Hey everyone! My name’s Ewan, I’m Australian and currently living in Korea doing a Master’s of Political Science and International Relations (정치외교학).
I did lots of different language classes throughout my schooling but never reached any kind of conversational ability in any of them. I had done classes in Japanese, Italian, and French, and Latin and had almost nothing to show for it.
It was only when I went to uni and chose Russian studies as my major that I had a breakthrough, and my Russian got even better when I studied in Moscow at the Pushkin Institute (Институт русского языка им. Пушкина). Since then I revisited Italian and French with a new perspective, and was able to improve my comprehension massively through comprehensible input-based methods.
Since my girlfriend is from Korea, I started studying Korean intensively, and I planned to go there to teach English after a year of study. I did so, and was able to pass TOPIK 6 about 8 months into my contract. Although it’s just a piece of paper, it was a massive confidence boost and is one of my proudest achievements to attain the highest grade with less than 2 years of study. I’m still in Korea now, balancing my uni work with language learning.
In addition to the languages I’ve listed, I have had a crack at Mandarin, Indonesian, Spanish, Portuguese and most recently Kazakh. I have really been enjoying learning Kazakh, and it has been really interesting to notice the unusual similarities with Korean (even if the Altaic theory is not commonly accepted, I can see the reasoning behind it now).
Nice to meet you all!
Hi Ewan, Welcome to the forum 
To answer your question about language proficiency examinations, I think it depends on what your goal actually is. If you are learning a language in order to be able to work or study in a certain country or because you need it in your current job, then yes such a certificate could be very useful. On the other hand if you’re only learning a language for fun, say, because you’re simply interested in it or because you may have friends who are native speakers of that language or you want to visit a country during your vacation, than I think such a certificate won’t be very useful. In this case I think it is much more important to be able to make yourself understood in the target language. A certificate won’t let you do anything more during a talk with your friends or a vacation but it might open up new job or study opportunities.
Hi Ewan!
First of all I think it’s awesome that you passed TOPIK 6 in such a short time - and as a Korean learner, that’s really inspiring as well!
I think proficiency exams can be super useful, but unless you have the real need to prove your proficiency (like when you’re trying to get a job or study where the language is spoken), I think there’s better ways to assess you level. Of course an exam can motivate you to study more intensely, or give you a confidence boost if you have great results, but that mindset doesn’t really work for me.
I took proficiency exams in English and Spanish, and I got C2 certificates for both, but in my case I wasn’t specifically preparing myself for the tests, I just happened to be good enough in the languages to pass. At the time I took them, I thought they were super important, but now I see that even if I hadn’t passed, that wouldn’t change a single thing about how I communicate in those languages. On the other hand, I know there’s people who pass really high levels of these exams by improving their test-taking skills and studying specifically for them, and not necessarily by being good at the language.
I think it’s all about knowing that those exams won’t reflect 100% of your ability in the language, and whether or not an official certification is important for you.
Welcome Ewan!
We actually already have a thread for language proficiency exams, which you can see here: Language proficiency exams