Korean Study Plan for Beginners: 30 Days to 6 Months

Korean study plan for beginners at a glance

A good Korean study plan for beginners has three phases: Hangul and the sounds of Korean in weeks 1–2, your first 300 words and 14 core sentence patterns in weeks 3–8, and speaking, listening and grammar in months 3–6. Five hours a week is enough to follow it, and a short speaking checkpoint every two weeks tells you whether it's working.

By day 30 you should be able to read Hangul, know around 100 words and give a 30-second self-introduction. After six months you'll have put in about 130 hours. That's past survival Korean but not yet everyday conversation, which is a realistic six-month result.

If you haven't started at all, our guide to where to start learning Korean covers the first-day decisions. This page is the calendar that comes after.

How many hours a week you need: 3, 5 or 8

Pick the number of hours you can keep up for six months rather than the number you hope for. The plan works at three, five or eight hours a week; only the speed changes. If you're unsure, start with five: most people can manage four to six hours a week alongside work or school.

For scale, the US Foreign Service Institute (FSI) puts Korean in its hardest category for English speakers: 88 weeks, or about 2,200 class hours, to reach professional working proficiency, on a schedule of 23 hours of class plus 17 hours of self-study a week. You don't need anything like that to order dinner or chat with a tutor.

The hour ranges match our guide to how long it takes to learn Korean: roughly 5–10 hours for Hangul, 50–100 for survival phrases and 300–400 for basic everyday conversation. They're averages with a wide spread, and an hour spent speaking is worth more than an hour rereading notes.

Little and often also helps memory: a 2006 review of 317 experiments on spaced practice found that spreading study out beats cramming for long-term recall. That's why the plans below put some Korean on most days and bring old words back on a schedule.

Weeks 1–2: Hangul and the sounds of Korean

Hangul, the Korean alphabet, is the fastest part of the whole plan. The letters take a few days. The second week goes to the sounds English doesn't separate, because that's where your accent habits form.

1. Days 1–2: the 14 basic consonants and 10 basic vowels, 24 letters in all. Say each one out loud as you write it.
2. Days 3–4: syllable blocks. A consonant and a vowel stack into one block (ㄱ + ㅏ = 가, ga), and a final consonant, called 받침 (batchim), sits underneath: 한 (han), 밥 (bap).
3. Days 5–7: the 5 double consonants (ㄲ ㄸ ㅃ ㅆ ㅉ) and the 11 combined vowels such as ㅐ, ㅘ and ㅢ. Read 20 real words a day: menu items, K-pop song titles, place names.
4. Week 2: the sounds English doesn't separate. Korean has plain, aspirated and tense consonants (가 ga, 카 ka, 까 kka), and ㅓ (eo) is a different vowel from ㅗ (o). Learn them from native audio rather than from romanization. Notice linking too: 한국어 is pronounced 한구거 (hangugeo).
5. Week 2: your first fixed phrases. 안녕하세요 (annyeonghaseyo, "Hello"), 감사합니다 (gamsahamnida, "Thank you"), 죄송합니다 (joesonghamnida, "I'm sorry," formal), 네 / 아니요 (ne / aniyo, "Yes / No") and 잘 모르겠어요 (jal moreugesseoyo, "I'm not sure").

Read everything out loud, and stop relying on romanization by the end of week 1. Our Hangul guide walks through the letters in learning order, with the common traps.

On the 3-hour plan, give Hangul three weeks. On the 8-hour plan you'll know the letters within a week; spend the spare time listening to the sounds rather than rushing into grammar.

Weeks 3–8: your first 300 words and 14 sentence patterns

Weeks 3–8 build a small, useful core: about 300 words and 14 sentence patterns. That's roughly 50 new words a week, or seven a day, reviewed in a free spaced-repetition flashcard app. Learn each word inside a short sentence about your own life rather than as a bare translation.

A balanced first 300 might look like this:

• Numbers in both systems, plus a few counters (개 gae for things, 명 myeong for people, 시 si for o'clock): about 40
• People and family (저 jeo, "I"; 친구 chingu, "friend"; 엄마 eomma, "mom"): about 25
• Food and drink: about 40
• Time words (오늘 oneul, "today"; 내일 naeil, "tomorrow"; 어제 eoje, "yesterday"; the days of the week): about 35
• Places and transport: about 30
• Everyday verbs (가다 gada, "to go"; 먹다 meokda, "to eat"; 하다 hada, "to do"): about 60
• Adjectives (좋다 jota, "to be good"; 바쁘다 bappeuda, "to be busy"): about 30
• Question words and set expressions (뭐 mwo, "what"; 어디 eodi, "where"; 언제 eonje, "when"; 왜 wae, "why"): about 40

Korean has two number systems, so learn both up to 10 early. Native Korean numbers (하나 hana, 둘 dul, 셋 set) count things, hours and age; Sino-Korean numbers (일 il, 이 i, 삼 sam) handle minutes, dates, money and phone numbers. Every price and every time needs one or the other.

Every example above is in the polite -요 form, called 해요체 (haeyoche), which is safe with strangers, shop staff, teachers and new coworkers. Casual 반말 (banmal) drops the -요, so 가요 (gayo) becomes 가 (ga). It's normal between close friends but rude to a stranger, so learn it later, on purpose.

Alongside the patterns, memorize a few fixed expressions as whole chunks; our list of basic Korean phrases has the ones you'll use daily. By week 4, combine them into a 30-second self-introduction: your name, where you're from, what you do and why you're learning Korean. Our guide to introducing yourself in Korean has a template. Bring your version to a lesson and ask the tutor to correct it line by line.

Months 3–6: speaking, listening and grammar

From month 3, you spend less time collecting words and more time using them. Most of your time now goes to listening and speaking, with grammar added one pattern at a time when you need it for something you want to say.

1. Month 3: past and future. -았/었어요 (봤어요, bwasseoyo, "I watched") and -(으)ㄹ 거예요 (만날 거예요, mannal geoyeyo, "I'm going to meet"), plus -고 (go, "and") to join two actions. Topics: yesterday, last weekend, next weekend.
2. Month 4: reasons and opinions. -아서/어서 for "because" (바빠서 못 가요, bappaseo mot gayo, "I'm busy, so I can't go") and the difference between 은/는 and 이/가 (roughly, topic or contrast versus new information). Topics: work or school, food, likes and dislikes.
3. Month 5: basic honorifics. The -(으)시- ending you use for people you respect (가요 gayo becomes 가세요 gaseyo), a few special verbs like 드시다 (deusida, honorific "to eat"), and when 반말 is fine. Start watching short drama scenes with Korean subtitles.
4. Month 6: longer turns. Practice talking for two or three minutes on one topic, then asking follow-up questions. Review the patterns you've been avoiding.

For listening, start with material made for learners: beginner podcasts and YouTube lessons at slow speed. Play each episode twice, once for the gist and once pausing to repeat lines (shadowing). Our guide to Korean conversation practice covers shadowing and other ways to get speaking time.

For a yardstick, Yonsei University's Korean Language Institute spends 200 class hours over 10 weeks on its Level 1, which covers Hangul, greetings, self-introductions, ordering food, shopping, asking directions, public transport and phone calls. The 8-hour plan adds up to about the same number of hours in six months; the 5-hour plan, about two-thirds of it. A classroom hour isn't the same as an hour alone, so treat this as a rough comparison.

Sample weekly schedule (a template you can copy)

Here is the week the plan assumes, at all three levels. Copy it into your calendar and move the days around as needed, but keep the mix of new material, review, listening and speaking.

Two rules make it work. Review before you add anything new, so old words come back at growing intervals. And end every week by saying something out loud, even if it's only reading your own sentences into your phone.

Free resources vs a tutor: what to outsource

Most of a beginner's plan can be done for free. Pay for the parts that need a second person: hearing your pronunciation, keeping you talking in real time, and telling you whether a sentence sounds natural or rude.

AI chatbots sit somewhere in between. They're handy for drills and quick grammar questions at any hour, but they can be confidently wrong about what sounds natural or polite, so double-check anything you plan to say to a real person.

Outsourcing only the checkpoints keeps the cost down. As of October 2026, 25-minute lessons with the 19 tutors who teach Korean on HaruMeet cost $7.70–$20.90 (median $11), so two checkpoints a month comes to about $22 at the median. Your first lesson with each tutor is 50% off, and there's no subscription; see lesson prices for pack discounts.

Track progress with a speaking checkpoint every 2 weeks

A checkpoint is a 25-minute speaking test you set yourself every two weeks, with one small task tied to the phase you're in. If you can do it mostly in Korean, move on. If not, repeat the last two weeks' material before adding more.

In the weeks between (14, 18, 22 and 24), repeat the latest task with new material. Send your tutor the task in the site chat beforehand, warm up for a few minutes, do the task and spend the rest on corrections. Add the three most useful corrections to your flashcards. Our guide to your first Korean lesson covers what to prepare.

As of October 2026, 10 of the 19 Korean tutors on HaruMeet list beginner lessons on their profiles, and all 19 list English among the languages they speak, so you can explain the checkpoint format in English. Lessons are live 1:1 on Zoom, booked from the tutor's own schedule shown in your time zone, and you can cancel free up to 12 hours before. Find a tutor for your week-2 checkpoint among our beginner Korean tutors.

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