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... Show more

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... Show more

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... Show more

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... Show more

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!! ... Show more