만화!

Obviously it takes more effort to read something in a foreign language and learn from it.  I read through a single chapter about three times.  The first time I read just to see what I can pick up – which is surprisingly a good deal!  (Sometimes if I can understand enough to be able to fill in the rest with context clues and pictures, I’ll just continue reading the next chapter but this is a bad way to study).  The next read-through, I’ll have my dictionary with me and I look up every word I don’t know and write it down in my vocabulary notebook.  I’ll also occasionally look up some grammar points if I’m not sure of them.  The third time, I mentally “fill-in” the words I looked up in the dictionary in their appropriate places and read for overall comprehension.  It’s a very long and tedious process and, no, it’s not worth trying to memorize every word you looked up in the dictionary.  But the great thing is that certain characters will have a distinct way of speaking and you start to pick up the words and expressions they use a lot.  You’ll start retaining more and more new words and your vocabulary will grow.

One of the best things about 만화 is that a lot of them were originally webcomics, which means you can read them online for free!  Check out these two that were also made into popular dramas:

• 궁 (Princess Hours)
• Full House