How to improve my Korean speaking skills

Speaking Korean fluently is the ultimate goal of almost every Korean language learner. It is also one of the most difficult things for most learners. Improving your Korean speaking skills is especially challenging when you are not living in Korea. In this article I am listing 10 tips to help you improve your Korean speaking skills

Having some language partners who can converse with you in Korean is really important. Living in Korea for a few months or years is the best way to improve Korean speaking but it’s not possible for everyone. But in this age of the internet, it’s not very difficult to find some Korean friends online who would like to help you with your Korean. You can find language exchange partners in Facebook groups. If you are not able to find native Korean friends, Korean speaking people from any country should do as well. Maybe, having a long phone conversation in Korean every day is not feasible but even a random 5-minute chat over Facebook Messenger will help you improve your Korean speaking skills.

There are so many communities of Korean language learners on Facebook, Reddit and other places. Join some of them, share your knowledge, ask things and help other learners. Again, communicating in a forum chat or Facebook post thread is very similar to having an oral conversation and it will help you frame better sentences and respond in an effective way. You can also find language partners in these communities and practice Korean speaking with them.

Read at least 10-20 Korean sentences every day. They can be from your textbook, an online newspaper, a blog or a comic book or anything else. Always read them aloud and try to focus on your pronunciation and intonation. Reading Korean aloud not only makes your vocal cords adjust with Korean sounds but it also makes you feel comfortable speaking Korean words and sentences. You get more in sync with Korean sounds.

Most of us use social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram every day. Try to write something in Korean on these platforms every day. You can also create a blog (using free platforms like Blogger and WordPress) and write your thoughts or share your knowledge about Korea in the Korean language. In the beginning, you will feel too self-conscious putting your Korean writing in public but with time, you will start feeling confident. Writing and Speaking both involve language production or expressing yourself using your language skills. If your Korean writing skill improves, chances are that your speaking will also improve with it

Choose a random topic and try to speak about it for 2-3 minutes. Record yourself and listen to the recordings. Notice where your pronunciation was incorrect or where you were short of proper words or which grammar were difficult to use. This will help you understand your weak points better and also give you confidence that you can speak.  You can also record yourself when reading something in Korean.

Role-plays are one of the most common speaking activities used in Korean language classrooms. The problem is that you need a language partner to do a role play. But there is a way out. If we are ready to play the role of both the characters in a conversation, we can do the role plays alone.

Take one random role-play situation every day, create a conversation (you can write it beforehand or do it spontaneously) and do the role play.

Listening is an integral part of oral communication skills. If you can’t understand spoken Korean well, you won’t be able to hold a successful conversation, no matter how good you are at speaking. Listening to Korean radio channels is a really good way to improve your Korean listening, as well as speaking skills Listening to the radio, can be more effective than watching visual media like movies or drama because on the radio you focus only on sounds. There are no visual distractions and mostly the radio announcers speak in a very clear and soothing way.

Korean movies and dramas are definitely very helpful in improving your Korean speaking skills but here I would like to specially recommend Korean TV shows. TV shows have a kind of spontaneity and authenticity that the movies and dramas mostly lack. There are many Korean TV shows that involve child actors or foreigners. The language difficulty level of these shows is generally not very difficult and they are very interesting as well.

One of the biggest barriers in speaking Korean is the fear of making mistakes and being laughed at. You have to get rid of this fear. There are no language learners that don’t make mistakes. In fact the successful language learners make a lot of mistakes.

Many learners think they would start speaking after they learn and practice a bit more. May be from next week or from next month. The thing is that you will never feel confident enough. The key is to start speaking today today, actually now.

I have been learning Korean for 10 years; currently writing a PhD thesis in Korean; and I still feel my Korean is not good enough. I still sometimes make silly mistakes and my Korean friends have a good laugh. Those are actually the best moments of the language learning journey.

Don’t think, you will feel confident after memorising 1000 more words or learning 20 more grammar patterns. You won’t. Your Korean is good enough to start speaking now. People talk to you to communicate, to share thoughts and feelings, not to judge your grammar or vocabulary. So stop worrying about it. Don’t procrastinate. Start speaking Korean from today.