So there is less than a month left until the 96th TOPIK and you have been struggling to study for it? Well, today Teri and Seolhwa are here to give you some tips on studying for the TOPIK II, no matter your current level. Why listen to our advice? Well, Teri obtained level 3 and Seolhwa level 5 in TOPIK before and will be taking the exam too this October. Let’s get started then!

Levels 3 and 4

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Hi, it’s Teri here with some intermediate level advice! TOPIK Levels 3 and 4 are intermediate levels. These exams not only assess your ability in Korean but also your knowledge of diverse topics and your ability to follow a specific exam structure. If you are focusing on Levels 3 or 4, you should not worry about the last 20 questions, as those are mainly for Levels 5 and 6.

~For writing don’t stress too much on question 54. Focus on getting questions 51, 52 right and 53 which should be easy to solve once you have a structure. Practice questions 51 and 52 whenever you can and look for a good structure for 53 in books that teach writing. (we will recommend some resources later in this blog)

~Setting a study plan where you know what resources you are going to use to study and how much time it will take you to finish those resources (whether books, YouTube videos, mock exams, etc.) will help you determine how many hours you should study per day. This leads to the next tip: consistency.

~Being consistent is key to passing these exams. My recommendation is to try to study every day for at least 10 minutes. Believe me, that makes a difference. I know there are some days when, even if you try to push yourself to study, you just can’t focus. When this happens to me, I review my vocabulary.

~To pass Levels 3 and especially Level 4, you need to know a variety of vocabulary, so you should also focus on that. I don’t really like to suggest memorizing vocabulary in any language, as memorization can feel forced. Instead, try to understand the word. Korean has many compound words, and you can often infer their meanings by knowing their Hanja characters. If you have the time, study some Hanja, but if not, try to link the new words you learn to situations in your daily life or contexts that will help you remember the specific word. Using flashcards is also a great method to review your words.

~Practice, practice, and practice. It may sound cliché, but practice makes perfect. It can be frustrating when you take a mock exam and the result is not what you expected, but if you keep going and take mock exams regularly, you will see progress. As mentioned before, this exam has a specific structure, and it’s important to get used to it.

~Listening was a tricky part for me when I first started studying for TOPIK. I recall sitting at the table, doing my best to listen to the audio, but I just couldn’t understand anything. I thought my listening skills didn’t exist. The thing is, to understand what you hear, you need to know the meaning of the words. If you don’t know the words, no matter how much you focus, you won’t get it. For the listening part, I recommend starting with reading—try reading articles in Korean, short stories, and texts from grammar books. At the same time, listen to Korean stories, watch videos from Korean YouTubers, and listen to podcasts about easy topics like food, music, culture, etc. ( I personally think Didi 한국의 문화 podcast is pretty good)

Levels 5 and 6

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Maybe you got a previous level 3 or 4 on TOPIK before and you are confident you could go for higher levels like me, Seolhwa. Levels 5 and 6 are more focused on advanced vocabulary and specialized fields so the difficulty level rises.

~In terms of vocabulary what can help you is hanja. Learning Chinese characters offers you a vocabulary boost since most advanced words are sino-korean words (words that come from Chinese). There is no need to learn how the character looks like or how to write it if you have never learnt Chinese characters, but knowing what some syllables can be really useful as you could even guess the meaning of new words by just knowing the individual meaning of the word’s syllables. For example, words that start in 무 or 비 would be negative since these affixed mean ‘not’. You can look for the Chinese characters by looking a word up in 네이버 한자사전.

~To learn advanced vocabulary, read news on 네이버 and native books as often as you can. Don’t forget to put the words you learn in a spaced repetition system like Anki or a flashcard app to memorize them easily.

~You should familiarize yourself with the type of questions you will get and keep track in both 듣기and 읽기 of the weak questions that you get wrong. If you know you get type 39-41 questions wrong (where you have to put the missing sentence in the right spot), then do more questions of that type. Do as many past papers as you can in a timed manner and see how much points you would get.

~Practice taking the 읽기 in a timed manner. Make your own strategy to preserve your focus and energy during the exam. Find the question order that fits you. For example, I like to start with the questions 30 to 40, then do the easier ones and finish with the hardest 10. This could look different to you though.

~For 듣기, again listen to past papers. I suggest listening to them on 1.5X speed and eventually get to 2X speed as it gets easier to understand because it will make your brain recognize spoken words faster and it will seem a lot easier to understand the questions in the actual exam.

~ While listening take notes! If you are like me and can’t make a summary of what you hear while listening, write all the information you hear and then compare what you caught with the questions while the recording is playing a second time.

~Doing the higher level writing means getting 51 and 52 right, and then focusing on 54. If you want a high level, you need to do 53 like in levels 3 and 4, but most of the points have to come from question 54. You should have a clear structure with 3 paragraphs: an introduction that summaries the question, but uses different words than in the questions and responds to the first question, then 2 paragraphs that respond to the other 2 questions and a final question in the last paragraph that summaries your entire essay. Focus on getting the structure right, using advanced vocabulary and connectors and don’t try to make your sentences too long (they could turn out sounding unnatural). Read answer models and steal the essay and the sentence structures you like. Write, write, write! Only by writing you can get better. Get a teacher to correct your writing or just ask a Korean friend to read your essay and tell you if your sentences sound natural.

Resources

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Books that we used and helped us a lot:

• 합격 레시피

• 토픽 한권이면 OK

• 에듀윌 한입토픽

• Cracking the TOPIK II writing

These are the tips we had for you today. Hope they will help you get to your desired TOPIK level. Remember also that an exam can’t reflect 100% your language skills since the exam itself requires having question solving strategy and time managing skills so take the results with a grain of salt. Learning a new language is all about the process and not just the result. If you enjoy your study sessions and the process in general, the results will follow naturally, so don’t give up!!

Keep tuned to find out how Seolhwa and Teri did on their exam because we will be making a second part when the results are out… Until then, good luck with studying and may you get the results you want!!

-xoxo Seolhwa and Teri