I Started Learning Korean (Again)

Last month, my friend Jasmine decided to sign up for Duolingo because we had discussed going on a girls’ trip to South Korea in a few years for everyone’s 30th. So she thought she’d better get a head start on learning some Korean for the trip lol. So naturally because she had posted about doing Duolingo, I thought it might be fun to pick up again.

A few years ago, I was using Duolingo to try to learn Korean and I had posted about it here. My plan was to work through the Duolingo courses and then go on to do some more independent learning through a textbook I had picked up. Needless to say I fell off learning with Duolingo lol.

To be fair, I lasted about a year and 3 months, I think my streak got to about 430 something before I stopped. Once you get busy and lose your streak it’s hard to keep up motivation for Duolingo. So I laid it to rest, plus, at the end of the day, I do not think that’s the way I was going to learn Korean.

But fast forward to now and I thought I might as well pick it up again because it’s more fun with friends. Because why not have your friends pinging you to do your Duolingo every day on top of a psycho killer owl?

It was daunting coming back to learning a language when you haven’t done it in a few years. I decided I would start doing lessons from the beginning but without restarting the course. That way if I felt confident I could just continue from where I left off and not have to do every single lesson again.

What I was surprised to find was that I did actually remember quite a lot of Korean despite not looking at the app or engaging in learning the language for so long. I guess all those lessons meant I did retain something – though if anything it’s more about helping me read Korean than speak it. Sure I can repeat phrases and fill in blanks in sentences, but if I wasn’t prompted by the app I wouldn’t be able to form any sentences myself. Which is not helpful if you want to learn a language.

Also I discovered, not surprisingly, but the free version of Duolingo sucks. Back when I was doing it before, my fiance and I splurged on Super Duolingo Family because we were both going to learn something. So I did not experience how annoying it is to have ads between each lesson and only being allowed to make five mistakes was. It’s very limiting and really putting me off to be honest. I only manage a couple of lessons before I have to stop because of the adverts.

I suppose the simple solution would be to just pay for Super again but I don’t think it’s worth the price. Besides, I am not sure how long I am going to continue using the app and I’d rather save my money for my actual trip to Korea.

The other thing that has thrown me off in the app is that last week, Duolingo did a complete overhaul of the Korean course and it is completely different than what it was before. I’m talking the modules aren’t even the same. So when they did this, I decided I might as well start the course from the beginning because it’s too confusing to keep going from where I was.

Now I would argue the structure the course is in now, is probably more helpful for if you are learning Korean to go to Korea. The first modules are about ordering food. But at the same time, if you don’t know any Korean or the structure of the alphabet/how to read it etc. this is very hard to jump into. Even for me, it’s a little bit different because the words they are using for “or” and “and” are not the same ones I learnt in the old course. And I know that words can change based on who you are speaking to with formalities and such but the app does not cover any of this.

So yeah, long story short, I think I am going to be giving up on Duolingo lol. I mean it’s fine if you already know some of the language and can learn new words and phrases for it but it’s not very good for learning the basics and actually understanding.

I think I only did well with Duolingo in the beginning because when I was at uni I did two base Korean language courses. So I knew how the alphabet worked and had learnt how to read it etc. It definitely helped me a lot vs my fiance who tried Korean for 5 minutes and had no idea what was going on.

But with the way it’s going I just don’t know if it’s worth keeping up. I mean I am learning things I just don’t think it’s enough. The only way I am going to learn anything properly is probably doing more independent learning and using other resources. Which makes sense, apps can only teach you so much.

I think Duolingo can probably teach other languages well, I just don’t think Korean is one of them.

So yeah, that’s where we are lol. I think I will dig up my Korean textbook to do some refreshers and see where we go from there. If anyone has any advice or resources for language learning let me know!