Learning Korean via online courses and lessons

Korean is spoken by the Korean people of both South Korea and North Korea. It is spoken by Koreans settled in other countries including the People’s Republic of China, the United States, Japan, and Russia, as well.

Currently, Korean is the fourth most popular foreign language in China, following English, Japanese, and Russian.

It is an East Asian language, and its homeland is somewhere in Manchuria. It is spoken by about 77 million people. 

Korean is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardised official forms used in each country. It is a recognised minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin Province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia and Central Asia.

Historical and modern linguists classify Korean as an Altaic language or a language isolate. This means that Korean language does not have any close relative. It, however, does have a few extinct relatives, which together with Korean itself and the Jeju language (spoken in the Jeju Province and considered somewhat distinct), form the Koreanic language family.

If you plan to learn Korean, and wish to rely on self-study or self- learning alone, there are some resources that can help you. These are:

• Korean dictionary (another language to Korean for beginners, and Korean to Korean for above basics levels)
• Books for learning Korean
• Korean story books, novels, poetry
• Korean newspapers, magazines, journals
• Korean news channels
• Shows and movies in Korean with subtitles, etc.

The self-study mode, however, helps one to only a certain extent. In self -learning, one has to depend on one’s own perspective about various concepts in the Korean language. A learner’s perspective might not necessarily give correct ideas of the concepts.

As against this, if a learner follows a Korean language expert who can give a correct account of all the concepts in Korean such as the Korean alphabet, Korean grammar, vocabulary, expressions, phrases, proverbs and idioms, etc., the learner benefits more.

To take lessons in Korean from an expert, one can access to:

• Korean learning physical classroom training arranged by language training institutes
• Blogs and podcasts based on Korean language lessons, uploaded on the internet by experts
• Online language learning apps
• Korean learning Online courses

Of these above-mentioned resources, offline training is a mode, effective, but more expensive and time-consuming. How?

One needs to commute to a venue where the training has been arranged. It incurs an additional cost for the individual who is already paying for the course. Moreover, the time that is spent in commuting for taking the lessons can be utilised for a better purpose or in a more productive manner.

A better substitute for this is taking lessons in Korean, online. One way to do this is via blogs and podcasts.  One can read blogs or subscribe to podcasts by experts, as lessons are imparted here in smaller bits. One can access these resources at any time of one’s convenience. There is one disadvantage, but. One cannot ask questions, and get the doubts cleared from the experts.

The third option that we saw here is online Korean learning apps. Here, learning Korean is made interesting for users byways of daily online quizzes with scores, new lessons taught each day in small chunks, a robotic app assistant helping learners to use the app easily, etc.

The same disadvantage, but, lies here, too. One cannot talk to experts, ask queries, and get the questions answered for more refined learning.

To get the best out of a source of learning, one must get opportunities to speak to the instructor. Even though this takes place even in offline training, it does not happen without one having to waste one’s valuable time and hard-earned money travelling for taking lessons.

Taking all the factors into account, it can be concluded, thus, that an online Korean learning course is the best option or mode to take lessons in the language. 

Here, classes are conducted online via audio-visual learning sessions. A student and an instructor can communicate with each other in real-time, that is right during the sessions. A student can learn, revise orally, practise the lessons taught, all in live classes. At the same time, an instructor can ask questions, take an oral test of the student, clear the student’s doubts when the classes are going on. Such online Korean courses are facilitated by edtech platforms which are an innovative or advanced version of language training institutes.

 

Some excellent online courses offered in Korean language are over the following platforms.

You may simply click on the links below to check for the features of these online courses in Korean, and choose the one that suits your requirement the best:

 

• https://classes.multibhashi.com/courses/live-korean-classes-online
• https://www.udemy.com/courses/search/?q=korean+language&src=sac&kw=korean
• https://www.urbanpro.com/korean-language
• https://www.duolingo.com/course/ko/en/Learn-Korean
• https://www.fluentin3months.com/free-online-korean-language-lessons/

So, don’t waste your time in self-learning alone; enhance your overall learning experience by complementing self-learning with an excellent online course for Korean learning!