KoreanClass101.com Blog

We’ve made a guide video that explains how to enjoy studying Korean with KoreanClass101.com! And here’s the youtube video! We hope you enjoy watching it, and also learn some now words and phrases from the bilingual lines!

Thank you!

Dear listeners,

We truly appreciate all of your continued support for our podcast and your active participation in the lesson comments, the blog comments, and the forum posts. Thank you so much! 정말 감사해요. 앞으로도 재미있고 유익한, 좋은 podcast를 만들어 갈 수 있도록 열심히 노력하겠습니다. While we continue to do our best on our end to make fun, enjoyable and useful lessons for you, we need your help in spreading the word!

If you think we’re doing a job, (we hope you do!) please let more people know about us by voting for us. You can see two small buttons at the bottom of the right-hand side menu on our site.

http://www.koreanclass101.com/index.php

If you have an iTunes account, please write in a simple review and provide feedback on what other people wrote.

Here’s the link to go to the iTunes review page! (Or click on the image above.)

And if you will, please also click on the little podcast alley button, and you can vote for us by writing in a few lines, which will put us at a higher ranking in the podcast list!

Direct link to Podcast Alley

Doing this can take up a few minutes of your time, but it’ll help us soooo much in making better and better podcasts and a lot more useful material!

Thanks very much, everyone! 감사합니다! We will keep doing our best!

We spent yesterday travelling to San Francisco to pick up a Korean boy who will be staying with us for the next four months. He is 11 years old (양력으로). To me this seems very young to be away from home for that length of time, especially to be staying with relative strangers. However, as I understand it, this practice is fairly common in Korea. While we are not doing a business, the “home stay” market is quite large.

We had two home stay children a couple of years ago with limited success. What I mean by that is that the parents sent their children here to America with the hope that their children’s English speaking ability would improve and thus increase their educational opportunities in the future. Most of these programs, as far as I can tell, deal with groups of kids in a very structured program. Thes kids do not get a signifcant amount of real life free-speaking of English. The two students that we had spoke only in Korean to each other and really took advantage of the Korean spoken in my home as well. So, I don’t think that they had as much success as they could have.

The exprience was good though, and it helped expose my children to the Korean language more. (This kind of learning is a two-way street after all.) The boy staying with us now seems to have some good English skills and a willingness to talk and fit into our family. Both of these qualities should ensure that he has a successful stay here (and that we don’t suffer with an uncooperative child…).

What do you think, is 11 too young to spend tht much time away from home? How would you feel about sending your (hypothetical) child away like that? And, do these programs really work or do they just make the parents feel that way? I think everyone should experience another culture directly, I just don’t know if someone that young can appreciate it.

Earlier this week we announced the launch of the Hanja Vocabulary feature in our PDF’s. Today, we are glad to announce the much anticipated release of a new premium features which is sure to take your speaking skills to new heights.

Pronunciation Practice
To address speaking practice, we have integrated a state-of-the-art software to allow you to record your own voice so you can compare your pronunciation to our teachers and continue to refine your speaking skills. This feature is available to all active Premium subscribers in the Line-By-Line Audio Transcript page for each lesson in the Learning Center (see screen shot below):

We hope you enjoy this new premium features and as always please let us know what you think.

Team KoreanClass101.com

When my wife and I first had children (child actually since you have to start somewhere) we decided to try to raise her by speaking Korean to her at home. This worked for a while, her first spoken words were in Korean (although I can’t remember exactly what they were -shame-). She probably said 마마, I’ll have to look this up in her baby book now…

Some of her first sentences were in Korean as well. I think that my parents were frustrated and amused at her bilingualness. Once her socialization expanded beyond our immediate family her Korean language use decreased to the point that after beginning school she hardly spoke it at all. Now, as a teenager, she is trying to regain her Korean ability.

With our younger two children we have tried to expose them to Korean in a more immersive manner. They spend about a month each year in Korea with their extended family where they learn such useful phrases as:

하지마, 먹어/안먹어, 안돼, 내거야, 만지지 마, 이리 와, 네, 야. Lots of useful phrases…

My oldest, 나래, says that her favorite phrase that she learned this past trip was “어이~, 내 사람아,” a well used phrase of my mother-in-law. Her current favorite phrase in English is “anywho,” which she picked up from watching “Palace (궁).” The phrase “좌우당간” (左右當間 I think) was translated as “anywho” and was a new one for me as well as my wife. I think this is an example of how language can  change.

My youngest daughter often calls me 어빠 instead of 아빠 but she is very proud of the Korean that she knows and tends to use it whenever possible. Because of our recent trip to Korea and the excellent work of Koreanclass101 we are speaking Korean much more at home now.

좌우당간, 새해 복 많이 받으세오!

This past summer we hosted the 여도초등학교 traditional Korean orchestra. The students ages ranged from 8 to 12 years (3rd through 7th grade). The 여도 elementary school is a private school funded by multiple chemical companies in the 여천공단. The orchestra came to the United States to promote the World Ocean Expo 2012 bid. (Congratulations to 여수시 for winning the bid!) For the two weeks that the students spent here we had two boys, two girls, and the school principle and his wife stay at our house. We arranged for the remaining 40 students to stay with various families in the area. Finding host families was not easy in this small community but everyone that hosted these children had a very memorable if not experience.

The children had a total of seven performances while they were here, two at the local high school, two at a theater that we rented, one at a Koean church, and one for the Korean press club in the San Francisco Bay Area. They also perfomed live for a television station morning show. This performance required that they be at the station at 5:30am so the evening prior we had fourteen children stay at our house!

Everyone liked staying at our house. I think that the children that stayed here had the easiest time adapting to American life, probably because we had things that were familiar to them like 김치, 김, 밥, and spoken 한국어. We had the youngest orchestra member stay with us for those reasons and she had no problems at all. Many of the host families were amazed that such young children were travelling away from home for three weeks (they toured for a week before returning to Korea).

There were a few awkward moments with American life for these children. One girl had a very difficult time with one family’s cat. It took her a few days to get used to the idea of a giant (25 pound) cat in the house. She actually spent one night at our house (we don’t have any indoor pets at the moment) and then she was fine. Most of the children were uncomfortable with the idea of indoor pets but by the time they left they were very comfortable with dogs and cats. Another family noticed water all over the floor of the bathroom after the Korean children showered; American bathrooms don’t have drains in the floors of the bathroom as a rule. Despite some communication difficulties everyone got along very well. Several of the families are considering sending their children to Korean for a couple of weeks this coming summer as a kind of sister school exchange. We shall see how this works out.

The performances here were excellent. Some video and pictures can be found here. For a link to lots of photos click the “우리들의 앨범” link on the left. Unfortunately, when someone in America hears the words “elementary school band” they don’t think of well trained performers, skilled in their respective instruments as well as stage presence. Consequently, the performances were not as well attended as they should have been (sold out would have been nice…). Those that attended were treated to an hour and a half long performance of traditional and modern arrangements. Everyone left very impressed and no one missed ”Hot Cross Buns” (our local middle school band favorite heard at every recital).

The instruments featured in the orchestra included the 가야금, 대금, 소금, 거문고, 해금, 태평소, 피리, 아쟁, 모둠북, 사물놀이, 등등. I will try to post some detailed information/pictures of these instruments in the forums. While many of the instruments were foreign to the audience, it was very fulfilling to be a part of this cultural exchange.

Merry Christmas everyone!

One of our listeners, Auntie, requested Hanja in the PDF’s. We had a forum post, we had discussions going back and forth, and gathered feedback. And now we here at Team KoreanClass101.com are in the process of adding this function to our PDF’s! Another great leaning tool for Korean education from KoreanClass101.com! This will be an indispensable aid to learn Korean and build up their vocabulary! This will build up your vocabulary exponentially! So thank you Auntie 씨 for bringing up this topic, and for generating some buzz about Hanja!

This feature should be available after the New Year. We will send out a news feed to describing the way this feature is used, and the way it is intended for use.

여러분.. let’s get excited about Hanja!!

“Aiin’t nothin’ but a Hanja Party!!”

Awwww yeah!

We are pleased to announce that a “remember me” function is newly available. When you login to KoreanClass101.com you will now have the option to check a “Remember me?” box. If you do, you won’t have to login again from that same computer for up to 7 days!

To turn on the remember me functionality, simply click the checkbox next to the Login and Password fields. Then when you are finished interacting with the site - just close the browser window - do not logout (logging out erases the remember me ability).

If you accidentally clicked the remember me option, don’t worry - just be sure to fully logout of the site before leaving. The next time you visit the site, you will be asked to login again.

If you encounter any issues with this new functionality or wish to see it enhanced in some way, please post a comment or shoot us an email. Thanks!

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that’s associated with your email and follows you from blog to blog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar-enabled blogs. The comment section of the KoreanClass101.com are now gravatar-enabled.

If you don’t have a gravatar, you can easily get one for free at Gravatar.com. Just be sure to use the same email address that you use to post comments on the KoreanClass101.com blog. Please note that it might take a few minutes for your shiny new gravatar to show up on our comment system.

We’re all shy when it comes to learning a new foreign language, but how much or how quickly your 한국어 can improve really depends on how often you say it all out LOUD. It would be ideal if you have people around you with whom you can practice everything you’ve learned from the lessons updated at KoreanClass101.com, but even if you don’t, what is Youtube for?

You can watch the videos that your fellow listeners of KClass have made, and share your own videos! Want to watch what others have to say in their videos? Want to listen to other listeners introducing themselves in Korean? In the mood for making a video intro of your own? Check out the KClass Group on Youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/groups_videos?name=kclass

We’ve got 9 cool videos up so far, and if you already have something made, you can easily add your own videos to the group!