Korean/Courses plan

See also: Authoring Foreign Language Textbooks

The Korean Wikibook has two major divisions:

• Reading, writing, and pronunciation
• Conversation

Reading, writing, and pronunciation

The Reading, writing, and pronunciation series teaches hangeul, the Korean writing system. The student is assumed to have no previous knowledge of Korean.

• Korean/Alphabet: a brief overview of Hangeul
• Korean/RWP: Read, Write, Pronounce Korean is a course teaching Hangeul.

  See: Korean/Writing lessons plan.

  Includes: jamo stroke order, composition, basic pronunciation; jamo in English cognates; reading, writing.

  Deliberately excludes vocabulary and grammar.

  Basic phonology is only exposed incidentally.

• Korean/Principles of Orthography: writing jamo, composing syllables (initials; horizontal, vertical, wrapping medials; finals)

  needs to include other principals, e.g. palatization of consonants before 이, 여, 야, etc.

• Korean/Essential Pronunciation Rules: plain, aspirated, tense; ㄹ; initial, medial, final; ㅇ; final-initial ㄴㄹ, ㄹㄹ; t-stops

  needs to include palatization and other essential topics

• Korean/Advanced Pronunciation Rules: phonology of final-initial combinations

  needs much more

Conversation

The conversation series teaches Korean vocabulary and grammar. The student is expected to know how to read, write, and pronounce Korean before beginning this series.

This series has the following goals:

• The series should be easy for the target student.
• The series should teach essential vocabulary and grammar.
• The series should introduce important aspects of modern Korean culture.

The target student is assumed to have the following characteristics:

• Upon beginning the Level I (beginner) series of conversation lessons, the student already knows hangeul but presumably nothing else about the Korean language or culture.
• Upon beginning the subsequent series, the student is assumed to know the content of the previous series but not necessarily anything else about the Korean language.
• The student may have no access to Korean reference material other than the Wiktionary entries directly linked from the lessons.
• The student may have no access to a teacher of Korean or to any native Korean speakers.

Structure

The conversation series are structured as follows:

• Level I: Beginner
  1. Basic Korean sentence structure, basic vocabulary, and greetings
  2. Particles, present progressive, future tense, requests
• Level II: High beginner
• Level III: Low intermediate
• Level IV: High intermediate
• Level V: Low advanced
• Level VI: Advanced

Grammar topics

The following grammar topics are arranged according to intended sequence of introduction:

• Basic Korean sentence structure
• Verb stems
• Honorifics (시, 으시)
• Present indicative 합쇼체 (ㅂ니다/습니다): Korean/Lesson I1
• Topic particle (는/은): Korean/Lesson I1
• Present interrogative 합쇼체 (ㅂ니까/습니까): Korean/Lesson I1
• Noun honorific suffix: (-님)
• Special honorific nouns
• Particles
• 에 (locative particle): currently in Korean/Lesson I1, but probably should move to a later lesson
• 에게 (dative particle): currently in Korean/Lesson I1, but probably should move to a later lesson
• 에서 (from, at, location of action particle): Korean/Lesson I2
• 로/으로 (toward): Korean/Lesson I2
• 를/을 (direct object particle): Korean/Lesson I2
• 이다 and 있다
• 해요체 and 해체 speech levels
• 겠다 (future tense): currently in Korean/Lesson I2, but probably should move to a later lesson
• 고 있다 (present progressive): Currently in Korean/Lesson I2, but it should probably move to a latter lesson.
• Imperative 합쇼체
• Hortative (proposative)
• Past 합쇼체
• 하다 and -하다 compounds
• -고
• -지 (덥지 않아요, 어렵지 않아요)
• -니
• other clausal/combining forms
• Other tenses (remote past, past future, remote past future) and moods (cohortative)
• Counters?
• Optional plural marker (들)
• ㅂ->우 (verb stem change before vowel)

  E.g.: 귀엽다 (귀여워요), 덥다

  Exceptions: 뽑다 (뽑아요), 집다 (집어요)

Before this course plan was created, a separate grammar series took a rules-based approach to teaching Korean. The following legacy grammar topics should be incorporated into the main the conversation series:

• Korean/Verbs (Talk:Korean/Verbs)
  • Speech levels: To ensure that learners who quit early walk away with the most useful polite speech levels, the verbs lesson teaches the speech levels 합쇼체 and 해요체 in that order.
• Korean/Nouns (Talk:Korean/Nouns)
• Korean/Particles
• Korean/Personal pronouns (Talk:Korean/Personal pronouns)
  • casual and polite/humble equivalents
  • avoidance of second person singular pronoun
  • substitutes for second/third person pronouns
  • contractions with particles
• Korean/Demonstrative pronouns
• Korean/Adjectives
• Korean/Determiners
• Korean/Conjunctions
• Korean/Comparatives and superlatives
• Korean/Questions
• Korean/Commands
• Korean/Dates and times

Glossary index

To help ensure that lessons build only on material already taught, Korean/Conversation lessons plan/Glossary lists each vocabulary word along with the lesson where it is first introduced.