When studying for the TOPIK, you will eventually face the reality of memorizing several thousand vocabulary words. Although you can reach fluency through immersion, conversation, and reading, if your goal is specifically to pass a standardized exam, you will still need to learn many low frequency, high specificity terms like public holiday, dissatisfaction, or lion tamer.
This article summarizes the vocabulary learning strategies I have tried over the last two years, including a new technique I am experimenting with now.
Bad Idea: Learning Words in Isolation
The worst and most common approach is to memorize the dictionary. I did this a lot in university and it is certainly better than nothing, but it is far from ideal.
Example:
염려하다: To be anxious.
This card has problems.
It is in dictionary form.
You will rarely encounter 염려하다 in its unconjugated state. You are more likely to see 염려해요 or 염려했습니다.It relies on an English translation.
English translations often sound natural in English but do not reflect nuance in Korean.
For example, 문득 is often translated as suddenly, but that flattens the meaning. 갑자기 can also mean suddenly. 문득 is used when a thought pops into your mind quickly, and in forms like 문득문득, it has a warm, reflective tone similar to from time to time, a thought comes to me out of nowhere.
Many Korean words have this type of emotional or situational nuance that translations hide. This is similar to the difference between famous and infamous in English. They can overlap, but not always.
- You lose the context. Words do not live alone. They live in patterns. Memorizing an isolated equivalence like envy = 부러움 does not show how the word behaves in sentences.
Exception: Tangible Nouns
I am more relaxed about memorizing simple physical nouns in isolation.
Bell, carrot, and fridge are straightforward. A bell is a bell. It is usually safe to translate an object since objects rarely carry nuance.
All objects are nouns, but not all nouns are objects. I do not apply this exception to abstract nouns like dignity or experience.
Still, for pure concrete objects like 고양이, 망치, and 바나나, memorizing a simple definition is fine. Vocabulary is a numbers game, and tangible nouns are easy wins.
Experiment: Memorizing Full Sentences
To capture nuance, I tried learning full sentences instead of isolated pairs. I still do this for short sentences where it is practical.
Example for 문득문득 (from the official dictionary):
문득문득 생각이 나다.
Suddenly, thoughts come to mind.
This is a big improvement. Now the word is connected to thought, not a generic suddenly.
When you have a vocab list in the thousands, this gets hard to manage with time.
1. Good sentences are long and flashcards must be short.
Finding the perfect sentence, short enough to recall quickly but rich enough to convey nuance, is slow. Multiply that by thousands of words and it becomes unmanageable.
2. ChatGPT tends to recycle certain words.
If you ask for thousands of example sentences, eventually everything involves 느낌, 필요, 계획, 노력, and similar patterns. ChatGPT repeats its favorite structures.
3. Dictionary example sentences are inconsistent.
After copying hundreds of them, I realized many are too formal, oddly phrased, or not actually representative of modern usage. I even found a few strange ones in the official Korean dictionary.
4. Full sentences are hard to memorize and hard to self grade.
Did you forget a particle? Did you switch a verb ending? Small mistakes add friction. Without feedback, it is difficult to know whether you produced a natural sentence.
I built Koala Cards to deal with this problem, and it mostly solved it. But you might still hit this issue if you use a more traditional app like Anki without plugins.
Experiment: Chunks and Collocations
To simplify without losing context, I moved to lexical chunks, small word combinations that commonly occur together.
Example for 실질적이다:
실질적인 도움
Practical help
A short chunk like this is easier to memorize than a sentence but still shows how the word behaves.
Why chunks work
They mirror how words occur in real speech and writing.
They teach you the company a word keeps, which is often the heart of vocabulary meaning.
They can be combined later to build full sentences.
What is a collocation?
A collocation is a pair of words that frequently appear together.
English:
commit a crime
heavy rain
Korean:
기분이 상하다
시간을 들이다
관심을 보이다
잔소리를 하다
Words have partners. Learning these is far more powerful than learning translations because it balances the problems with single words and full sentences.
New Idea: Monolingual Korean Definitions
As we go into 2026, I am in cramming mode for the TOPIK in April. This means memorizing words for the sake of memorization, and I need ways to optimize the time spent on this task. Around the same time, I found a video by Language Jones explaining why translation is bad for language learning. How can I reduce my reliance on translation and cram more vocab?
My newest experiment:
Learn the isolated word, but with a full Korean definition, not an English one.
Example (문득):
문득
갑자기 어떤 생각이 떠오를 때 쓰는 말이에요.
You do not just get a translation. You get an explanation in Korean. You also get passive exposure to other Korean words used in the definition.
The Problem With Translations
To make this method more effective, I follow two additional rules.
1. Conjugate verbs.
Never memorize the plain dictionary form, since it is the least common form.
I use present tense 요 form, since this is the most used form for most verbs:
강조하다 -> 강조해요
흔들리다 -> 흔들려요
의심하다 -> 의심해요
2. Use noun modifying forms for adjectives.
Adjectives behave like verbs in Korean, so learning them as modifiers is more natural:
어색하다 -> 어색한
조심스럽다 -> 조심스러운
귀찮다 -> 귀찮은
You will use these forms constantly, so you might as well memorize that version.
Cautious Optimism
This monolingual approach keeps the simplicity of single word cards while preserving nuance and context. It also forces you to interact with Korean as Korean, not as a shadow of English.
It is still early in the experiment, but so far it feels promising. It has less friction than full sentences and far more nuance than English translations.
Have you ever tried something similar? Reach out and let me know what you think.