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Really frustrated with Korean materials

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Po-ru
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5481 days ago

173 posts - 235 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, Mandarin, French

 
 Message 1 of 30
04 August 2010 at 1:35am | IP Logged 
I have recently been really upset with the lack of overall quality material available
for Korean. I am really suffering in the listening department and need more listening
practice as well as grammatical explanations and I am really not sure where to get it.
This is what I have used so far:

TYS Korean - an overall poorly written book with poor audio. Not enough hangul is used
and instead of translating the dialog, they put a romanized translation, which is just
useless for anyone who wishes to seriously study Korean.

Fred Lukoff : an Introductory course to Korean 1 - it was a pretty good book, but I am
at chapter 12 and the later chapters stop breaking down sentences, so it's difficult to
understand and the grammar explanations and vocabulary used are way to advanced for
Chapter 12 of any book.

Colloquial Korean - not a bad book, definitely one of my favorite Korean resources,
except you have to pay like an additional $25 for audio cassettes

FSI Course - like any FSI course, thorough, long to master, and very plain

KoreanClass101.com - sadly one of my most used resources. The audio is pretty good and
easy to follow but this should not be one's top resource of learning Korean =/

Elementary Korean (used in library so no audio) - not a bad book at all. Some portions
were a little unclear, but very thorough, and a bit pricy for me to buy

Pimsleur - Pimsleur is Pimsleur. I am on level 2. It's definitely a good tool for
getting to think and speak the language but not very comprehensive at all

Lets Speak Korean TV series - good series, but not comprehensive. Learning a few new
phrases each day is great for your getting around in Korea, but not really great for
in-depth comprehension

I also have College Korean and I just ordered Dr.Arguelles book with the cassettes, so
I have hoping that's a bit more comprehensive and will have some good material.

I am just getting unmotivated and discouraged because where I am at right now, I need
listening practice along with further grammar explanations, and none of my resources
except KoreanClass101 and FSI can give me that. The amount of material for Japanese
was through the roof. The two Genki books were great, the TYS Japanese was awesome,
Berlitz Essential Japanese summed up everything essential I needed before going to
Japan to be at an Intermediate level. And for Korean I feel that the materials are so
lack lustered.

Can anyone here point me to some other resources or try to help get me back on track?

Thanks

Edited by Po-ru on 04 August 2010 at 1:43am

2 persons have voted this message useful



ericspinelli
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
Joined 5784 days ago

249 posts - 493 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Italian

 
 Message 2 of 30
04 August 2010 at 3:12am | IP Logged 
For more audio, check out Talk To Me In Korean.

LingQ added Korean and, though last time I checked most of the recordings were from Talk To Me In Korean, there were a few LingQ exclusives and I'm sure they'll be adding materials from other sources as time goes on.

You can also try using RhinoSpike to get recordings for materials that don't already have them.

Another option is to improve your Japanese or Mandarin to the point where you can use materials in those languages to learn Korean. For example, ALC, a Japanese publisher, makes some quality resources in Japanese for learning Japanese, Korean, and Mandarin. For Korean, they not only have a number of books with audio/transcript/translation but they publish the quarterly 韓国語ジャーナル (Kankoku-go Journal) that includes interviews, etc., with the same.
4 persons have voted this message useful



jtdotto
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 5230 days ago

73 posts - 172 votes 
Speaks: English*, Korean
Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, German

 
 Message 3 of 30
04 August 2010 at 4:58am | IP Logged 
http://www.paradigmbusters.com/

I used this course at my university - hands down the best grammar explanations I've read.

There's also http://korean.sogang.ac.kr/
2 persons have voted this message useful



treehouse
Newbie
United States
Joined 5403 days ago

19 posts - 22 votes
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 4 of 30
04 August 2010 at 8:52pm | IP Logged 
HanBooks.com has a lot of (different) Korean textbooks, at low prices.
Click on the "Let's Learn Korean" box on the left column, or use this link:
http://www.hanbooks.com/koreanlanguage.html

Their "help" page says they are the largest online Korean bookstore in the USA.
They have many books which seem more interesting than ordinary textbooks.
I especially like:
Korean Made Easy for Beginners. (Daragwon). 288 pages. 257*188mm. Incl.Audio CD and
book and phrasebook. $27.27.

I also like it because Smart.FM has put up SRS programs keyed to the vocabulary in this
book, chapter by chapter. So I use it in conjunction with Smart.FM which makes it more
fun.

3 persons have voted this message useful



Warp3
Senior Member
United States
forum_posts.asp?TID=
Joined 5536 days ago

1419 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 5 of 30
04 August 2010 at 11:20pm | IP Logged 
Po-ru wrote:
Lets Speak Korean TV series - good series, but not comprehensive. Learning a few new
phrases each day is great for your getting around in Korea, but not really great for
in-depth comprehension


How far did you get in the series? They do start off with nothing but very simple "pre-fabbed" phrases in the early episodes but once the series really gets into gear, they cover a lot of grammar and sentence patterns (plus some Korean culture, here and there). I'm only halfway through the series now (there are 260 total episodes in the season I'm using) and I've learned a *ton* of useful information from this series already.

As far as grammar lookup references, I use:
http://www.koreangrammaticalforms.com/
http://parksguide.blogspot.com/
http://ezcorean.com/all_grammar.php
1 person has voted this message useful



The Real CZ
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5650 days ago

1069 posts - 1495 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 6 of 30
04 August 2010 at 11:46pm | IP Logged 
For listening, that's mainly a time and vocabulary issue. Listen more and learn more vocab.
1 person has voted this message useful



Po-ru
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5481 days ago

173 posts - 235 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Spanish, Norwegian, Mandarin, French

 
 Message 7 of 30
06 August 2010 at 3:27am | IP Logged 
Thanks for the suggestions, I will check some of them out. I'm still not at all happy
though with the lack of good comprehensive material for Korean. There are some good
materials, but none of them are excellent =/

Edited by Po-ru on 06 August 2010 at 3:28am

1 person has voted this message useful



Yukamina
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 6265 days ago

281 posts - 332 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean, French

 
 Message 8 of 30
06 August 2010 at 5:56pm | IP Logged 
Is this the same as the College Korean you used? http://www.language.berkeley.edu/korean/10/main.html
It's a bit dry, but I think it's a good resource.

Here's a Korean site with kids stories with audio, animation, and if you're lucky, subtitles. http://parents.jr.naver.com/donghwa/


1 person has voted this message useful



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