#kgiu

When I first started learning Korean seriously about a year ago, I already knew hangeul very well and knew some basic phrases. So I thought it was going to be easy. And to be honest, at first, it was. I went through my first beginning level textbook (Vitamin Korean 1) with ease and supplemented with TTMIK and watched tons of Korean dramas. And then I moved on to Vitamin Korean 2. I was making progress fast. Or so it seemed.

Because then I hit The Wall™.

I stopped making progress and suddenly found myself unable to make use of anything I had learned. Making sentences by myself? Impossible. Getting new grammar into my head? Nope. I was not making progress whatsoever and on top of that found myself forgetting everything I was once so sure of. I was back to square one: I could read hangeul just fine but that was about it.

I got frustrated and upset but nothing was making sense anymore. I asked people on the learning Korean subreddit about what I was experiencing and what they said wasn't helpful at all.

"That's the intermediate plateau. Everyone experiences that."

But I was nowhere near intermediate. I was still a beginner.

"Just use immersion to study, don't rely on books."

After listening to kpop for nearly a decade and watching an endless amount of Korean dramas and taking in as much Korean content daily as I can, I can tell you that immersion isn't working for me either. Not now at least, where I still struggle with the basics.

So I took some time "off" and ironically started learning Japanese during that time. (Now I'm kind of learning both) After a while, I started looking for different resources for learning Korean because I figured I needed a fresh start. After much consideration I decided on the Ewha Korean textbook series and am now slowly making my way through their 1-1 level. Which is mostly (or maybe all of it) basically just review but I want to start with the very basics and slowly work myself up again. And maybe this time it'll work for me, as I got very frustrated with my Vitamin Korean series.

Right now I'm finally actively studying Korean again, not as harshly as I used to though. I take more and longer breaks when needed. There's no rush and no need to become fluent (or even intermediate) anytime soon. I'm going to take it slow.

Moral of the story: Take a break when you feel like givng up.

By the way, following some suggestions from my followers on Twitter, I opened my study instagram account ^^

Hello @kopikode 👋 Thank you for sending us an ask :) This is Hayleen 🐰 speaking so I will answer based on my experience learning Korean if you don’t mind hahah. Well first off, I have both the TTMIK book series and Korean Grammar in Use series and have studied both, so this is personally just my opinion. ^^

In my opinion, I would recommend to have more than one resource to study Korean as one may be very strong covering an area such as “Grammar”, but may lack practice activities or vocabulary for you to learn on how to create sentences. One can be your primary resource of the study, and the other, a supplement. :)

I would suggest, if NOT possible to have both resources, for you to study primarily from TTMIK as they have many courses, books, videos and even cultural tips to cover everything you need to know about the language and culture. It covers a large section of all the functions of the Korean language where as Korean Grammar in Use, as the title suggests, will primarily focus on grammar. So in case you want to learn vocabulary, you will have to be a bit more independent and look for the words yourself, which can be a bit time consuming. It depends on what you are exactly looking for :)

If you have both books, I suggest to make sure to read bit by bit by yourself, and then use their audio files to read along with them so you can have a better understanding and also improve your listening :) TTMIK also offers a lot of material to apply what you have learnt. Please make sure to actually do the practice activities as my first mistake in learning was to skip the practice activities as I was rushing, only to forget what I had learnt later! haha

To further sharpen your skills, use the Korean Grammar in Use books in case you want more detail in how to use the grammar forms accurately or the different rules of politeness levels in Korea. I notice TTMIK primarily use Casual Polite form which is helpful to sound natural. But, in case you want to understand how these forms can change or use a certain level for a purpose you have, I do recommend to get this book as it goes into depth on the uses and forms. They also have the grammar rules laid out in separate sections of the books, all in order. (Ex: Korean Particles are all in order and in a separate section dedicated to explain only the Korean particles.) 

TTMIK seems to teach grammar well, but mixes it in with phrases, words or grammar rules in each chapter. (Ex: Chapter one “Phrase”, Chapter 2 “Particles”, Chapter 3 “Tense”, Chapter 4 “Particles”, etc.) For some, this could be a good way to learn, but it may be messy for others.

This came out longer than I expected lol. In short, it depends on what you seek. I recommend to have BOTH for the above reasons. If you aren’t able to, I recommend to study from TTMIK with their books and website. ^^

The “Korean Grammar in Use” series is one of the resources I recommend the most when people ask me which resources they should (or shouldn’t) use to study Korean. That is not to say that it’s flawless, but it’s solid for sure. If you want to start diving into advanced grammar or are looking for something to supplement your other advanced grammar resources, here are a few good and bad things about “Korean Grammar in Use (Advanced).”

NOTE: A lot of what I say here, especially in regards to the formatting of the book, will be applicable to “Korean Grammar in Use (Intermediate)” as well since the books follow the same format. I imagine that this also holds true for the beginner edition as well, but I can’t say for sure since I’ve never actually read a copy.

Pros:

One of the good things about the KGIU series is that it is available not only in English but also in other languages like Mandarin and Japanese. If you’re a native speaker of one of those languages and would like a more comfortable read, or if you’re learning one of those languages and would like to tackle learning Korean through one of your second languages, this could be really beneficial! A lot of Korean grammar resources are printed in just one language, so having editions in multiple languages is a plus.

As for the content, I find that KGIU’s explanations are fairly clearly written and easy to understand in both Korean and English. The initial description of the main function(s) of each grammar point is succinctly introduced and is usually accompanied by a table showing you how to conjugate the grammar point properly. Any specific limitations, extra usages of the grammar, or just other important things to know or remember then appear in the “더 알아볼까요?” section. After all is read and done (har har har), you’ll have quite a bit of information to work with! Compared to other sources I have used, I would say that “Korean Grammar in Use (Advanced)” is usually the most detailed when describing the usage of each grammar point, but the way in which that information is introduced and formatted doesn’t leave the reader feeling like they’re being barraged with too much at the same time.

Within the “더 알아볼까요?” section is another sub-section that I think is worthy of its own special mention. In the “비교해 볼까요?” sub-section, KGIU shows and breaks down grammar points that either look similar to the target grammar or have similar meanings (or both) and explains how each is similar and different with the target grammar. While other sources that I’ve used will usually mention things like “This grammar form can be switched with X form” as necessary, they don’t tend to have comparisons like KGIU does. Another excellent feature and a reason why I recommend this series~

Wrapping up the positives for this book is the amount of practice questions. Each grammar form has at least two pages of practice questions accompanying it, which is more than other books I have used. The exercises are fairly simple but effective, usually involving choosing the appropriate word for a sentence from a word bank and using it with the target grammar to complete the sentence, or changing or combining sentences using the target grammar. At the end of each section—the book is divided into sections of grammar with similar meanings and/or usages—there are also some extra multiple choice questions to check if you have properly understood the differences between the forms.

Finally, on to some things that are specific to “KGIU (Advanced)” and not the series as a whole!

(Okay, this isn’t really specific to the advanced edition, but this is almost certainly a non-issue for intermediate and beginner learners, so...) A lot of advanced grammar resources are written purely in Korean, whereas “KGIU (Advanced)” uses first Korean and then English for its grammar explanations and example sentences. Depending on how you look at it, this could be a good thing or a bad thing. If you are working on removing English totally from your studies, and think having the English translations right there might be too distracting, this might not be the book for you. However, if you aren’t quite yet comfortable reading grammar explanations in Korean but want to give it a shot and be able to check yourself, this is excellent. Depends on what you’re looking for!

Another thing to be aware of—and this really applies to all advanced Korean grammar study materials—is that you will often find yourself questioning the usefulness of grammar you encounter. Once you get up to that level, the remaining grammar left to learn is largely grammar that crops up in mostly literature or more formal settings like news and business presentations, etc. More than once I have asked a friend or coworker to help clarify a grammar point only to be met by “Why are you learning that?? I don’t think I’ve ever personally used that in my life!” Of course, they still know what it means, so while you might not find yourself using some of these grammar forms much, you still might encounter them and need to know what they mean. This isn’t really a good thing or a bad thing; just how it is!

Overall, I’m a big fan of the KGIU series, and I would wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone looking for a strong source for learning Korean grammar :)

As planned, I got started on more notes from Korean Grammar in Use today. I decided to do four today since that’s how many there were left in the particle section. I also wanted to give myself a day or two to go through some of the practice exercises and audio I skipped before (I’ve realized the error of my ways ^^;). I’ve also been thinking that I wanted to go back and look at the dialogues in My Korean another time (but more in depth this time around) so I think I’ll try to fit some of that in as well. The source of this seemingly large (and hopefully sustainable) amount of motivation is likely from having watched a bunch of videos on the channel Polyglot Progress on youtube (particularly their podcast) so if you’re in need of motivation or study tips or anything like that go check them out :) As for the rest of the studying I did today, it was pretty much just memrise I think.. and not much of that either ^^; Oh well, I tried :P

Yesterday I learned about Korean counters and let me tell you: I don’t think I’ll ever be able to remember them. Because in Korean you need to use different counters for counting different things. In both English and German, you just count people/animals/things like this: 1 person, 2 people, 3 people, 4 people, etc. (1 Person, 2 Personen, 3 Personen, 4 Personen, etc).

In Korean, the counter for people is “ 명 “. This goes for all words that are people. Like students, teachers, doctors, taxi drivers, etc. They all use the counter “ 명 “. For example, 2 people means 사람 두 명. Easy, right? Now let me tell you that there seems to be a different counter for literally everything.

Here’s the most commonly used counters:

Things – 개 

People – 명 

Animals – 마리 

Slices – 조각 

Books – 권 

Bottles – 병 

Clothing – 벌

Days – 일 

Months – 월 

Years – 년

But there’s probably like 3 times this many counters alltogether. But because Koreans themselves often can’t think of the correct counter for something rando at the top of their head, they just tend to use the counter “ 개 “ instead of less commonly counters as well. 

So if all fails and you just can’t think of the correct counter to use for a certain thing, then it’s perfectly fine to just use “ 개 “ as a counter.

Now, to use these counters, it goes like this: Noun + Number + Counter. It’s pretty easy actually. The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 20 change a bit for easier pronounciation.

1 = 하나 → 한

2 = 둘 → 두

3 = 셋 → 세

4 = 넷 → 네

20 = 스물 → 스무

Let’s, again, use the word 사람 (people) and the counter 명.

1 person = 사람 한 명

2 people = 사람 두 명

3 people = 사람 세 명

4 people = 사람 네 명

5 people = 사람 다섯 명

6 people = 사람 여섯 명

7 people = 사람 일곱 명

8 people = 사람 여덟 명

9 people = 사람 아홉 명

10 people = 사람 열 명

20 people = 사람 스무 명