By Korea.net Honorary Reporter Rabiatu Bobboi from Nigeria

If I was told the first time I saw a Korean drama, which was a few years ago in my university dorm room after I pressed play to watch the first episode of “Boys Over Flowers,” that I would be reading and understanding the Korean language, I would’ve never believed it. My journey in learning Korean started during the first few months of me discovering numerous Korean dramas and binge-watching highly rated TV series such as “My Husband Got a Family,” “A Gentleman’s Dignity,” “Coffee Prince” and “My Lovely Kim Sam Soon.”

I’ve always had an interest in studying languages, whether French, Arabic and Spanish in school or Chinese, Italian and German as hobbies. Yet the recurring results on my path toward linguistic fluency was the inability to move beyond basic vocabulary and phrases or even learn useful grammatical structures.

So when poorly translated sentences from the K-dramas I was watching became a frequent occurrence, coupled with my fascination with learning a language, I jumped at the opportunity to explore the linguistic colloquialisms of another culture. This began my odyssey of learning the Korean language.

Initially, I employed the passive method of jotting down words and phrases I heard often repeated in the dramas I was watching, writing them down with awful spelling mistakes that I dare not repeat here. Little did I know then that my method, though unconventional, would prove highly beneficial to my Korean-language studies.

After conducting extensive research using Google -- as is always the case when I take on a new challenge -- I learned that my most crucial mistake when studying Korean was failure to learn Hangeul from the outset. I thus found a website to learn Hangeul, though initially dreading this task.

To my astonishment, however, I quickly learned how to pronounce Hangeul characters in a day; within a week, I had mastered the basics of the Korean alphabet. This encouraging achievement motivated me to study the language harder.

With the voraciousness of someone excited to learn something, I formed a library of resources to learn Korean. From online video materials and buying textbooks to downloading Korean-tutorial apps, accessing websites and listening to podcasts, I spared no effort to achieve my goal.

As time went by, I tweaked my study methods and adapted them to my lifestyle with tools I felt were feasible for me. A surprising discovery that greatly helped me learn Korean, however, was my longstanding pastime of watching as many K-dramas as I could.

Over the years, I have expanded my viewing choices on Korean TV to variety shows, and this has improved my listening skills immensely. I started noticing more words, phrases and sentence structures I could use in my conversations and learned conversational Korean better than from a textbook. Because of this promising finding, I decided to take things a step further and be more intentional with the way I studied Korean.

The following tips explain how watching Korean TV shows and dramas has effectively assisted my learning of Korean.

Tip 1: Boosting vocabulary

Many K-dramas focus on professions such as medicine, legal affairs, law enforcement and cooking and thus offer a prime opportunity to learn industry-specific Korean terms. What I usually do is have a pen and notepad handy and write down new words I learn by watching such dramas. I also expect my notes to prove useful as a customized phrasebook when I visit Korea.

Tip 2: Familiarization with sounds and proper pronunciation

A major disadvantage of learning a language through books is the lack of proper guidance in how to naturally pronounce words in the target language. By watching K-dramas, however, one can listen to how Korean words are pronounced in a variety of contexts and have the opportunity to practice speaking along with the dialogue.

Tip 3: Use of pop-up words on variety shows to learn Korean slang

Language learners using traditional methods will probably disagree with me on this because some believe that learning slang can negatively affect one’s language learning and confuse them when speaking in a formal context. In my experience, however, I’ve found that when reaching a comfort level with a language, I could differentiate the situations in which formal language and slang should be used. Slang especially comes in handy when texting a Korean.

Tip 4: Watching TV programs starring children

When beginning to learn a language, a student’s understanding of the target tongue regardless of age will start off as that of a child. The benefit of watching Korean TV programs starring children is that the level of Korean is not too overwhelming for beginners but also serves as a supplement to further study of the language.

In conclusion, by finding a language you enjoy learning, making it part of your lifestyle and incorporating it into your language study, you raise your chances of getting proficient in that tongue and sticking to it. After all of these years of learning Korean, I realize that what greatly helped me learn the language was my daily habit of watching either a drama or variety show that had Korean as the main spoken language. By integrating my love of Korean TV programs with my efforts to learn the language, I overcame periods of low motivation to study Korean or those that left little or no time to utilize a structured learning method.

wisdom117@korea.kr

* This article is written by a Korea.net Honorary Reporter. Our group of Honorary Reporters are from all around the world, and they share with Korea.net their love and passion for all things Korean.