How to Understand Korean Without Subtitles in Just 3 Months! 🇰🇷

If you're watching tons of Korean content and still feel like your listening and reading comprehension isn't getting any better, this video is for you. I've been there too. So in this video, I'm giving you a step-by-step study plan. It's a 3-month routine I wish I had when I just started learning Korean. You only need 1 hour a day and by the end of the 3 months, you'll finally be able to watch Korean shows without subtitles and read Korean content without feeling lost. The goal of this 3-month plan is simple. Understanding Korean without subtitles. Also, stop translating everything in your head and actually feeling confident when you hear native speech. The plan is based on four techniques and I'll also show you how I use LingQ, who's sponsoring this video, to make it all easier to stick to. Now let's jump right into month 1. Month 1 is about training your ears and getting used to real fast native Korean and building vocabulary on the go. Let me break down what you're gonna do daily for the first month. The first thing we're doing is 20 minutes of dictation practice. So how you're going to do this is choose a K-drama or any Korean show, a YouTube series, or a Korean podcast. Slow it down to a slower speed if you want and then play it and write down exactly what you think they're saying. So you listen to the show and you write down what you think they're saying. You don't necessarily need to handwrite because it's gonna be a bit too fast for handwriting. Unless you want to slow it down even more, you can just type down. You can do this in like 60 bits for the whole 20 minutes. So you play 60 seconds and type it down. You try to get as much as you can and then you check the transcript or the subtitles of the video to compare. This practice really trains your brain to listen. You start hearing word endings that you didn't know yet, also filler words, particles, and all those tiny things that normally just fly past you. This is how you train your ear to really realize what Korean actually sounds like when it's spoken, especially when it comes to pronunciation. Now the second thing I want you to do during the first month is every day 20 minutes of reading practice. You can go to 어린이 동아. 어린이 동아 is basically a Korean news website which is specifically designed for kids. So the language level isn't too difficult but it's also not too easy. I think it's a really fair level for someone who's not Korean. Now you can choose any article you think looks interesting and try to read through it without looking any words up unless it really stops you from understanding the meaning. Especially on your first time reading it through, just try to get the overall meaning of the text and don't get stuck on the small words that you don't know yet. But some keywords are important so you should look up those in order to really understand the article. If manually looking up the words is too much, because I sometimes get really tired of looking up single words all the time, you can import the article on LingQ. When you import the article on LingQ it'll generate a clickable text for you and now you can just click on the words that you don't understand and then it shows you the meaning. And you can even save it as a flashcard if you want to study with it later on. I'd absolutely do that. It's going to build your vocabulary so much. And if newspaper articles are too hard for you, even if they're for Korean kids, you can also just start with the mini stories that are on LingQ. Those are very beginner friendly. They're short and they also come with audio and you can slow them down too. But I do recommend moving on to news articles on Orinidonga after about one week of getting used to all of these exercises. Why I really like this exercise is because you really learn how Korean works outside of textbooks. It helps you and it helps you see common sentence patterns and learn new grammar on the go. And for the remainder of this hour I recommend reviewing the new vocabulary. Either you can make your own flashcards or use LingQ or any other app that you prefer. And if you're diligent with this, your vocabulary is actually gonna be so good within those three months. It's really gonna be worth it. Let's move on to month two. Month two is all about leveling up your comprehension and training your brain to actually retain and use what you hear. Let's look at what you're gonna do every day during month two. First we're gonna do 20 minutes of layered listening. The way this works is you can just turn on any kdrama or Korean variety show or YouTube video, podcast, whatever you like. Preferably it should be like five to ten minutes but you can see what's too much or too little for you. And then listen to the clip once without subtitles and try to understand as much as you can. Just try to get the overall meaning and don't get stuck on like specific things that you missed. Just try to get and grasp the overall thing. And in the second round watch or listen to the clip again and this time turn on the subtitles or transcript on YouTube and look up the words that you don't understand. A little bonus that you can do here is reading along while you're watching the video for the second time. That'll help you improve your pronunciation and rhythm. It's not really the focus of today's study plan but I think it's still a fun and nice bonus if you also want to improve your speaking. For the layered listening exercise I actually really recommend LingQ. You can import any of the Netflix shows, YouTube videos or even K-pop songs and K-pop song lyrics you choose for this exercise to LingQ and it'll automatically generate a full transcript of that content that you imported. And the transcript will have built-in word explanations for you. So again you can just click on the words that you don't understand and add them to your flashcards. It just saves so much time and makes effective listening practice like this way more doable. By the way if you don't feel like finding your own shows and contents for the listening practice every day it could get a little bit tiring or you could run out of content. You can also just use one of the many contents that are already on LingQ. They already have like tons of Netflix shows, YouTube videos or like science podcasts, anything. And not worry about finding a new thing to watch every day. LingQ kindly agreed to sponsor this video and offer us all a 40% discount on a 12-month plan through the link in the description box. So make sure to check that out. Thank you LingQ for sponsoring this video. You made my studying life so much easier. Okay the layered listening exercise is actually one of my favorite exercises. I just think it's so fun to do and again you really train your ear to understand native Korean and also build vocabulary on the go. During month two I also want you to keep doing the reading practice. Just like on month one, keep going on 어린이동화 and read one news article a day. And then during the remainder of the time you can again review your flashcards and study the new vocabulary that you learned. Now let's move on Month three is where everything comes together. By now you've trained your ear, you build up your vocabulary and you learned how to follow native Korean speech without and with the help of subtitles. Now it's time to push yourself into real word fluency, understanding Korean effortlessly and rephrasing ideas in your own words. This month is all about applying everything you've learned so far in a way that actually sticks. Let's break down what you're gonna do every day for the third month. First we're gonna do 25 minutes of raw listening. This is similar to layered listening but there's a little twist to it. Choose a short scene from a kdrama, variety show, podcast, blah blah you know the drill. It should be around three to five minutes. Watch it once and try to follow along as much as you can. And now try summarizing what happened in those three to five minutes in your own words in Korean. I recommend even recording this because sometimes when you're not recording it you can get a little bit lazy with this exercise. So I do recommend recording it. If three to five minutes are too long for you, you can also break the video down into one minute sections. Once that's done, go back, turn on the subtitles or use a transcript and catch what you've missed. Again if there are any keywords that you've missed, look them up and once you're done reviewing the subtitles or transcript, try summarizing the scene one more time. And I want you to speak out loud in Korean in your own level. The reason why I really love this exercise is because you are actually actually learning proper comprehension. Because the thing is, sometimes you think you understood something but then when you try to explain what you understood you realize, wait I don't think I actually got it. So back in university when I would study for exams, I'm not talking about Korean exams, I'm talking about exams about any subject. The most effective method to really test your comprehension is explaining the subject in your own words. So this exercise is going to make you a master of listening comprehension. Now the second exercise I want you to do is again reading. We're still using 어린이 동화 but we're bringing a little twist to it because this is month three and we want to achieve the best goals ever. So this time you pick the article that you want to read. You read it from start to finish and then similar to the previous exercise, I want you to explain and summarize the article in your own words. And I want you to do that orally and preferably also record it in this case. Honestly it doesn't matter at all if you do any grammar mistakes or pronounce anything wrong. This is really just a way of making you a master of comprehension. And if you have any time left, just review your vocabulary flashcards as usual. And that's already it. That's the plan. Three months, one hour a day. To some of you the studying plan might seem simple but you really don't need to burn out or move to Korea to improve your listening comprehension like this. The only thing you need is consistency, the right techniques that I just gave you, and a system that makes it doable, which is this plan. I promise you if you stick to this plan, even just 50 to 70 percent of it, your brain will not be the same in three months. You'll hear faster, understand deeper, and start thinking in Korean way more often. I made this video because I used to wish for people to make plans that I could just follow. So I really hope this helps you guys. And if you want to make this plan even easier to follow, I do recommend checking out LingQ, who gladly sponsored this video. The link's in the description. And now I want you guys to let me know if you're going to try these three months and join the challenge with me. And if you're serious about learning Korean, I've got more videos coming your way. I also upload vlogs in Korean about my daily life in Korea. And I have a Korean podcast with my boyfriend SP. Anytime I speak Korean in any of my videos, there are always dual subtitles, Korean and English, both of it. So subscribe if you haven't already, like the video, and I'll see you next week. Bye-bye!