Korean Learning: Falou App

          Today I'm going to talk about an application that a lot of people in the Korean learning community on Instagram are recommending without really giving a heads up about what people should expect while using it. This is why I chose to do this review of the application.

The name of the application as you can see is Falou and you can learn more than just Korean as they have other languages there too. 

However, this review is only for the Korean language since this is the one I am learning at the moment.

The application has 3 different types of lessons: situational conversation lessons, word lessons, and what they call sleep lessons which is a recording of conversations you can listen to, to improve your listening abilities. 

Listening Abilities: 

It has different themes and each theme is rated as easy, intermediate, or advanced. 

So far I’ve only listened to the first of the recordings and it is basically the conversations from the first lessons in the situational conversation lessons. I will say that it is a good way to get your ears used to the Korean language.

Word Lessons:

As with the previous category, there are themes to these lessons. This is a good way to build vocabulary and they have a good way of teaching it to you. They depend on repetition and picture association as well as giving you pronunciation. 

  Here they show you the word spelling, pronounce it for you, and give you the picture association. 

Then they give you the word in English and ask you to pick the Korean translation. 

The same thing but in a different way of asking the question, which is repetition. 

Next, they ask you what you hear and you have to pick the right word.

Then they ask you to say the word to check your pronunciation. 

Finally, they ask you which is the correct image for the word spoken in the recording. It is a very effective way to get the words to stick into your brain and get pronounce them.

Situational Conversation Lessons: 

I left these lessons for last because I have found some issues with them, but let me discuss the good things first.

These lessons offer everyday situations that you might find your self in and they give you a conversation to follow first from one perspective and then the other. For example, if you meet someone for the first time, you will play the conversation first from person number 1's perspective then person number 2's perspective so you pronounce both sides of the conversation. The application will not let you move on to the next line unless you pronounce your line as close to correct as possible. The recording of the conversation and the playback can show you where you need to work on your pronunciation and can also show you that you are doing well. It can offer a good boost to your confidence when you hear yourself improving.

How each lesson starts.

The lesson itself. Person A speaks and they give you the response to speaker A. Your speech is recorded and analyzed to see if you spoke it correctly. If you did, then you move to the next line but if you don't they show you where your mistakes are so that you can say it correctly. The snail you see in the picture plays the recording slowly so you can listen carefully and imitate it.

This is a video of a full lesson that I did, as you can see I still hesitate in some places and in some places my pronunciation is not perfect but it is close enough to pass inspection from the application.

Now here are the cons of this application:

1. They mix formal with informal freely, which if anyone knows Korean knows it is not done. In some of the conversations you are meeting someone for the first time and they are speaking informally to each other and that never happens.

2. In a few of the first conversations in the lessons, they use the word 여보세요, which is only used on the phone instead of 안녕하세요, which is what you use when you meet someone and say hello to them.

3. In some of the conversations the words endings used are used by older people to younger people, my Korean teacher was very surprised that it was used in the application as if it was normal. He said that he suspected that the people who put together these conversations were not Korean.

So is this application any good? It’s complicated.

If you are just starting out, then just use the word lessons for now. Until you get a grasp on what is allowed and not allowed in Korean culture when it comes to formality levels. 

If you are intermediate then go ahead but keep in mind what I said above.