The Republic of Korea is currently a country with a developed economy and state-of-the-art technologies, high living standards, and unique culture and traditions. All these indicators were achieved in a fairly short period of time almost from scratch. The Republic of Korea is developing rapidly and, apparently, is not going to be satisfied with what has already been achieved. Studying Korean is also growing in popularity and going mainstream.

A new specialisation at St Petersburg University ‘Korean for Beginners’ in English is being launched on the Coursera platform. It targets especially those who are eager to take the first steps by themselves in acquiring a new language and get to know more about the flavour of this country.

St Petersburg University offers a large number of online courses on various platforms, but this specialisation can be justly considered unique. Throughout the training, teachers are complimented with animated characters. This will make language acquisition even more comprehensible and engaging. Together with the authors of the course, experts in Korean philology and native speakers also took part in voicing the characters. They also recorded vocabulary, and grammatical structures and exercises. All this makes it possible literally from the first lesson to: develop listening comprehension skills in Korean; feel confident with the use of grammar and words learned during video lectures; and learn more about the cultural characteristics of the country.

After thoroughly mastering all the topics (there are 14 of them) and completing test tasks, students reach A1 level in accordance with the TOPIK classification (an international examination for determining the level of proficiency in Korean).

 

They will be able to: perceive spoken language within the context of the material studied; construct sentences in Korean (both in writing and orally) by themselves; know speaking etiquette; and much more.

The specialisation ‘Korean for Beginners’ at St Petersburg University consists of four independent online courses that can be studied either separately or as part of the specialisation. Completion of the programme can be an excellent start in learning a new language and knowing South Korea — a country with an ancient history, centuries-old traditions and great potential.

The specialisation ‘Korean for Beginners’ in Russian will already start in the autumn of 2021. Stay tuned.