Inspiration
I spent the summer studying 30 new vocabulary words per day, making flashcards for them and going through the Leitner Calendar Spaced Repetition System to make it all work and help me memorize the words long-term. Well, after creating 1500 flashcards, I found that I needed a quick refresher with some of the words, so I decided to type out the entire list and create a printable PDF with it for easy reference.
Downloads:
I’m providing these in two formats (PDF and Excel). The lists are divided into 4 categories of words:
- Day 1-22: Nouns (명사)
- Day 23-39: Verbs (동사)
- Day 40-45: Adjectives (형용사)
- Day 46-50: Adverbs (부사)
And obviously, for the highest benefit, it would be best for you to pick up a copy of the book yourself:
Challenge
Learn these words! It’s already made a big difference in my comprehension of Korean and I feel like my eyes and ears are truly opened for the first time in many years.
But, I can also tell that you need to work on these DAILY according to the Leitner Calendar schedule for best results. I’ve neglected reviewing for about 2 weeks and am having trouble recalling many of the words – I KNOW I’ve studied them, but I can’t remember them at all. Time to get back to review!
Over to you
How is your study going? Do you find you need more help with Vocab or Grammar? Reading or Writing? Let me know on social media with #120TOPIK or in the Comments below.
In many occasions I see vocabulary lists, vocabulary quiz websites, etc. I wonder if there is a preferred way of learning it. Quiz from the Korean word or from the English word? It’s usually easier to recognise a word from Korean than remembering it from the English word, I think. Is there a risk on learning from the Korean word in the sense that you may think you know the words but actually you are not able to remember it unless you actually see it (reading ok but speaking not quite)?
I’d really appreciate any opinion on this.
They say you need to learn/study/read a word a minimum of 7 times before you “know” it well enough to recognize it in conversation or on paper. But to be able to reproduce it freely takes more repetition. That’s why I encourage using Spaced Repetition Systems for learning vocabulary.
Happy to have stumbled across your well – seems valuable.
I have a TOPIK exam coming up in a couple of months and I, too, struggle most with vocabulary and the shear amount of it required to even comprehend some of the harder questions.
Going to have a look at this method you have put forth here.
It seems to be described similarly over a few different pages on the site. Is there an authoritative step-by-step guide on which lists to print and how to begin – or is that simply done by ourselves?
Personally, I just grab any list to start somewhere. Or I’ve found a couple of good books with vocab and make my own lists. Basically for me, just starting is the hardest part. But once I start, following the method works pretty well. Even if I already know some things, it makes it easier to just keep moving along.