You Know I Have No Chingu!

Hello, and welcome to Chingu Korean, the brainchild of two numpties who thought it was a great idea to fill their already busy schedule with learning a foreign language and blogging about it... Smart!

-Immy-

As you may have learned from our 'About Us' page, I have been studying Korean for approximately a year at the point of writing this blog post. I absolutely love the language and the culture to the point that my Instagram is more Korean study blogs than actual friends. However, towards the end of 2022, I was feeling really demotivated and upset with myself over what I perceived to be a lack of development in my Korean abilities. I loved learning grammar and I diligently attended my lessons, so why didn't I feel like I was improving?

While I love studying as part of an in-person language class, I find that it provides the opportunity for stark comparison to other people and their progress. This was a key factor as to why I felt so demotivated. I didn't have the same amount of time as others in my class to devote to Korean studies, and I didn't go home and watch K-dramas every day to help with my vocabulary. (There's only so much Korean my boyfriend can take -_-)

It wasn't until I spoke to Shaymae about my worries that I realised we were both in the same boat! Neither of us felt like we put enough time into our studies, and as such, Chingu Korean was born.

It began as an extra day a week that we would meet up after work to sneak in some study - but, rather swiftly, it became cute Korean-themed days out and then a studygram, and now finally, a full-on blog!

Finding someone to share my Korean journey with - especially someone in a similar situation to myself, has been a huge help in motivating me and re-igniting my passion for Korean. I hope that Chingu Korean can be this person (or in our case persons) for you and that you can feel motivated and excited to learn Korean with us.

-Shaymae-

👋🏻 안영

My first attempt at learning this beautiful language was back around mid-2019 and as you might guess I didn't really get very far.

I am more of a physical and verbal learner so not having someone I can speak to, and practice with was difficult. I also found the audio files and romanisations in the books I was using at the time very confusing. I felt like I wasn't making any progress so my motivation for learning started to dwindle, I started looking for classes but by then we were in the full swing of lockdown. I found a few online courses but, knowing me, I knew that an online course wouldn't have been a great fit for me as, with many distractions around, I would never pay any attention to the lesson.

At the beginning of 2022, I finally found an in-person class but it took me some time to build up the courage to enrol (I never really liked school). Happily, it was one of the best things I could have done! It was great to be able to learn in an environment that suited my learning style, however, I still felt that I wasn't progressing as much as I should have been. Don't get me wrong I love my classes and my 선생님 (teacher), but I just needed more, more time to study and more time to practice. I'm always listing to K-music to and from work and watching a K-drama at the end of the day, half a sleep not concentrating, so I am pretty confident in my immersion, but as we all know, there is much more to learning a language.

Trying to find time to study around work and family felt impossible like one would have to suffer for me to be able to have that time. After one of our many before-class homework catch-up sessions (that still happen today) Imogen and I realised that we were in the same boat and like Immy said, we started meeting one day a week after work for a study session. This then quickly developed into days out, our study gram and now this blog.

Having Immy to share this with has been more helpful than I could have imagined and I hope that Chingu Korean can be just as helpful to you.

So join us on our journey and let's see where we end up 😊