How foreigners in S Korea study Korean

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외국인들이 직접 알려주는 한국어 배우는 노하우 • Today, we turn our focus to culture • And to explain what's going on in South Korea right now, we have our Won Jung-hwan in the studio for us. • Jung-hwan, what do you have for us today? • So Mark, before I go any further, how good is your Korean? And where and how do you practice it? • Wow that's pretty good Mark. • In fact, it is not so common yet,... but when I go around Seoul, I sometimes spot foreign visitors speaking the Korean language quite fluently. • Well nowadays, I could proudly say more and more foreigners are getting used to the language before they even come here,... thanks to the huge popularity of Korean culture and television dramas overseas. • But I always wondered,… how those foreigners study the language. • Indeed, to get a closer look into how foreigners do it, I went to the Korean Language Education Center at Seoul National University. • The institute was established in 1969 and aims to teach Korean language and culture to international students, intending to learn Korean language as a foreign language or their second language. • Over 28-thousand students from more than 90 countries have graduated from the programs laid out by the institute,... and the program invites some 5-hundred students every semester from overseas. • I had a chance to peak in on the class,… I first asked them what's the most difficult thing about learning Korean. • I always get confused because there's a big difference between English and Korean. When I write a sentence, the two languages have different structures. If I keep practicing, I think I can get better. • I am good at taking speaking exams, but it's really hard when I actually speak with Korean local people. • But despite their difficulties in learning Korean, more non-Koreans are studying Korean academically nowadays. • As for real classrooms, some 57-thousand students are studying at over 1-hundred-70 branches of the government-backed King Sejong Institute, from Nairobi to Minsk and from London to Tokyo. • Further evidence of the language’s popularity can be found in the number of takers of the Test for Proficiency in Korean. • A total of some 260-thousand people took the TOPIK in 2018,... up 77 percent from 2010. • In fact, the number of such students has been growing sharply over the past few years to the point where some are saying the number of foreign Korean literature language students is similar to locals. • Experts explain the phenomenon has resulted from the increasing number of foreign nationals who want to become Korean language specialists. • And of course, this is thanks to the extra attention South Korea and its culture have been receiving from abroad. • So the answer is,… I should attend one of those classes to be really good at the Korean language? • Well maybe. But talking with those native-like foreigners that I recently encountered,… studying at language centers isn't always the answer for being perfect. • Indeed, the group of students I met told me that academic way of approaching didn't really help them to reach the level they are at the moment. • I followed them around to see how they study the language,... and I noticed they enjoyed using Korean,… in fact, the language was part of them at their daily lives, for instance, when they order something at a restaurant or just watching their favorite K-drama shows. • I think it's much better to study Korean by interacting with my Korean friends outside instead of studying new vocab or grammar by myself. As I am not a native speaker when I speak Korean, I make mistakes. But those mistakes can be corrected and be explained by native local speakers. • They all told me how embarrassed they were back in the days when they made mistakes speaking to locals. But each time they made mistakes, they took it as a learning process. And on top of that, even when they were watching their favorite shows in their leisure time, it was interesting to see how they tried really hard to get use to the language. • I like watching K-drams. Normally what I do is, I don't repeat but rather try to understand. If I don't understand the meaning completely, I go back and watch it again. So I think I watch 2 or 3 times for one episode. Basically until I understand everything. • Arirang News Facebook: / arirangtvnews

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