Frequently Asked Questions

Doranchae is an online Korean language school built around real-life stories and scenes. Instead of starting with grammar rules, each lesson begins with a real situation — ordering food, visiting a friend, exploring a market — and builds vocabulary and grammar naturally from there.

It began with children who spoke no Korean at all. The dialogues in the textbooks were not the Korean they would actually use, so I started writing my own.

Doranchae turns the situations a teenager and their family typically run into in Korea into stories — a trip, a night market, a temple, a district office, an argument over a lunchbox. They are invented stories: I imagined the children I taught a few years older, and wrote them with a good deal of enjoyment.

Six levels, 72 episodes — made by one Korean teacher, not a company.

Not at all. We start from zero — including how the Korean alphabet (Hangeul) works. Complete beginners are very welcome.

It is a self-paced web app — no live sessions, nothing to install, no need to log in. Open it in your browser and work through episodes whenever suits you: watch the scene, learn the vocabulary and grammar behind what was said, then practise with quizzes, writing and shadowing.

No — Doranchae is entirely self-guided, so there is no scheduled class or cohort to join. If you get stuck, you can ask on the message board and I answer there.

There's no fixed schedule. Most episodes take about 20 to 40 minutes to work through, and you can pause and pick up right where you left off.

Yes. There is a mobile version at doranchae.com, made for short sessions — five or ten minutes of review, flashcards and word practice. The full app opens on a phone too, but the mobile version is easier on a small screen. Nothing to install either way.

One thing to know: within the same browser your progress carries over, but it does not yet travel between your computer and your phone.

Doranchae is in beta, and it is free for one year. There is no paid tier and no card to enter.

🌱 Start Here and Levels 1–2 are open to everyone — no account needed. That is two full levels, 24 episodes, with the vocabulary, grammar, quizzes and closing tests that go with them.

Levels 3 and up are locked for now: they are being tested with real students. They will open once they are ready.

Not for studying — Levels 1–2 are fully open without one, and your progress is saved in your browser either way.

An account is what opens the message board. That is where you can ask me something directly and where I answer. It takes about ten seconds: pick a name and a PIN.

Once you have an account your progress follows the account rather than the browser tab, so keep the same one — a second account starts from zero.

1. Just open the app and start — no sign-up, no download. Levels 1–2 are open to everyone.

2. Not sure where to begin? Take the placement test in 🌱 Start Here — 15 questions, and it stops on its own once it gets too hard.

3. Want to ask something along the way? Make an account on the home page and leave it on the message board — a name and a PIN is all it takes.

Doranchae collects no personal information, so there is no way to verify that an account belongs to you. That means a forgotten account name or PIN cannot be recovered.

You can make a new account in seconds, but your progress will not carry over — so please keep your name and PIN somewhere safe.

Entirely original — 6 levels, 72 episodes in Doranchae, plus the Kids material, all written from scratch. Each episode follows one family through situations exactly like the ones you will meet — a night market, a grandmother's kitchen, a district office — and the vocabulary and grammar come out of the natural banmal and jondaenmal the characters speak to one another. Slides, audio and quizzes are all custom-made. Nothing is licensed from a textbook publisher.

Yes. Reading and writing Hangeul (the Korean alphabet) is introduced from the very first level. By the end of Level 1, you'll be able to read basic Korean text and write simple sentences.

Yes. The levels are built around TOPIK: Levels 1–2 cover TOPIK I (beginner), Levels 3–4 aim at TOPIK 3–4, and Levels 5–6 reach into TOPIK 4–5 with news articles, essays and modern Korean short stories. Each level ends with a closing test in TOPIK format, and the writing section follows TOPIK questions 51–53.

Yes, please do. The text and grammar explanations are released under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 — teachers may use, print and adapt them for their own students, with credit. The only exception is the audio and slide images, which may be played on this site but not redistributed.

Very little is collected. To study you need to give nothing at all. If you make an account, what is stored is the name you picked and your PIN — no email address, no phone number, no real name.

Your study progress is kept in your own browser. For enrolled students it is also copied to the server so that I can see how the lessons are going and so the record survives a lost browser — what is copied is which episodes you finished, your test scores and your vocabulary review, nothing else. Your notes and your writing stay on your device. Full details are in the Privacy Policy.

Doranchae Kids (ages 6–12) is a private family class with live sessions, and it will not be opened to the public — it is taught to young children.

The open one is Doranchae, for ages 13 through adult. That is this site, and it is free.