TTMIK Stories - Learn Korean

I have been learning Korean for 3 years and and getting stuck trying to move up to intermediate. My main issue is listening comprehension and whilst it is improving it has been slow going. I stumbled across this app just last week and it is brilliant. The stories and articles are great and the audio just what I need. Unfortunately my free trial ran out today and now I need to decide on a subscription. Yesterday as I was contemplating taking out the subscription it was $19.99 per month however today ,now that my free trial is finished, it is now $29.99 per month! And I assume that is $US not $aud. At $19.99 I was tempted but $29.99 is unfortunately too steep for me. Over the past 3 years I have purchased $1,000’s worth of material through TTMIK and have a premium membership and whilst I appreciate the immense effort gone into the app I think $30 every month is way too expensive. I actually think TTMIK is doing itself a disservice by charging so much as a lower price is likely to generate far more income via 1,000’s of subscribers as a opposed to a few hundred at the current price. It actually reminds me of a family holiday I had to Lapland with my kids. at the resort we were staying at there were dozens of brand new skidoos that remained un rented for our entire stay because the asking price of €90 per 90 mins was way too excessive. In talking to others on the tour nearly all of them said that had the rental fee been half that much they would have hired one for sure. So rather than make €1,800 that day i.e. 40 tourists x €45 they made €0 i.e. 0 tourists at €90. Obviously TTMIK can charge what they like however in recent times, save for the much cheaper shipping costs (although much, much longer delivery times) they seem to be gouging far more money from their customers than when I first started purchasing its resource materials which is a shame. For me, unless there is a rethink on the subscription cost, I will concentrate on the Iyagi lessons instead despite, not being as user friendly.

I was keen for this app but after doing the free trial, I was quite disappointed at the content compared to the monthly cost. Some issues I had: - The app lets you select some words that you might not understand for the definition, but only particular words. There were words that I didn't understand but was not able to click on, so I ended up having to use it alongside a translation app. - It's not very engaging. You read, you do a quiz, and you can use the flashcards. This app doesn't seem to cater to different learning styles, I wish there were pictures with facial expressions/ items/ people mentioned in the story or some more interactive content for visual learners like myself. Though it does have an option to listen to the story as well as read it which I liked. - I may have missed it, but I couldn't see anywhere to read the story in English after finishing it in Korean and doing the quiz? I'd love to know if I translated the story correctly but you can't copy text (which I understand why) to put it in a translation app. - I don't feel the monthly cost is justified. I understand it works out to be a couple of dollars a day, but as someone who doesn't buy 'daily coffees' etc. that adds up. I wish there was a discount for those who already subscribe to their website.

Just finished the free trial and absolutely loved this app. It is excellent content and clearly they’ve put in a huge amount of effort putting it together. There was no pricing information up front so I was getting excited about working this new app into my daily study routine and was disappointed to find out the price. It’s a great app but unfortunately it’s too expensive for me especially since it’s on top of the basic TTMIK subscription I’m already paying.

This app creates a great complement to the TTMIK workbook lessons and gives much needed extra practice from those books to solidify understanding. I think that the vocabulary review features on this app could be improved drastically in order to prevent people from forgetting words they read several days/weeks ago, but other than that the app is very helpful in seeing common idioms and spoken phrases. One other feature idea would be “script” stories for each level, where all of the reading is dialogue between characters and would allow for more practice with spoken phrases. Overall, great app for learning Korean!

This is an excellent app for learning Korean. Read the stores / articles and take the quizzes regularly and your Korean will improve accordingly. Highly recommend. 6/4/24: I recently finished level 5 and I am moving through level 6. I like to alternate 1:1 between stories and articles in order to maximize spaced interval learning effects. Within the profile screen where it shows the user’s progress (X/100 articles and X/100 stories), we should be able to click on articles or stories to go directly to the next item in queue to be read. Currently, you need to click first on the root link to articles/stories screen and then toggle between articles/stories and so on. This creates unnecessary additional clicks..

I’m not able to update or delete my previous review so I wanted to mention, the app was fixed within a day and everything has been working great since then. This app is an amazing learning tool and now the subscription is cheaper so it’s an incredible value!

Love what TTMIK usually puts out, lessons, videos, podcasts etc. have subscribed and learned a ton. I’m level 5 or 6 depending on what day I take their test. But for this app the stories have too much vocab and regular use of at-level grammar that makes doing the quizzes more like guesswork. Totally appreciate the value of working without translations and do it all the time to advance. But ultimately after doing the exercises the translations should be available to check understanding. If translations were available —post quiz perhaps, it would be worth the money. But at this price point an app without the dialogues translated is simply not worth it. The app is stable and not buggy.

I have a subscription to this program already through their website but the app is not able to sync up any information from my other account.

I concur with a prior review that there should be the option to view a translation of the series/article after the quiz. I think there needs to be some major work on the apps use of “spaced repetition.” Because it’s not really spaced repetition as is. From what I can tell, as soon as one correctly gets it three times, it’s memorized, which simply isn’t true. Additionally, the first set of words I added, which was about 7, allowed me to do the Flashcards back to back. So, I got all the words in my set correctly three times in a row that are now “memorized” but they aren’t. Also, I can’t even see a list of words that I’ve “memorized”. Memrise has a much better spaced repetition system fleshed out for an app. Lastly, there should be a function where I can add other words to my vocab set that I don’t know but isn’t flagged as one of the vocabulary words for that series or article. I was really hoping for more out of ttmik stories, but it’s not something I’m willing to subscribe to without some hefty upgrades.

This app is so amazing! I honestly wish I’d had something like this when I was studying Spanish. It’s helped me with my Korean so much and has given me a confidence boost. When I did the level test, it placed me at level 3, but I have been reading at level 1 because level 3 was too difficult for me. And I’m glad I made that choice! There have been a lot of words in level 1 that I’m unfamiliar with and would have missed, otherwise. This app has so many things to help with my Korean! I can click on words right in the article/series to define it and go right back to looking at the context. I love the audio feature, the review feature, being able to toggle between levels—everything about it, really. I would maybe add more questions to the quizzes, though, and maybe a way to remove an article/series from the list of what has already been read. Or maybe a way to bookmark which story I’m on if I’m going back through the list to review? I really, really love this app and to me it is worth the price.