The 20+ Best Apps To Learn Korean In 2022
K-pop, bulgogi, Korean cinema, soju… There are plenty of reasons to learn Korean, and there are plenty of ways to learn.
… Korean
Mondly Review – Made Significant Improvements in 2022
Mondly
Summary
Mondly is a language-learning app that teaches basic vocabulary and grammar structures. It seems most appropriate for learners with little to no exposure to their target language.
The activities mostly rely on passive recognition of vocabulary and phrases, and therefore are not very challenging. However, they are varied enough that you probably wouldn’t get bored with short, daily practice sessions.
Although I wouldn’t recommend Mondly to anyone looking to seriously learn a language, it may be appropriate for individuals studying languages with less available resources, or for individuals who are preparing to travel abroad.
Both the interface and the course itself could be designed better. *Edited on Nov 22* It has made many improvements this year. We will update soon.
It’s decent for learning vocabulary, but I thought a lot of the material wasn’t explained very well.
It’s fairly inexpensive.
I Like
- Daily lessons, weekly quizzes, and monthly challenges – these functionalities encourage you to practice every day.
- The vocabulary included is useful and drilled in an effective way.
- It’s fairly inexpensive.
I Don’t Like
- The content and exercises are the same for all levels and languages.
- The exercises are mostly passive.
- I don’t think the order of lessons and topics is very well thought out.
- For me, the interface is not user friendly and the platform is visually unappealing.
Price
There are three plans… $9.99 per month for one language $47.99 per year ($4/mo) for one language and $99.99 for lifetime.
Mondly Review – Made Significant Improvements in 2022Read More »
Lang Workbooks Mini-Review: Thorough Writing Practice
Lang Workbooks
Price:
$5.99
Summary
For learners of languages that use unfamiliar writing systems, the Lang Workbooks series can be a helpful and practical way to master the intricacies of writing in their target languages. Among numerous other writing systems, the series includes the Korean, Russian Cyrillic, and Armenian alphabets; Persian and Thai script; the Hindi Devanāgarī abugida; Chinese characters; and Japanese Hiragana and Katakana. The series also covers languages that use the Latin alphabet with diacritical (accent) marks, such as French, German, and Portuguese. Many books in the series have been translated into other languages, such as Italian, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. The series also covers writing systems that may have fewer available resources for learners, such as Lao script and the Cherokee syllabary. Each book in the series presents its featured writing system with suggested pronunciations. The practice pages in each workbook have useful features for each letter, symbol, or character, such as a recommended stroke order, font variations, example words, and a “Trace and Learn” section. Each workbook is relatively inexpensive. In addition, the publishers of the series have granted teachers and students a license to make photocopies of the workbook pages for personal use, so you can get unlimited chances to practice. Considering the depth of information in each language’s workbook, the books in this series can provide great value for learners.
LingQ Review – Extensive Reading Made Easy
LingQ
Summary
LingQ is a language-learning platform that focuses on extensive reading for over 30 different languages. You can import your own content or choose from the community library of books, articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, and more.
The app highlights unknown words across every lesson and makes them reviewable via different types of SRS flashcards. The more you read, the more accurately you will be able to identify content that is suitable for your level.
Although I did not find it beneficial for languages I had never studied before, I think LingQ can be helpful for upper-beginner to advanced language learners who enjoy reading. It is especially helpful if you struggle to find graded readers in your target language.
The LingQ reading app is enjoyable in most languages, easy to use, and can expand your vocabulary. However, I found the user content frustrating to navigate.
With the import function, users can choose to study almost anything they want.
Now that other apps provide similar functions, the monthly subscription may be a bit overpriced. However, the yearly subscription seems fair.
I Like
- I can easily import almost any material I want to study.
- I can use SRS flashcards to quiz new words from a specific page.
- Each lesson in the library displays the percentage of known and unknown words based on my reading history.
- There are many dictionaries to choose from for definitions.
I Don’t Like
- Reviewing words is chaotic. Every word you look up gets added to a huge queue that quickly becomes unmanageable.
- The extra features are overpriced and can be found other places for cheaper.
- Very little of the content is original. Much of it was uploaded by users from other places.
- The free version is extremely limited.
Price
Premium membership costs $12.99/mo, $71.94/half-year, $107.88/year, $191.76/2-years; single-language lifetime membership costs $199
When I first signed up for LingQ, I wasn’t very impressed. Its seemingly random lesson library, filled with custom cover photos and inconsistent title formats, made me want to click on just about anything to get away from that page.
…OPLingo Mini-Review: Community Driven, Non-Profit
OPLingo
Price:
Freemium, Premium Subscriptions cost $6.99/mo, $60/Year
Summary
OPLingo is a community-oriented, non-profit language learning site. It essentially combines the functions of LingQ, LangCorrect, Readlang, iTalki, and HelloTalk. The free version gives you limited access to some functions, but by paying for a membership you support ethical causes — such as building a primary school in Tanzania. You can browse user-contributed texts or easily import your own YouTube videos, articles, or ebooks into the Reading Tool. OPLingo has also developed hundreds of audio conversations in several languages, including Tagalog, Cebuano, Thai, Swahili, and Russian. Within each page, you can read a transcript and get definitions and pronunciations of unknown words. By identifying which words you don’t know, the next passages you read will highlight the number of known or unknown vocabulary words. In their Write & Correct section, you can write in over 100 languages and exchange corrections with other users, although Spanish, French, and English learners have a better chance of receiving corrections than other languages at the moment. You can also practice a language by texting with fellow community members, or by hiring a teacher in your target language. OPLingo has a lot of potential and is a good alternative to LingQ, but it needs a community of learners to help it grow — so check it out!
AmazingTalker Mini Review: Not Our Top Pick for Web Classes
AmazingTalker
Price:
From around $10 per 50-minute class
Summary
AmazingTalker is an italki and Verbling competitor that lets you book classes with language teachers and academic tutors of your choice. It has a lot of attractive features for students, but teachers complain about high commission rates and lack of support. It boasts a 3% acceptance rate for teachers and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. If you’re not happy with your class, they’ll rebook you another one for free. There are lots of teachers to choose from, or you can also use their AI Matching Service to find a tutor. The teachers’ profiles include videos, reviews, and their résumé. However, AmazingTalker doesn’t seem a great choice for teachers. It charges English and Japanese teachers astonishingly high commission rates of up to 30%. While these rates fall as teachers earn more through the site, they have to make $1,500 a month before the commission reaches levels comparable to italki and Verbling. Making it worse, there’s an additional 8% fee for payment processing and tax that all teachers have to pay, no matter what language they teach. There have also been complaints on Reddit from teachers claiming to have been harassed by students and fellow teachers. However, we cannot corroborate these. Given all this, we’d recommend trying italki (review) or Verbling (review) first. Alternatively, check out our guide to the best platforms for online language classes.
Verbling Review: Online Classes With Helpful Revision Tools
Verbling
Summary
Verbling is an online language-class marketplace where you can take lessons with teachers of your choice. It has some student-friendly extra features, including a built-in online classroom, flashcards, homework calendar, and a filing system for lesson materials. There are also useful but disorganized forums where you can discuss languages, share writing for critique, and do free language drills and exercises.
The lessons are generally high quality and well structured, plus the filters make it easy to find teachers who specialize in everything from accent reduction to interview preparation.
However, it can be slightly pricier than alternatives, so if you’re on a tight budget, you may want to look elsewhere. It also has fewer languages than some of the bigger competitors, so it might not be a good choice if you want to study Azerbaijani, Khmer, or Yoruba.
There are some less experienced teachers, but I found the lessons to be more consistently high quality than on italki.
The classroom technology, flashcards, and filing system are fantastic for learners and easy to use.
Some teachers charge more than on italki, but you get better classroom technology, more privacy, and fewer disorganized teachers.
I Like
- I quickly found great teachers.
- The platform’s extra features, such as teacher-made, personalized flashcards, help you review the material learned in each lesson.
- It seems focused on long-term progression as well as immediate student satisfaction.
- You don’t have to give out your contact details, thanks to the classroom technology.
I Don’t Like
- Some teachers don’t use the platform’s flashcards and materials system.
- There are fewer languages available than on italki.
- You can only pay in US dollars, plus there’s a hidden fee.
- The forums need more moderation.
Price
Prices are set by the teacher and range from $5 to $75 for an hour-long lesson. You can get discounts for buying packs of 5, 10, or 20 lessons with a teacher. Every student gets one free trial lesson, after which they’re $6 each.
I’ve got a confession to make: italki is one of my least favorite online language-learning resources. However, it was my go-to option for a long time, and I understand why people love it: it’s cheap, has teachers in nearly every language imaginable, and the app has a bunch of extra community features.
…Verbling Review: Online Classes With Helpful Revision ToolsRead More »
The Cyber University of Korea Mini-Review: Comprehensive
The Cyber University of Korea
Price:
Free
Summary
The Cyber University of Korea provides four levels of video courses that can be accessed for free on several platforms, including YouTube. Levels 1 and 2 cover basic communication about everyday activities and how to carry simple conversations around the city. Levels 3 and 4 cover casual conversation. At the end of level 4, the university hopes that students can achieve a 3.5 score on the Korean language proficiency exam (TOPIK). The videos have live teachers with slide presentations, dialogues, animations, and flashcards. They will quiz you on new concepts, get you to participate in the dialogues, and encourage you to practice pronunciation. New words are provided in different contexts so you know how to use them. Beginners should start with the Level 1 of “Quick Korean” playlist on YouTube. There are other Level 1 playlists in Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese, but levels 2, 3, and 4 are in Korean with English subtitles. For some reason, the third and fourth levels don’t contain any animations or images, and they seem slightly less engaging. Nevertheless, these video courses are an excellent substitute for the hundreds of dollars you might pay for a university class with the same content.
LP’s Korean Language Learning Mini-Review: Unorganized
LP’s Korean Language Learning
Price:
Free
Summary
LP’s Korean Language Learning is a free website with grammar explanations, music videos with accompanying translations, YouTube videos, lessons based on the TV show, “Let’s Speak Korean”, and short audio lessons that explain specific grammar points. You can also download a full PDF with all of the grammar explanations on the website. All Korean words are written in Hangul, so you may want to have a grasp of the alphabet before reading the grammar explanations. You can use the audio lessons without reading, though, although they do not seem very engaging. The YouTube channel does not have many video lessons, and the ones that are available are basically videos of the narrator explaining different grammar points from the website. Overall, the site is a bit unorganized, but the grammar explanations are simple and have lots of examples. You can also check out How to Study Korean for over 150 step by step Korean lessons. These lessons are entirely text-based, but they will give you a solid foundation of the Korean language and writing system.
DeerPlus Mini Review: Fun Supplementary App
DeerPlus
Price:
Freemium; $8.99/month, $35.99/year, $59.99/lifetime
Summary
DeerPlus, also known as LingoDeer Plus, is a cute, gamified app from the makers of Lingodeer. It sets out to teach you words, phrases, and grammar through 11 different games, but it’s best used as a supplementary tool. You’ll drill vocabulary, build phrases, select the right particles, decide if a sentence is grammatically correct or not, do conjugation exercises, answer listening comprehension questions, and more. What you won’t do is learn the material prior to being tested like you do with LingoDeer (review), DeerPlus’ sister app. DeerPlus is a fun supplementary tool that would work well alongside most resources, but especially LingoDeer. However, it’s a shame that there aren’t SRS features in what is essentially a review app. A word of warning: you can study in a range of languages, but not all the games have been translated. We were shocked when we switched from studying Japanese via Spanish to Japanese via English and discovered grammar and “integrated” games in addition to the five vocabulary and phrase-based ones we had been playing.