How To Speak Korean: Preparatory Steps

This article is for those who are learning Korean and would like to speak Korean. If you've been a student of the Korean language, you'd notice that speaking is a very important part of learning the language.

Even if you know how to read and write Korean and can understand some of the things you hear on Korean dramas, movies or other videos, you would not be able to communicate with other Korean speakers if you cannot speak Korean properly.

Therefore it is important at this stage of learning where you learn how to pronounce words, sentences and phrases correctly so that you can communicate with others.

Some of the important tips initially before you learn to speak Korean include:

Listen to tapes, audios or videos of Korean repetitively

It is very important to get used to listening to a lot of same words, phrases and sentences in Korean. The more you're exposed to listening to these conversations in Korean, the better. This process enables you to understand what you're hearing. Make sure to recognise and understand any word or phrase you hear.

Write down words or phrases you heard

This step allows you to consolidate what you learned by listening. Write down the same words and sentences you listened to and see if what you heard is correct. Therefore, it's important that you have the original manuscripts or subtitles in Korean so that you can compare what you wrote down to what you heard.

If there's a discrepancy, that's ok as long as you got some of them right. Try listening to the same thing again and see if you can correctly hear the right word or sentence. Repeating this process will help you become familiar with the sounds you hear. Ultimately, you'll be able to recognise the same word or sentence when talking to others and they used the same word or sentence.

What happens next is that you now have a context in which a certain word, phrase or sentence is used. This means you can use the same word or sentence in other situations, and it'll be more natural because you now have the right context in which to use those words or sentences.

Lastly, repeat the process

The advantage of this process is that you remember those words or sentences you learned once you hear them used by native speakers of Korean. You'll remember the setting, environment and the place in which those conversations were held. The more you have these kinds of experience, the more you'll be confident about using some phrases you learned because you know the right context now to use those same words in other similar settings.