KoreanClass101.com Blog

Full Immersion. We're talking 99% Korean input here and that's 100% scary. It's no joke - Americans are among the few countries that typically prefer an assisted-approach to language learning. Meaning we generally like to use L1 (our first language - English) to help explicitly learn L2 (the target language - in KC101's case - Korean). Most people who support this teaching model claim that the stress levels of the students are decidedly lower and that learning can take place in a comfortable L1-rich environment. Koreans are not the only ones who prefer full immersion (the exclusive use of L2 in the classroom) but since we are all students of Korean, let's focus on that for the moment being. However, I eagerly wait to hear from fellow... Show more

안녕하세요. 현우예요. There's an interesting promotion event going on at - you can watch videos and participate in the quizes and puzzles, and if you win, you get some prizes ^^ Click to go to the webs  page!

Hi. 현우 here. : ) I went to 광주 , the city I was born in, to celebrate 추석  with my parents. 추석 is always good, even though you can expect some seriously heavy traffic in the main highways because a lot of people move from city to city all at once. Nevertheless, it's always worth the effort. For 추석 we did the usual things, like having good food, visiting a lot of relatives and saying hi here and there, bowing, maybe getting some allowance (which doesn't happen to me any more, unfortunately) and having a small ceremony to thanks the ancestors and everybody else, and visiting some tombs of our close ancestors and paying respect. But this year,  we did something else too - my family went for a drive!! This is very rare for my family... Show more

I don't know if it's just my strange perception of things, but I think the Korean music scene has been rather quiet these past couple of weeks. I think it's a case of timing - most groups that have had something come out recently are nearing the mid-way or even end of their single's promotion run, for some artists it's about time for them to switch to their album's second promotional track, for other's it's time for them to slowly fade back into the background while they prepare something new. But I also feel like it's a bit of a case of the calm before the storm, though that is just my own personal view of what's going on right now - I am, after all, currently holding my breath for the release of Epik High's new mini album Love Scream... Show more

Kinship terms. It's kind of hard to translate the concept literally but these titles are used quite frequently in Korean. Actually, here's a great lesson on just that. English can be quite direct at times. Whether that is a good or bad thing, indirectness is more favored in Korean. In English, we like to use names to be polite whereas Koreans prefer the use of titles like 선생님. Certainly there are times when Korean can express some of the most direct concepts possible, but on the whole, Korean functions in an indirect manner most of the time. One such way to be indirect is the widespread use of kinship terms. Here's a brief breakdown of a few select terms based on gender: These four terms are used widely and are quite... Show more