At the beginning of 2016 I have stumbled upon this video and it completely changed my mind. Up to that point I’ve been learning Korean every day for at least 5 months (I started in August) and I couldn’t string even a couple of sentences together, even though I could already read and write some things.
After watching this video I realized that I urgently needed to start looking for a Korean language parent and did not stop until I found her – the wife of a Korean professor at the University of Ljubljana, who kindly agreed to talk to me for an hour or two once a week, and she was nice enough to do it completely free, just out of her love for Korean language. Only thanks to her I was able to start speaking in just 8 months from the beginning of the study (in January 2016 I came across this video, in April I already spoke Korean during my trip to Korea).
Back then I didn’t know about italki, so I was always on lookout for Korean exchange students in Ljubljana, always trying to hang out with them just for the sake of practising the language with them. This year I discovered italki, and now finding a language parent has never been easier, no more awkward conversations with random people, just pay the price of one or two coffees and talk as much as you want))