First Step Korean

All about language programs, courses, websites and other learning resources
mcthulhu
Orange Belt
Posts: 228
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 4:01 pm
Languages: English (native); strong reading skills - Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Slovene, Farsi; fair reading skills - Polish, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Portuguese; beginner/rusty - Swedish, Norwegian, Danish
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First Step Korean

Postby mcthulhu » Tue May 30, 2017 1:16 am

This is a nice little beginning course in Korean on Coursera, from Yonsei University, with about an hour's worth of lectures per week, divided into four units, for a total of 5 weeks. It's meant to teach the alphabet and sounds, and some basic vocabulary and expressions, including numbers and dates. This is just to whet one's appetite, I think, and if you want to go further you'd need to continue with, for example, Learn to Speak Korean 1, also on Coursera. That one sounds more substantive, and assumes that students are already comfortable with Hangeul.

You can pay for First Step Korean if you really want to have a certificate (I couldn't care less). Otherwise you can take it for free, and you can still submit the quizzes for grading, unlike some other courses on Coursera that require payment before allowing feedback.
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eido
Blue Belt
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Joined: Tue Jan 30, 2018 8:31 pm
Languages: English (N), Spanish (C1)
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Re: First Step Korean

Postby eido » Thu Jun 21, 2018 7:18 pm

I´m one of the moderators for this course, though I´m not very active anymore since I don´t know a lot of Korean and can´t help all the learners that come to me for help. The course in general has a problem of recruiting ´Mentors´ that are supposed to help beginners, but none of the Mentors that I saw the last time I logged on two months ago were well-versed in Korean. They had ´Teaching Staff´ that occasionally logged on, but mostly it was up to us inexperienced ones. Everyone got the same stock response from what I´d consider the head Mentor - ´I´m afraid I can´t help you because I don´t know enough Korean, but here´s this really old and confusing response from a member of our native Korean-speaking Teaching Staff´. Part of the reason I want to learn Korean is so I don´t feel so horrible for leading these learners astray. I want to explain things to others, and I want it to make sense to them.

My advice would be not to go to the forums and go find a Korean-speaking buddy to help you consolidate what you´ve learnt.
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