I just finished my major paper. . . I’m extremely exhausted as well… but give me a day and a drama marathon and I’ll be right as rain.!
Looking forward to doing this challenge with you!!
I’ll send over a screen shot of my spreadsheet since the gifs are working again.
I just came back from a funeral. It was really sad. I cried buckets. My head’s hurting, and i was thinking of taking a nap, but catching up some dramas might be good medicine, too. 
Thanks for the idea.
Update #1: One week has passed. I’m quite pleased with my progress thus far. I can almost read, and my speaking partner says that my voice sounds Korean and I have better pronunciation than other English-speaking learners of Korean that she’s been exposed to. I’m so glad to have a great start. I won’t start the vocabulary challenge until I can actually read and do so well enough to touch-type. I think I’ll get more out of it that way. That said, I’m focusing on basic grammar for now, plus listening to the radio in Korean as often as I can. I can’t wait till I start on the vocabulary and start recognizing things said in the dramas I watch and the songs on the radio :-D. Yippeee!!!
I was just getting ready to type in this question when your post came up.
What Korean radio station are you listening to?
Does anyone else have any korean radio stations they are listening to?
Where did you find your language partner?
I thought I messaged you places to check for a language partner. If I didn’t I’m sorry, but I definitely had planned on it. Of course, a live partner is best. A way to do that is hang out around a Korean restaurant or food store. That’s the most common way I found described online. Another thing you can do is go to mylanguageexchange.com and find Koreans who’ve just come to America. Use the search feature. I’ve filled it out on my home page and attached a screenshot to show you.
BBN is the station I listen to. It plays instrumentals a little too often, but it’s fine for right now.
If you click on the “advanced search” link, it will open to the following page:
If you have a free account, you can search for profiles with the word “gold” in the description, because although most will be saying that they don’t have a paid account with phrases like “NOT a gold member,” there will be several with paid accounts. Just follow the directions on how to make contact. You can look for exactly who you want, even searching only within your city. It’s a great resource. I’m sure you can find someone this way!!
I found what I was looking for–a free online touch typing teaching tool. http://hangeultypeattack.com/
Once I’ve got the basics down, I can try http://kids.daum.net/study/do/studyflash/view?id=7 or http://10fastfingers.com/typing-test/korean or http://play.typeracer.com/?universe=lang_ko. Especially that last one–it’s for pros.
you guys should try seemile.com as well. It’s how I know (more or less) how to read Hangul and maybe write it - spelling mistakes will happen. Because of school I had to put aside studying it, but now that’s done with I have time and really want to start again. So that’s my starting point. Good for any beginner I’m sure ^^
Cool. Will have to check it out. Studying has put me on hold for a while with Korean. I won’t do it unless I can do it well, and unfortunately, those studies are taking massive amounts of time and energy that leave nothing much for extracurriculars like language self-study. 
Good thing about the site (you have to click on the go back to old site link) that it’s with youtube videos which all in all aren’t that long with short lessons in it - which make it a whole lot easier.
Hi Everyone!!
Is anyone interested in starting another language challenge? It wouldn’t need to be Korean, but any language you want to learn. We could all touch base weekly, share struggles and triumphs, and hold one another accountable.
I did pretty well when @Alienluvah suggested this a few months ago, and actually made some real strides in Korean.
Up for it?
Can I ask how you tried to learn/improve your Korean in those months?
I think that it’d be a good motivation to have a language challenge if several people do it… What do you mean exactly by a challenge? Improving language skills (a lot?) in 6 months?
@Hesto I’m interested, I’m about to lose motivation again. Today I was planning to start reviewing TTMIK level 1 and 2 before moving on to level 3 and do some planting on memrise. Should have don that earlier.
But I think I can skip a few things in level 1 and 2 because I have been studying with my Hello Korean 1 book. I plan to ask Hello Korean 2 and 3 for Christmas so before that I want to complete book 1 if possible so I can use book 2 right away if santa is so kind 
Sure!
I wasn’t quite sure how or what I should do so the first month was exploring how I learn best…
Basically for 3 months I promised to study 5 times a week for one hour a day. I wanted to improve reading/speaking and listening.
I used Memrise.com in order to get more vocab.
I used italki.com to find a tutor and to try and make friends who speak Korean.
and I used Lang8.com to practice writing . (I wasn’t as good about keeping up a diary)
I did really well in vocab and I learned the 1000 most common Korean words.
I finished up a couple of Korean workbooks I had laying around and gained some grammar.
And I practiced speaking with someone over skype once a week. (This was the hardest for me because my pronunciation is rather bad and I’m really shy in real life.)
Personally I feel like I moved up a level in Korean. So I want to do it again 
but it’s so much harder alone.
By Challenge… I just mean challenge yourself- What is your language goal? Do you want to have a 15 minute conversation with a native? Pass a placement test? Subtitle a movie? The only rule is that the goal needs to measurable (Otherwise how do you know when you are there).
I was actually checking out italki earlier this week and I was confused, is that service free or not? It looked as if you had to pay per ‘lesson’. Also last week a ‘tutor’ contacted me through the language exchange mentioned above offering me his service for a small fee but I have no idea what is fair, what I should expect and everything. Not that I can afford it yet but when I can I want to give this a try because I noticed during a beginners class lesson at a convention I went to that that’s more my thing. But that school is only in Amsterdam and has lessons on saturday morning. Not an option for me because only to get there I need to travel 2+ hours.
Next to that ‘tutor’ I found some nice Korean people to do language exchange with but then again where to start? I mean I don’t really know enough yet to have a good conversation, yesterday I tried to write a message to someone in Korean, I knew all the words but I had no idea how to put it all in good sentences. Where did you start with your tutor or language exchange person?
italki has two options you can pay for tutors and then you can also just look for people who want to do a 50/50 language exchange and then you can chat over skype or message back and forth.
The first thing I would do is create an introduction. Your name, your age, your year in school or an occupation and any hobbies you have. ( I can help you if you’re unsure of any of the words.) and then of course goodbye.
Start small. Your first conversation in Korean might only be a minute and a half. If they ask a question you don’t know ask them to type it for you. Then you can find out how to answer that question and get back to them (maybe in a different session).
Also when I chatted with people I kept a google translate up in a small window so that if I need help with a word I could look it up quickly.
Wow you learnt those 1000 words? 
I looked at them a few months ago and although I knew quite a lot of them already, I don’t think I can study them quickly or something… (like the person who started this discussion: all in 1 month would be kind of impossible for me, I think :/)
Ah, now I understand what you mean by challenge, thank you Did you really have a (measurable) goal in mind when you did this a few months ago or did you just want to improve reading/speaking/listening by studying 5 times a week, 1 hour a day?
I didn’t do real talking yet with anyone, just emailing, but hopefully I will find a native who wants to do so with me. I also sometimes have the problem that some just simply stop emailing, no idea why. Maybe because I tend to respond within 24 hours and they think I expect the same of them which I don’t.
I can introduce myself in Korean with hobbies, country, job. That was covered in the very first lesson of Hello Korean 1.
I mostly use 2 translators… Daum and Google Translate because on daum I havent figured out yet how I can let it pronounce Korean words. Maybe I click the wrong buttons…
Let’s think of what my goal will be for this challenge and how I plan to reach it.