5 Steps: Your Korean study schedule

learning korean Sep 13, 2022

Step 1 - 20 minutes

The day that you have your lesson is critical! This is the ORGANISING step.

Set yourself up for success in the following steps!

Straight after class, before you even get up from your desk - organise and re-write your notes into your nice notebook. Don't worry about making it look pretty!

All it needs to be is:

Organised so you know where to find the information next time
In your own words
AND THERE!!

The information is still fresh in your mind, so this is the BEST time to digest all the information you've learnt.

You'll find that you understand so much more during this time. If you leave it till tomorrow, you will find that you've forgotten about half of it already!

Step 2 - 30 minutes

On the second day, you want to focus on UNDERSTANDING what you learnt the day before.

This means testing yourself! Try using new words with the sentence structure you've learnt! Mix and match with what you already know!

E.g. If you learnt how to say "On Wednesday I worked", replace 'Wednesday' with other DATES! Replace 'work' with other simple VERBS!

On Thursday I worked
Last week I worked
Last weekend I studied

The key here is not to make it too difficult for yourself! Don't worry about TEACHING YOURSELF new things - just focus on having a solid understanding about what you have learnt.

Step 3 - 30 minutes

The third day is focused on MEMORISING.

At the end of the day, the goal for most of you is to understanding and speak Korean… without your notes right?? To do that, you need to remember what you know!

Have a system in place to test and grow your memory.

This could be:

Word Association: Create a 3-5 word story about that word and WRITE IT down in your nice notebook
Flash Cards: Again, don't worry about colour-coding, laminating or any fancy stuff. You won't need these for long! Every time you learn a new word, create a flash card and after you get it right 3 times in a row - THROW IT AWAY!
Post-it Notes: Each post-it note should be written in either Hangeul-ONLY or English-ONLY. Stick them randomly around the house and translate it every time you walk past it! Same thing with flashcards, once you know it more than 3 times - throw it away!

Whichever system (you might have more than one!) you've got in place, Step 3 is about adding to this system and going through the other ones too!

Step 4 - 30 minutes

Steps 1 to 3 has made sure that you have the structure in place to set yourself up for success. Now it's about FOCUS and PERFECTING.

Drill down on the topics and areas that still need working on - do more examples, watch parts of the lesson recordings if you need to. This is the time to make sure you've not missed anything!

Step 5 - 10 minutes

This is THE SINGLE most important step in this whole process and yet only 1% of people will religiously do it. This step is about SOLIDIFYING.

The thing about our memory is that it's never as good as we think it is - we forget! And that's just a fact. Make it a habit to re-read through your entire nice notebook, at least once or twice a week!

This will take you about 10 minutes. Feel your confidence growing stronger and stronger by the week!