This is a perfect class to get an introduction to Korean (and likely boost your GPA as well), you can start from nothing and end actually being able to say things in Korean. There's a lot of studying needed (as with any language), but its quite easy if you keep with it. The class is also quite balanced between reading, writing, speaking, and listening, so you won't be lacking in any serious way when you finish the class. You'll also get to meet many great people to work together with, and you'll even be partnered up with a volunteer wither at UVic or in Seoul to help you with the assignments. Basically, the course is a fun and relatively easy way to get started with Korean!

The course covers the first 6 chapters of SNU Korean 1A: learning Hangul, greetings/describing yourself, talking about/asking for items, present tense verbs, locations, dates/past tense verbs.

Jaerang was an overall great prof and her lectures were quite interesting. She also gave us plenty of opportunities to practice during the class, and her slides (while sometimes disorganized) were pretty good at explaining the key concepts in each unit. She also was very accommodating, and would even hold Zoom calls during lectures if you couldn't make it for some reason (which is important since you get graded on attendance). She also graded assignments very easily and never entered 'part mark' grades (for example, if an assignment was worth 4%, she would round your grade to either 0/4, 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, or 4/4) which made it quite easy to get an A+ in her class. However, she always took quite long to respond to emails, and never gave much information about the assignments which meant we ...read more

Preexisting knowledge of Korean is useful, but not at all necessary. I came into the class with zero knowledge of Korean and had no problems whatsoever. The first quiz is quite difficult, and Jaerang didn't give us any warning about it, so make sure you track the due dates in the syllabus. The other quizzes were quite easy if you study, however.