Korean up until now

 Since my background in Korean is so short, I'll give a quick rundown here too! For the long version, please see this post.
After having seen a few shows in Korean, I started to pick up words, got excited about that and found immersion learning as a viable option to learn a language.
I'll start from there.

There is a TL;DR at the bottom!

With finding out that immersion learning is a thing that people do, came a plethora of new vocabulary that I had not known previously. TPRS being the main one. I must have searched that with Korean and found the YouTube Channel "태웅쌤 - Comprehensible Input Korean" and the Beginner TPRS series on there. It was so much fun. After completing the series (to the point that it is now) I had learnt basic grammar, how to express a want and basic past tense along with some vocabulary. All without ever thinking about the grammar in an abstract way, just by understanding what he was saying, aided with the pictures he was pointing at. Needless to say, my mind was blown and I was hooked. I revisited the videos a few times and saw others on his channel, like the ones teaching Hangeul.

Since I had some success with parallel-text short stories in Japanese I attempted the same in Korean, but the level was way too high. Which I would not have minded, if the short stories in question hadn't also been rather boring.

Informed by things that had worked for me in Japanese, I started the Hangugeo con AngDuck Podcast, but unfortunately it did not have a lot of episodes and seems to have been discontinued. For vocab I started the "General Korean Vocabulary by Evita" together with "General Korean Sentences by Evita" and later "Korean Grammar Sentences by Evita" Anki decks. I do not recommend doing three separate decks. It would be great if the sentences were featured as example sentences on the respective vocabulary deck. The grammar deck has it's benefits though.

Finally, in the Beginning of October I gave in and joined Refold out of curiosity and ended up liking it, despite having worried that putting any sort of external restraint on my learning, would make me want to stop. I didn't want to stop and found it really motivating to regularly interact with other learners, share resources and read how others succeeded.

Just like with Japanese, I had started looking for language exchanges and ended up finding someone willing to answer my ill-informed questions. Except for a single call with someone else, and a few voice messages with yet another person, I didn't speak any Korean. I did however frankenstein together a few sentences that said helpful person then corrected. I used the howtostudykorean website to find out what the grammar I needed looked like.

 Whilst it is very much not recommended to output anything that early, at least not amongst the Refold community, I think, having to really sit with a few sentences like that, as well as, having a reason to look up some grammar, was helpful. I'd personally recommend it, if you have someone to correct you with precise reasoning. But also do whatever you feel like.

During all of this I was still watching Korean Dramas, except that I at least tried to see some entirely in Korean, or rewatch some that I had seen before. When seeing The Schoolnurse Files i really did not comprehend much at all (it was fun anyway). I also tried to sit through some reality TV and tried to find content on YouTube that interested me. All in all not much of it is worth noting, but I do think that spending that time with the language was helpful anyway. When rewatching Sweet Home, I started some sentence mining. Stopping and making Anki cards for sentences I was almost, but not quite getting. I realise that this is also not recommended at Stage1 by the Refold guide, but it felt right to do so.

So where am I now?

A few days ago i found out that I was comprehending IYAGI podcast episdodes by TalkToMeInKorean. I will not claim that I understood every sentence but I did understand some, or usually the gist of what was being said. This is very exciting to me. I also saw the movie #Alive and got most of what was being said (the bulk are very easy). I am inclined to self-level myself at the 2A stage of the Refold guide now, even though I don't have 1k words down in vocabulary.

TL;DR or in Conclusion

I hopped around resources a lot but the one I'd recommend the most is the 태웅쌤 - Comprehensible Input Korean YouTube Channel, which got me started and interested in Korean in the first place. Since then I have used a variety of others, loosely sticking to the Refold guide and seeing more Dramas. And finally the IYAGI podcast which is where I felt the most how much I had progressed. Right now I am very behind on my Anki but very pleased with my accomplishments. I am baffled that I understood anything at all and I would not have thought that possible given the amount of effort. Part of that is likely that learning is enjoyable so it requires lots of time, but not much heavy effort of forcing oneself to do things.

On that note, I will take my leave until I feel like I have more to report.
Many thanks for reading,
cheers,
Zora