this, I also began to pay attention to this when listening and learn to pronounce it correctly. But for now it’s not easy for me to do this.
• What else do I do to make my habit of learning Korean sustainable, so that words are remembered more easily and so as not to lose heart? I include Korean expressions in my Facebook friends' birthday greetings and send them voice messages. I use some of them at work when I offer something to colleagues or thank them. But most often I say them to Juho. Thanks to him, some of them became part of me. In other words, I use them wherever possible. But in Belarus, unfortunately, there are not many opportunities to speak in Korean.
• And there's one more thing I want to talk about. Juho once told me that the Korean education system is different from ours. When learning a foreign language, the emphasis is on building a strong vocabulary. And he added that he learned 30,000 English words at school. I was surprised how it was possible to know the number so accurately, but he said that in the Republic of Korea a dictionary of English words that they must learn was specially created and published for schoolchildren. And he learned them, it's true. From any field, no matter what word I say, he will immediately tell me what it means. I observe the same picture every day regarding the Russian language. He knows an incredible amount of Russian words. I asked him if words really play a key role? He replied that about thirty percent, yes. And these observations also help me, at least for now, not to lose motivation. But the main thing I would like to say at the moment is: you should never be afraid to start learning a foreign language, on the contrary, you should use this chance. Language is part of the culture of a people. Therefore, it helps us enrich our internal culture and expand our understanding both of the world as a whole and of individual people as part of it.

In many methods, you are forced to start speaking too early, when you still know practically nothing. But what's the point of talking when you don't understand what people are saying to you?

When you start to understand FIRST, your progress will be much faster. Your pronunciation will improve, you will begin to speak more naturally and remember words faster than with any other method. And you can focus on your speech, rather than trying to make sense of what you hear at the same time.

Another problem with traditional teaching methods is that they immediately load you with heavy grammar rules. Trying to remember grammar rules besides Korean may only confuse you even more. Grammar is only needed when you already speak the language. Until then, these rules only act as a filter that slows down your language learning process.

Children don't pick up a dictionary, learn grammar rules, or start speaking from day one. Why then should you do this?

Inspired by how children learn languages...LingQ uses the principles of clear language input in language learning to reduce this time to a minimum.

Instructions

Understand the logic

Before learning a language, you need to find its place in the language family, determine its closest relatives and the type of language. Yes, oddly enough, reading books on linguistics makes life much easier for people who study with a form of writing that is significantly different from their own. All beginners should know that the Korean language belongs to the Tungus-Manchu group of languages ​​of the Altai family. This is an agglutinative language, which means that the sentence is built according to the “subordination - object” scheme. That is, not “I am going to the store for food,” but “I am food because I am going to the store.” Verbs do not have a gender, but there are special conjugate endings in order to address friends, mother and father, as well as older people and high rank. It seems strange at first, but experts are confident that Korean is one of the easiest languages ​​to master.

Spin Attack

In order to learn any language, you should not only study theory, immerse yourself in grammar and build up your vocabulary, but also read, listen, write coherent texts and, of course, communicate. There are many free resources on the Internet to help lovers of the Korean language. So, for example, a resource http://www.lingq.com/ offers texts and podcasts in Korean for students of all levels - from beginner to advanced. The network user reads the text, listens to it at the same time, remembers the pronunciation of a native speaker and “links” new words. You can make cards from words, download them, upload them to your mobile phone or receive them by mail. Another educational network where you can learn Korean is livemocha.com. The free course includes more than fifty lessons: theory, test exercises, quizzes and two tasks that test native speakers - oral and written. Politeness and respect are the two pillars on which language learning in online educational networks is based.

Serious preparation

If a student studying the Korean language needs a certificate or confidence that the best teachers are teaching him, then it is worth enrolling in free Korean language courses at the Cultural Center of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea: http://russia.korean-culture.org/welcome.do You can also learn Korean for free at Won Gwan Language School http://www.wonkwang.ru/. There you can download free audio courses and purchase educational literature. In addition, Korean is studied in courses at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at departments at RGSU, RGGU, MGIMO, ISAA and others. These educational institutions prepare professional students of Korean studies.

In Russia there are not many really good textbooks on Korean language for beginners from scratch. And this despite the fact that they provide a fairly good explanation of the grammatical material and a lot of useful vocabulary. The disadvantage of textbooks for Russian-speaking audiences is that some of them do not have audio recordings or even keys to the exercises. That’s why it’s better not to limit yourself to self-study, but to additionally attend courses and look for acquaintances with Koreans to develop speaking skills.

1. “Textbook of the Korean language. Basic course" Kasatkina I.L., Chong In Sun, Pentyukhova V.E. The book is intended for students who are studying the Korean language for the first year. The manual contains enough material to master good writing skills and master grammar. The textbook is designed for approximately 180-200 hours of classroom work. The manual is recommended by many students who have studied Korean, but there is no audio or answers to the exercises.

2. Textbooks written by teachers of the Korean Won Gwan School for students with different levels of training: Introductory course, Korean course for intermediate students 중급 한국어 And Korean Basic Course 고급 한국어. These textbooks are among the most famous among Russian students. The manuals focus on grammar, and there are answers to the exercises. The books come with CDs with texts and dialogues. The downside is that there are no listening tasks.

3. "Korean Language Textbook" Verkholyak V.V., Kaplan T.Yu., Galkina L.V., Kozhemyako V.N. and “Textbook of the Korean language” by Verkholyak V.V., Kaplan T.Yu. Guides for beginners. The books cover approximately 400 hours of classroom work. They provide accessible material on phonetics, grammar and vocabulary of the Korean language, but there is no audio for the books, so it is better to study them with a teacher or use them as additional materials for classes.

4. Textbooks of the National Institute of International Education of the Republic of Korea NIIED. There are only four such textbooks. The plus is that they correspond to the levels of the Korean TOPIK exam. The textbooks contain exercises for working on all language skills, but, unfortunately, there are no answers. Therefore, you need to find someone who will check the completion of tasks.

5. “Korean language (Introductory course)” Choi Yang Sun. This course will be a good addition to your main textbook. In addition, this book can be used as a self-instruction manual, since it has a CD with audio and answers to the exercises. An advantage of the textbook is the large number of dialogues.

6. Guides for learning the Korean language by Kogai Yu.P. – “Phonetics”, “Hieroglyphics”, “Morphology”, “Syntax”, “Spoken Korean”, “Phraseologisms of the Korean language”, etc. Not all of the manuals were published, but the author made them freely available. The books are truly worthy of your attention.

7. "Basic Korean: A Grammar and Workbook" by Andrew Sangpil Byon. A textbook for those who are learning Korean for the first year. The manual contains grammar exercises. You can study independently or with a teacher.

8. "Korean grammar in use"- a series of three textbooks, which are compiled in the same way as English grammar in Use. Those. In the book, each lesson contains a grammatical structure + rules of use with examples + exercises to practice the material. You should not pass by these benefits.

This is how short our review turned out to be. By the way, you can get acquainted with most of the Korean textbooks listed here on our VKontakte page