Quote by Prof. Arguelles:

1)     Understand that you are committing yourself to a very difficult task and make that commitment seriously.

2)     Commit as much time as possible to the project and develop the habit of regular daily study at fixed intervals.

3)     Begin with Let’s Learn Korean by B.J. Jones (Hollym Press, 1982). Before you do anything else, take a black marker and ink out all the Romanization in the book, and be prepared also to edit the music and English off the recording.

4)     Initially, do nothing but blind shadow the accompanying tape, focusing entirely upon the phonetic aspect of the language for as long as you can stand to do so.

5)     When you have made as much progress with the rhythm and sounds of the language, learn how to read Korean aloud by working systematically through this excellent little introductory work, which will put you on the road to good pronunciation, help you develop basic literacy, and give you some useful vocabulary, phrases, and, hopefully, some intuitive feeling for the language.

6)     Work systematically and thoroughly through all the materials in the Historical, Literary, and Cultural Approach to the Korean Language, upon which I first collaborated with Professor Kim Jongrok in order to fill precisely this very specific need for a more systematic approach to the language.

7)     When you have done all of this, you should be at a certain juncture in your studies. For maximum efficiency in attaining the final goal of an actual full command of the language, you should endeavor to get to this point after about three months of studying for several hours each day. After this juncture you should continue working with the same intensity using a six pronged approach consisting of six different elements, some of which may at times be easily incorporated into each other, but all six of which should nonetheless be given specific attention in different measures according to different learning styles. These six elements are:

A.     Shadowing

B.     Working through many different volumes of grammatical textbooks and teaching
manuals such as Francis Y.T. Park’s Speaking Korean series (Hollym Press) and Fred Lukoff’s series of Courses in Korean from Yonsei University Press.

C.     Writing many sheets of Hangul out by hand on squared paper, reading aloud as you do so.

D.     Systematically mastering the 1800 basic Hanja from Bruce K. Grant’s Guide to Korean Characters (Hollym), again writing out squared sheets by hand while reading aloud.

E.     Internalizing the material in Miho Choo and William O’Grady’s Handbook of Korean Vocabulary (University of Hawaii Press 1996) by reading and writing out loud, making vocabulary cards, using mnemonics, etc

F.     Chanting aloud the rhythms of the patterns of the paradigms to be found in A Handbook of Korean Verbal Conjugation, available from Dunwoody Press.

8)     Expect to engage in these activities for several hours each day each and every single day for at least one full calendar year and more likely for several years before you come to a new juncture.

9)     If you are fortunate enough to be able to add a 7th element of conversation with native speakers at any point in the process, by all means do so, but also by no means neglect any of the other six elements. If you do not have this opportunity, however, at this juncture you should actively seek it out, i.e., plan some sort of excursion containing organized intensive linguistic immersion on the Korean peninsula.

10)     While there, you should acquire both as many graded readers and as much easy authentic material in subjects of interest to you as you can (children’s literature and schoolbooks, translated texts, more complex Hanja workbooks, etc.), as from this point on you should be advanced enough to chart your own course.

11)     Keep your perspective at all times. Foreigners who have emigrated to Korea and engaged the language in a serious fashion generally report that it takes something on the order of fifteen years in the country before they feel truly 100% at home in it. So, do not berate yourself if after ten years of study you still cannot effortlessly read a novel; this is normal and to be expected. “Survival Korean” can be attained in a matter of months, but true systematic exploration and appreciation of the language is a life's work.