August 30, 2025 | Ademola Adeyemi

Note: This letter is for folks who want to get as good as possible as soon as possible. 

If you’re not worried about getting good quickly, then just get consistent input. Find content you enjoy and keep your exposure consistent. You will eventually get fluent. 

But if part of you is wondering “how can I get good as quickly as possible,” then these principles will help you make things more efficient.

I was so cocky in my early Korean learning journey that I decided to do 100 words a day instead of 10.

Matt vs Japan said 10 words. I heard that and thought, “Dude, I can handle way more than that. What if I want to get fluent faster?”

So I cranked it up. Started with 15 words, felt confident, got a little cocky. Then I got really ambitious and went straight to 100 because I figured I’m not like “them.” Sh*t, I can push through a little pain, for some real gains.

The math seemed perfect: 100 words × 100 days = 10,000 words.

And 10,000 words? That was the holy grail number floating around every language learning forum I frequented. People would flex their Anki streaks like gym bros flexing their cuts. “Just hit my 8K milestone!” “Anyone else grinding toward the big 10?” It became this weird badge of honor, and I got caught up in the race. If everyone else was chasing 10,000, then obviously that’s what I needed too. 

And if 10 words a day was the “safe” route, then 100 words a day was just… math. Simple, brutal math to get there 10 times faster (Yeah, I know how that sounds now.)

Three weeks later, I was burnt out, overwhelmed, and ready to quit Korean entirely.

Here’s what nobody tells you about that math: 100 words for 100 days will NOT give you 10,000 words that you actually know and have acquired well. You won’t even reach close to that, even if you try using mnemonics and every study technique in the book.

If you’ve been stuck in that cycle:

Duolingo for three months, then Pimsleur, then some expensive course, then back to researching “the best method” 

You know exactly what I’m talking about.

You don’t need more discipline. You don’t need more hours. You definitely don’t need a better method.

You need to understand what daily vocabulary work actually does versus what you think it does.

Today I’m breaking down why 10 beats 100 every single time, the real purpose behind daily word learning, and how to build a system that holds you accountable to your language goals while making your favorite Korean content actually comprehensible.

The Accountability Game-Changer Nobody Talks About

Here’s the nuance that changes everything: Those 10 words aren’t just about vocabulary. They’re about accountability.

You can absolutely acquire language without learning and studying words in an SRS. Kids do it all the time. Thing is, we don’t have our mom talking to us in baby language, gradually making input more comprehensible. Most of us, myself included, don’t have a native speaker with the patience to actually go step-by-step in making every piece of input comprehensible for us.

Instead, we have liberty. We consume media and content that we choose, that we like. But that liberty comes with a responsibility: we need to do the steps to make our input more comprehensible so we can start enjoying the stuff we enjoy much smoother, quicker, more effectively.

Ten words a day is my daily check-in with Korean. It’s the first thing I do every morning. It’s not too difficult to accomplish, but it’s enough to get me warmed up and gives me a reason for watching my input. I’m actively listening for words I could understand or words that felt familiar but I didn’t quite know yet.

Without that daily touchpoint, it’s too easy to let weeks slip by thinking “I’ll get back to Korean when I have more time.”

Why Your Brain Sabotages Intensity (And the Real Math)

So what actually happened when I cranked up from 10 to 100 words? It wasn’t just “more work.”

The second I moved from 10 to 20 words, my daily review burden doubled. But it wasn’t just double the cards. It was double the mental fatigue, double the time commitment, double the excuses.

Picture this: Card 3 of 100, and your brain is already sending you ‘nope’ signals. Meanwhile, card 3 of 10 feels like you’re already 30% done. Same effort, completely different psychology.

I remember Day 19. I opened Anki, saw my review queue, and literally said ‘nope’ out loud. That little word—’nope’—cost me three weeks of progress when I gave up entirely.

But here’s the real issue: I was overwhelming my brain so much that even simple dialogue felt harder to follow. I wasn’t making my Korean content more comprehensible. I was making it less accessible because I was too mentally drained to actually engage with it.

The Real Purpose: Making Input Comprehensible, Not Memorizing Words

Stephen Krashen nailed this decades ago with his input hypothesis: We acquire language through comprehensible input. But here’s the key: input needs to be comprehensible enough for natural acquisition to happen.

Now, Krashen talks about 95% comprehensible input, but I’d say that’s closer to 70%. Even when you don’t understand everything, you’re building mini skills just by giving the language attention. You’re giving the language time to breathe and actually become important to your brain. Your brain hasn’t had that experience since you were a child—you’re reawakening that part of your inner child that knows how to break through and make a system for language.

Your problem isn’t that you need to learn more words. Your problem is that your favorite Korean content isn’t comprehensible enough yet for natural acquisition to happen.

The 10 daily words aren’t teaching you Korean. They’re making your Korean content teachable. Every word you deliberately learn opens the doors for comprehension, which opens the door for acquisition.

Remember: the studying of words and understanding meanings of words is not the same as understanding language messages. Language is all of those pieces together, in context, where you can actually use them.

The acquisition—that subconscious ability to just speak the language—is an acquisition skill, not a learning skill. But the learning makes acquisition possible for those of us without patient native speaker friends.

The Frequency List Strategy That Actually Works

If you’re a complete beginner, you’re probably wondering: “How do I even find the words I need to make the stuff I watch easier?”

That’s where frequency lists come into the picture.

Here’s my recommendation: Take the most frequently used words, but make sure they’re the right kind of frequency lists. There happen to be decks of the most frequently used words on Netflix or web dramas because there’s a difference between frequency lists from school textbooks (which focus on written language) versus the frequency of stuff that shows up in spoken content.

The words we use to speak and the words we use to write vary. Writing has more density and certain aspects that differ, particularly in Korean. Since your goal is to watch stuff and learn from it, you want spoken frequency lists, not academic ones.

Learn these words not individually, but in sentences. You can find sentence examples for these words on Naver Dictionary if you want to build your own deck.

Personally, I recommend a platform I’ve been using since around 2021 called Migaku. They have courses that give you those first steps of frequency lists and comprehensible input curated by natives. It’s kind of the thing I wish I had that’s available now, so I recommend using it to get your feet wet.

The Timeline That Actually Makes Sense

Here’s the framework I wish someone had given me: Think about how long it will take you to get through a frequency list of the top 1,000 to 1,500 words.

At 10 words a day, that’s 100-150 days. At that point, you’ll have enough foundation to feel confident jumping into sentence mining and content-based learning.

But here’s the key—you don’t need to wait. You can do both frequency lists AND sentence mining at the same time. It’s not a dogmatic principle where you can’t sentence mine until you finish the frequency list. You can start sentence mining immediately if you want.

My story was that I learned Korean through traditional methods for 6 months, which set me up well enough to jump into sentence mining confidently. But for others, you might be able to jump in immediately. The goal is to get you as confident as I was at six months, even if you’re starting from day one.

I don’t want to put a specific timeline on it because your commitment and persistence with input will determine when you feel comfortable. There’s no such thing as being “ready” for input—input is waiting for you to just start getting it.

The Foundation Philosophy

Remember: the goal is not to become proficient in SRS. Proficiency in knowing what one word means, knowing the conjugation of every word—that’s not fluency. That’s academic knowledge.

Fluency comes from understanding messages. The frequency list is your first step, but it’s a means to an end, not the end itself.

In my first couple of months, I was more concerned with just having the language playing in the background, making the world of Korean around me, helping my brain remember how important this language is. That’s the key thing to keep in mind.

If you misalign your understanding of language acquisition—if you think it’s grammar study, memorizing words, completing textbooks—you’re the person who won’t reach their fluency goals.

The Daily Warmup That Changes Everything

Ten words a day serves as my daily warmup and gives purpose to my content consumption. When I’m watching a K-drama, I’m not just passively consuming—I’m actively looking for words that felt familiar but I didn’t quite know, or words that showed up repeatedly that seem worth learning.

This makes every piece of Korean content educational instead of just entertainment, but without the overwhelming pressure of trying to understand everything perfectly.

It’s like having a daily appointment with Korean that’s small enough to never skip but meaningful enough to keep you moving forward.

The Implementation That Actually Sticks

Start with spoken frequency lists for your first 1,000-1,500 words. These structural words make up the skeleton of Korean communication. Learn them first, and suddenly everything else becomes more comprehensible.

But don’t feel locked into finishing the entire list before exploring sentence mining from content you actually want to understand. Do both. Give yourself permission to be flexible with the process.

Ten cards a day. Every day. During busy weeks and free weeks. When you’re motivated and when you’re not.

The system works not because it’s perfect, but because it’s sustainable. And sustainable beats intense every single time.

You can acquire language without studying words, but if you’re like most of us learning without native speakers patiently guiding our input, those 10 daily words are what transform incomprehensible content into the comprehensible input where real acquisition happens.

The goal isn’t to become a human flashcard. The goal is to make your favorite Korean content comprehensible enough that your brain can naturally acquire fluency from it.

And that starts with just 10 words a day.