1 year review

I’m really grateful to the members of the refold community who continue to share their experiences and I hope I can pass on the favour by sharing my notes from the past year.

Language background

I’m one of those people who paid money to get a degree in a language (good old nihongo) and was pretty embarrassed at the end with my language level. I had the impression that if I couldn’t engage with natives or native media in my TL easily after four years then it was my fault for being a lackluster student. After some distance I looked back on my experience and realised everything I had acquired was from exposure to the lang in context and eventually that turned me onto immersion.

Daily routine

I’ve got a mon-fri job, live alone and have no big commitments on my time which are positive but I also suffer from depression and fatigue so I have to use my energy wisely. The key to consistency for me is associating Korean only with fun and escapism.

Anki takes 5-10 mins each day. I try to spend at least 2 hours a day actively immersing, using ~30min intensive/~90min freeflow as a guide but I’m super flexible. Passive listening isn’t a part of my routine.

I got the Tuttle Elementary Korean and Continuing Korean textbooks second hand and read through a grammar chapter every week or so. I was extremely casual and lax about grammar after the first month. When I finished reading those two textbooks I started them again from the beginning. These books are good for immersion learners because they focus on approachable grammar explanations (the exercises are basically an afterthought at the end).

Knowing Japanese helped as there are a lot of familiar concepts, if I hadn’t had that base I might have incorporated grammar reading more regularly into my routine.

Breaks are magic. If I'm exhausted i don’t force myself, I don’t want to associate immersion with an obligation or chore. If I’m really not feeling it then I stop and nap or give my brain whatever dopamine hit it’s craving instead. If I can't immerse because of ~life then that’s how it be.

Taking time off is definitely part of the process, our brains need breaks sometimes to learn better in the long run. I’m always enthusiastic to get back into it after a break which is motivating and the powerup you get when you come back and new things have clicked into place is 👄👌

I’ll run over what kinds of resources I used and give some markers of how things progressed for me.

Watching (~90min a day)

From day one I started with native TV shows/web dramas/movies/vlives aimed at adults with TL subs (comp input channels and kids shows are not my bag).

I watched mostly fun supernatural dramas to start with that I enjoyed despite understanding nothing. I would do a lot of lookups in the first few months (as much as i had the energy for) to try and work out what was going on but after 10 minutes it gets exhausting so mostly I just watched and enjoyed and looked up words that repeated a lot/seemed important/i thought I had guessed/sounded cool to me. I had fun narrating my own version of the plot to myself when I couldn’t understand anything.

For the first 10 months or so I was often in the middle of 3-4 shows at any given time, I'd switch between them to avoid getting bored while comprehension was virtually zero. I would sometimes mix in shows that didn’t have subs just because I liked them and wanted to watch them. My content mix on a given month often ended up being (1) simple but not super interesting show with subs that I could do lookups/sentence mine from, (1) much harder but more interesting show with subs and (1) show without subs that I just enjoyed.

I liked the non-subbed freeflow because it was low-intensity and I enjoyed the flashes of brief understanding in the forest of ambiguity without having to grind through the subs.

At ~1 month I had zero comprehension, I was freeflowing with subs but I couldn't read fluidly enough to follow the text properly and audio was just a wall of noise. I took a lot of breaks and often watched episodes in 15 minute chunks to keep it manageable because otherwise my attention span shorted out.

The first word I acquired was 하지마! Because I watched one (1) BTS video without subs and Yoongi said it about 198475 times 😹

A collection of other random words I acquired in the first months: necklace, ghost, earrings, today, cute and it’s okay. (I liked words beginning with the k sound apparently!)

At ~4 months I could sometimes glean the topic of conversation and was able to understand very simple sentences (e.g. “where are you going?”) when watching freeflow with subs. When watching intensively I was looking up tons of words but I felt like it was getting easier to pick and choose which words were important to look up instead of a complete ambiguity soup. Without subs i could hear the shape of words I guess but I couldn’t make anything out.

^This was actually the point where I felt the most drained by immersion. Starting to fuzzily understand things here and there ironically made me frustrated that I couldn’t understand more. I powered through and that feeling faded away after a couple weeks.

At ~9 months I started rewatching the dramas I had first started immersing with. Watching freeflow with subs I could follow the gist of the plot although details were hit and miss. I often got lost in long sentences.

Around this time is when I started noticing that I'm not needing to focus as intensely on the subs any more. My brain has freed up enough bandwidth to start letting the sound filter in as well and I start to hear the words as I read the subs but it’s very patchy. Before this point my brain was so laser-focused on reading the subs that I was never really hearing the words.

Without subs I still wouldn’t be able to follow anything but if I turn the subs on I can at least get the gist.

At ~11 months my content had narrowed down significantly because I was understanding much more and so things were holding my interest for longer stretches of time. Watching unsubbed vlives (because I'm too impatient to wait for subs) is like listening to a radio that fades in and out of signal from crystal clear to incomprehensible. Watching content from idols I like and regularly follow is much easier than random people. Part of it is knowing their idiolect and the context of their life, but I think the fact that I feel like their target audience plays a role, there’s less mental barrier between me and the language because I'm so engaged.

At ~12 months I'm switching between fresh new content and re-watching old content that I enjoyed. There is a noticeable comprehension drop when I go from a re-watch to a new show. It can feel frustrating for a minute but it’s also nice to think that in another 6 months or whatever I'll get to rewatch this as well and notice how much I learned since then.

I was probably 80% subbed / 20% unsubbed over the year

Refold comp level: 3?

Reading (~30 min a day)

First off, I love reading! I started off by working through all the physical graded readers I could get my hands on. Native TV shows were totally incomprehensible for months so the graded readers were my comp input. At the start I knew nothing and it took me ~30 mins to work through a single paragraph intensively. Months 1-6 I sat with a physical book, looking words up and writing notes on the page as I went.

If I did it again I would go through them in this order:

Olly Richard’s Korean Stories for Language Learners > Tuttle Korean Stories > Lingomastery Beginners > Lingomastery intermediate

At ~2 weeks I looked at the first page of the Olly Richards reader and didn’t understand anything so I put it away again.

At ~2 months I was pleasantly surprised that I could read through the first story in Olly’s book with a lot of comprehension and guess a fair few unknown words from the context. This was super motivating because I didn’t expect to be able to, especially considering how little I was understanding native media at the time. I couldn’t read webtoons at all for example.

At ~8 months I tried out webtoons again (a webtoon of a simple SOL drama I had just finished) and found I could read it freeflow and not be totally lost. I don’t think webtoons will ever be a big thing for me but I was excited to finally be able to enjoy them and because lookups are a hassle I found them a nice relaxing freeflow activity before-bed.

At ~9 months I finished working through all the physical graded reader books I had and felt quite comfortable. Freeflow I could follow the basic story minus some details and intensively I felt I could understand almost everything outside of some fuzzy grammar or phrasing in the lingomastery books.

At ~10 months in I had moved onto reading online. I got Migaku and started reading fanfic (ao3 > filtered by language and ordered by hits > opened anything in a fandom i was vaguely familiar with).

The first fanfic I read was a translation of an English language fic so I was able to understand the story first. I was quite apprehensive about the jump from graded reader to native material, reading a translation first helped me bridge that gap.

I also wanted to read non-fiction but searching for native articles myself was impossible so I changed my phone browser lang to korean and let it auto-suggest articles to me. I really wasn’t picky about what I read.

~12 months I read a lot of short general interest articles that are perfect to read in one 30 min sitting. Using a hover dictionary like Migaku is essential to remove friction from the process since I have to do lookups on almost every sentence. If I don’t understand based on the lookups I use Mirinae to parse out the grammar nuances. If it still feels unclear I just move on because it’s clearly above my level at this stage.

Reading fanfic is a big part of my routine at this stage as well because I read a lot of it anyways so I enjoy it and I’m familiar with the rhythm of the storytelling. I read intensively in the evenings when I have the most free time and then re-read the stories later on during my train commute. It’s still hard to freeflow read at this stage with my vocab being low but I've found this is an enjoyable method for me to get more freeflow in. When I'm reading on the train on my phone I'm not tempted to stop and look up words, and I already know the story so my brain is free to notice the language more. The short length of fic is also gold at this stage. My pace is slow as hell but they are short enough that I get a resolution within a few reading sessions and I get to experience more variety than sitting with a long novel for weeks.

Refold comp level: 3?

Pure Listening

Months 1-10 I very rarely did any pure listening. A few times I would listen to the first chapter of the audio book for Wizard Bakery just to see what my comp was like but even once I could understand some words and phrases it hadn’t coalesced into meaningful sentences.

~11 months in I started listening to TTMIK’s Iyagi podcast, 타요니의 한국어 팟캐스트 and 희야 한국어. I can follow the general gist of the conversations but there’s loads that goes over my head. Mostly because I don’t know the vocab, although I usually listen twice in a row and I always catch more the second time around.

Refold comp level: 2/3?

Output

I didn’t do any 🎉

Lol I mean technically I didn’t but I've definitely been feeling the urge lately. When I realise I don’t know the word for something simple I sometimes find myself instinctively trying to use Korean to paraphrase or describe it in my head. The grammar I come up with isn’t always right but it’s generally close. (maybe?)

Sometimes when reviewing grammar sentences spontaneously come to mind like “oh like you would use when you say ~~example sentence my brain pulls out of the abyss~~~”.

I’ve noticed with these spontaneous thoughts I can hear exactly how the Korean would sound in my head but find it hard to type the sentence out when I'm trying to check it in papago or whatever. Which maybe suggests that I’m trying to produce what I’ve heard more than what I’ve read? Or maybe that’s not the case at all but it’s interesting to me regardless 😂

The role of SRS, my study planner and monthly reflection journal

Anki has played a very limited role for me thus far. I started with a pre-made 500 word vocab deck at 10 new words/day. Once I finished it I started sentence mining but dropped my new cards to 5/day. I don’t always add enough cards to meet this. It’s a nice chance to increase my exposure but I didn’t feel a huge benefit from it up till now. The majority of words I've learned so far have been via natural repetition in my immersion as they have been such basic, high-frequency type words anyways.

My previous exposure to Japanese and Chinese helped for sure as there is a lot of familiar vocab or phrasing. If I hadn’t had that background I would probably have done another pre-made deck after the first. (refold 1K deck wasn’t out when i started)

Drops I used Drops for 3-4 months. I found it a nice game to play when I was commuting but didn’t want to do more anki. It also let me explore some vocab topics I was interested in but hadn’t come across in immersion yet. I learned a few words from it and probably set some memory foundations but overall I don’t remember most of the words because I wasn’t coming across them enough in real life. S

Study Planner - I made myself a planner which is laid out in sections:

Theme for the month / media or topics i want to explore / any goals

Some things I put down were: reading month (I mostly only read (as much as I could) to see if it would improve my reading comfort level - it did it was great), girl group month (i watched loads of kpop girl group content because i realised i wasn’t hearing many female voices in my usual immersion - found some fun new content), i tried out things like focusing on adding passive listening (not into it), webdramas (didn’t find them more comprehensible than regular dramas) and a grammar review focused month among others.

List of content that I immerse in

just the name of show

Quick checklist

If I jot down a little list of what I want to do in a day I am much more likely to do it, which is where this study planner idea came from.

This ended up being a super simple log that is not stats focused. It gives me a place to write my to-do list and look back on if I want. I briefly note whether it’s Intensive/Freeflow, what kind of media and how many minutes/hours I ended up doing.

I don’t add formulas to automate the total time recorded etc because I want to avoid getting into the trap of doing things to see the numbers go up.

💗Journal - This was one of my favourite things all year! I reflected on my experience each month (which I used to create this 1 year review), one page per month, laid out as follows:

Overall observations/thoughts/struggles
List of content - coded with a little heart if I really enjoyed it and a strikethrough if it was terrible so I can go back to the good things again later.
Description of my current immersion and comprehension levels, what feels easy/tough and how much I understand.
Listening check where I sometimes listen to pure audio and see what I understand (if anything 😂)
A little joy - just something small that made me happy from my immersion

I don't know how long I'll keep the journal up for but I've found it really rewarding as a way to engage more with my learning and track the experience. I loved reading it back as I wrote this review.

Hanja

I kept a rough list of hanja that I spotted in the first year out of curiosity. Usually either shorthand in a headline or clarification in articles where the word might be ambiguous (but as a learner you’d be looking the phrase up anyways).

Hanja spotted in tv/books/apps: 美 beautiful, 完 complete, 死 death, 無 nothing/free, 新 new, 美味 delicious, 韓中 sino-korean, 男 male, 神 god, 月 month/moon, 生 life, 下 below, 上 above

Newspaper headlines: 美 america, 英 UK, 韓 Korea, 秋 Autumn, 文 culture/literature, 歴史 history, 母 mother

I don’t read a lot of “serious news” so I don’t see hanja often. When I do I often understand thanks to Japanese which I’m grateful for but based on how little I come across them I don’t think they would have been too overwhelming to approach like regular vocab had I come into this with zero prior knowledge.

Thoughts on immersion

Progress is unpredictable as hell. If I look back in my journal in month 8 I couldn't follow any raw audio, when reading subs my brain filtered out all of the audio to concentrate on the text. Then two months later I was suddenly starting to parse big chunks of spoken language out of the blue and was able to follow whole parts of livestreams without subs.
Be curious and try stuff out, you never know what you’ll get into. I started watching so many things ironically then ended up genuinely enjoying them.
Unlike trad classroom learning there’s no expectation placed on you to have learned anything other than what your brain is acquiring for itself each day. I think this facilitates a good relationship with the language in your mind because you’re focused on what you do know instead of what you don’t.
You gotta forget a lot in order to remember. I’m often coming across a word over and over again and looking it up every time. Sometimes I don’t remember it at all, sometimes it’s familiar but I can’t place it, sometimes I know it but I feel like I wouldn’t recognise it outside of the context of the sentence, other times I know but I just wanna be super sure I know it so I look it up anyway. The process isn’t linear either, it’s all jumbled up, but eventually I don't have to look it up any more.
I make immersion the best part of my day. I find a cosy spot, grab a blanket, light incense, play music, make my favourite drink or snack. It feels like an indulgence rather than an obligation.
I need so much more exposure. Even when I'm understanding I’m generally not parsing the language automatically like I do with English at this stage. Usually I comprehend chunks and my brain paints an overall picture with gaps for all the bits I missed. I need hundreds of hours more exposure to the words to hear & comprehend them automatically. The words and grammar I know are still kind of soft and mushy and I rely a lot on context to be sure I'm understanding correctly.

Results

So over the course of the year I’ve enjoyed something like 30 tv shows, read some good and some bad fanfic, watched an embarrassing number of vlives, read the most random assortment of internet articles, played a cute cat game, started listening to some podcasts, tried out webtoons, found a cool poetry zine and discovered toooons of new music. I also learned and forgot hundreds of words, opened and then was too intimidated to read a full length book multiple times and didn’t speak a single word of korean. 휴

My total immersion hours are under 500:

I definitely did as much as I could do without it being a burden or strain and I dropped my immersion time without stopping completely when I needed to deal with life stuff or the world in general got overwhelming. I’m really pleased with how far this has taken me in terms of being able to enjoy content and my comp has built to a point where I can feel my immersion naturally starting to ramp up.

Lol look at my tiny vocab stats:

~2500 words known on Migaku

~1100 anki cards

A couple online tests:

TOPIK I mock test

Month 6 - Reading 69%

Month 9 - Reading 85%

Month 11 - Reading 95% Listening 94%

This roughly equates to CEFR A2 I think? (I doubt I'll ever sit the topik for real, but it’s fun to see number go high)

King Sejong Institute Test - Beginners

Month 9 - 75%ish

Month 12 90%ish

This one was interesting to see the relationship between the skills. Unsurprisingly grammar is slightly weaker than vocab & comprehension.

Future plans

I'm not sure I have a goal beyond explore Korean and have a good time doing it to be honest.

I am keen to get into reading YA novels but I think I'll keep building my vocab up with fanfic & articles which are more bite-sized for the time being. Now that I’m starting to follow things freeflow I can feel the momentum building and I’m excited for getting into more content. There’s so much stuff I haven't tried: I've never listened to a web drama or an audiobook, I've barely scratched the surface of kr youtube, I've only watched a couple movies and I haven't gotten to read any books yet.

Next month I’m joining a class to try out speaking and meet some other local learners. I think focusing on production will help solidify some simple grammar that is still a little mushy for me because I'm so used to relying on context and accepting ambiguity. I enjoy speaking when it’s low-stakes but I really hate being forced to produce language that I haven’t acquired yet so it might be too early for it to be comfortable. I guess I'll give it a go and see!