TTMIK Stories - Learn Korean

Great app to practice reading and listening to Korean. I’m a beginner learning Korean for 7 months and this app has already helped me improve my reading skills and I feel a lot more confident already. The different levels mean that most of the grammar I’ve already studied and so I can see it in practice. You can save audios of stories you’ve read and choose to save vocab. to learn. It’s also super easy to use and looks nice. 4 stars because although the vocab. learning section is great - it automatically thinks I’ve learnt a word after 3 correct guesses, and doesn’t let me skip words. Also, I love the app but it’s quite expensive.

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.

** Updated Review ** I just finished my first Level 4 story series and it was so rewarding and motivating!!! I bit the bullet and bought a year subscription at the discounted promotion rate. I am so glad I made this purchase! This is exactly the type of material I needed to help me see and understand grammar in context. The stories and articles reflect everyday life and situations, making the vocabulary and dialogues instantly useful. Seriously a game-changer for me, as I have been “stuck” at level 4-ish for years - learning the same grammar points over and over again, but not really being able to insert them into my own conversation patterns. This is helping me grasp how grammar is really used…. and helping me build useful new vocabulary, too. Thank you for this app!!!! Previous review: This app is exactly what I was looking for to improve listening and reading…. BUT I won’t be subscribing unless the price comes way down. I don’t even spend this much for Netflix! I’ve been a Premium subscriber to TTMIK for a long time. I agree with another reviewer that there should be a heavily discounted option for people already committed to a Premium subscription. The two subscriptions together are too expensive.

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. 4/30/24- I did notice that my score for the level 5 module has not changed since finishing stories and beginning articles (even after reading 33 articles, score remains the same as it was when I finished stories).