When should I get a Korean tutor?

When should I get a Korean tutor? Later than the tutoring sites suggest, and probably sooner than feels comfortable. Do the parts a book can check by itself, which are Hangul and the core patterns. Then pay for the part it cannot check: someone hearing and reading what you produce and telling you what is wrong. A tutor is an expensive way to learn an alphabet and a cheap way to fix a pronunciation habit before it sets.

For expectations: the US Foreign Service Institute puts Korean in Category IV, its "super-hard" group: 88 weeks, or 2,200 class hours, to reach a combined speaking and listening score of 3 on the ILR scale. A typical FSI week is 23 hours in class plus 17 hours of self-study, and FSI says real times vary. A tutor will not make Korean quick. It stops you rehearsing the same mistake for months, which is only worth paying for once there is something of yours to correct.

Tick these off before the first paid lesson. Each is covered in a standard beginner book, and each can be checked against an answer key.

The contents of Korean Grammar in Use: Beginning run in the same order: 이다, 있다 and numbers, then tenses, negation with 안 and 못, and the core particles, with -(으)ㄹ 수 있다 and -고 싶다 a few units later.

For this stage, pick a book that can mark you. Korean Made Simple has practice sections with answer keys in every chapter. Korean Made Easy for Beginners is written for learners studying alone, with four Hangul units before its 20 chapters and an answers section at the back.

Input can be checked alone; output cannot. The official exam shows the split. In the 2026 TOPIK plan, the paper TOPIK I answer sheet is headed 듣기, 읽기 (listening, reading) and holds 70 four-option items. That level has no writing and no speaking. TOPIK II adds a written section, and speaking has its own test, TOPIK Speaking, graded from level 1 to 6.

So everything TOPIK I asks for can be prepared and marked alone. Speaking and writing cannot: a sentence can feel right in your head and still be wrong on the page or unclear aloud. That gap is what a second person is for.

For sign 5 on Sheet 2, try speaking practice alone first.

If you still sound out Hangul letter by letter, or the “What to finish alone first” checklist is half done, a paid lesson turns into a lecture on what a book already explains. Finish the book first.

If you want a live teacher at this stage anyway, there is a free route. The Online King Sejong Institute describes itself as a free online Korean learning service, on PC and mobile. In its Lecture Assisted courses, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced include video lessons, 10 live Zoom classes, 2 assignments and an online listening and reading assessment. The Introductory course has 5 live classes. Courses open on a published schedule. Its level test covers listening and reading at beginner and intermediate level. You can retake the same level after a month, and it points you to a course and textbook from 1A to 4B.

Score each teacher the same way, one column per trial:

Bring a book you both work from. Korean Grammar in Use: Beginning suits this: it covers the grammar of levels 1–2 in Korean university and academy courses, compares look-alike patterns and has an answer key. Ask for the unit you are stuck on as homework. For a structured course with a Professional Teacher, Integrated Korean: Beginning 1 is a course book by classroom teachers and linguists of Korean, in which each lesson has a conversation, its own vocabulary list and a reading passage.

On recording: the italki Classroom can record only if both teacher and student agree. The file saves to your computer as WEBM, and italki keeps no copy. Separately, Smart Lesson summaries support Korean and list topics, vocabulary and grammar. They need a lesson in the italki Classroom with audio recording allowed, and the error-correction section is for italki Plus subscribers only. Either way, copy each correction into a language notebook the same day.

One book from the first two rows covers the solo stage. Add one of the next three when lessons start, and use the same one as your teacher.

For reading and listening up to TOPIK I level, not yet: a book with an answer key checks that work. For speaking, writing, sound changes and speech levels, yes, because nobody can mark those alone. The milestone is a sentence of your own that you cannot check. When that happens most days, book the trials.