KOR 1010

Korean with prof Choi Yoon Hwa was my favorite this semester! She was so nice and understanding and made every class enjoyable. If you're into Korean culture and have been for a while, you've probably picked up a little bit of basic Korean and this class definitely develops/refines those skills. Majority of the class, including myself, found this class easy as a result. (No koreaboos though, for the record.) I'm not sure how students without this exposure fared-- I think a few struggled a bit with memorization and pronunciation. The class consists of workbook assignments every week (recommended to complete early on but I usually procrastinated until the day before due and was fine), weekly vocab quizzes, short essays, and a final spoken presentation. All easy work as long as you're paying attention in class. She moves quick on slides, but most students seemed to pick everything up perfectly fine. I took the 10AM session and made it to every class, maybe almost coming in late twice, but definitely manageable with a lack of sleep. Take the 12PM session if you need to though-- attendance is required and very important. Overall, highly highly recommend. I learned so much in one semester! #tCFfall2021

Professor Choi is amazing. She is such an intelligent and kind instructor. All the other people in my class that I knew loved her. The course is a very manageable introduction to the Korean language. I think the most challenging thing is just getting accustom to a new alphabet but the Korean alphabet is very straight forward you just have to memorize new characters. You quickly get used to it. We did regular vocabulary tests and workbook homework assignments. You have three lesson tests, which are just like unit tests kind of, and an oral exam that she gives you the questions for in advance. Our final project was a presentation but this semester in 1020 we are doing a video instead because some people expressed nervousness about presentations so I don't know if it has changed for 1010 too.

She was great instructor and a very nice person overall. As long as you show an interest in learning Korean, she is understanding. Vocab quizzes will vary from around 40 characters to 20 words, and overall it is a lot of work for a 4 credit class. I recommend her for people who have no Korean learning experience. She is very accommodating, and tries to ease learning anxiety. If you want to get ahead, purchase and read over some of the textbook beforehand. Get some practice with the characters and words. Confidence is a very important part of language learning. You will gain a good grasp of Korean if you take this class, and may even catch the language bug!

Professor Choi is the best professor I've had at UVA. She is extremely nice and caring to all her students. I was recommend to take her class by a bunch of people all saying that she was a great professor. The course was consisted of vocab quizzes that progressively got "harder", 3 unit tests, 2 short essays, an online workbook, and a presentation. During lecture she is very attentive and encourages practice conversing in Korean. The workload for this class was not very heavy, but as someone who struggled with Korean, I had to put in a little bit more time. A majority of the class found the course easy though. She is very welcoming in office hours as well.

Seonsaegnim is an amazing professor!! She makes Korean learning so fun and she respects every students' learning pace. I know that because I am someone who struggled a bit in this class, but she made me feel comfortable to learn. This course consists of hangul/vocab quizzes every other day and online workbook assignments. We also had three lesson tests, an oral exam, and a presentation. It may sound like a lot, but she makes sure that we are prepared and comfortable. She would give us guidelines for every test, so we know how to study. For the oral exam, we would be randomly paired with a partner and the two of you would have to create and memorize a short script. We only had to memorize 10 sentences for each person. For the presentation, it is like a poster session and one or two classmates would watch you present for 5 minutes and then, everyone rotates. I was so nervous for my presentation, but it really was not that intimidating. Overall, this class is super fun and I would strongly recommend it if you are someone who is interested in learning Korean.

This is an excellent class with one of the best professors I've ever had, but I do not recommend taking Korean for the language requirement.

Intermediate Korean is hell on earth and the most unreasonable class I've ever taken in terms of difficulty. I am taking multiple advanced Computer Science classes and they are all easier than Intermediate Korean. Every week I need to do 30 pages of handwritten workbook assignments, scan them individually, and do this within a day at most. You will suffer if you take Intermediate Korean, do not take Intermediate Korean.

Elementary Korean is an incredibly fun class though, with a pretty alright workload. Professor Yoon-Hwa is one of the best instructors I've ever had and made me extremely passionate to learn the language... I can't say that I still have that passion though after taking these classes into the intermediate level.

Korean is a very hard language to learn. The alphabet is very easy to learn, but once you get past that it gets very difficult very fast. 1010 isn't too bad, because it's still an introduction course, and Professor Choi makes everything seem simple. There are normally around two quizzes a week, which for me was a lot. This is a class for language enthusiasts and people really dedicated to learning Korean, not so much people trying to get their language requirement easily.

Seonsengnim is the best!! Super kind and funny and taught the class in an enjoyable way. I had a small amount of previous experience with korean before the class, but even for students who had never learned anything before she taught at a good pace and made sure everyone was keeping up. Classes consisted of a lot of speaking to classmates, but everybody in the class wanted to be there and engaged in conversation. The vocab quizzes were the only thing in class that was hard to keep up with at times but as long as you practice the quizlet right before hand you would be ok. Definitely recommend taking the class with Yoon-Hwa, does not match the typical language experience and was enjoyable!