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Francis Y. T. Park’s "Speaking Korean" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Malcolm Triglot Retired Moderator Senior Member Korea, South Joined 7126 days ago 500 posts - 515 votes  5 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 1 of 4 14 December 2008 at 11:57pm | IP Logged |
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I’ve been using Francis Y. T. Park’s “Speaking Korean” series for a while now, and while it is not without its flaws, I feel that it is one of the best intermediate-level resources available for learning Korean. I wouldn’t recommend it as a starting point, but it’s a great resource for serious learners who have made it past the beginner’s stage. One of my favorite things about this series is the sheer density of the content; there is so much vocabulary and grammar packed into it, and so little filler. The structure of the series is a little complicated, so I’ll provide a volume by volume analysis below.
Volume I (Grammar 1/2) This is the first of the two grammar volumes in the series. Each lesson opens with a dialog, then notes on the dialog, a few grammar points (usually verb endings or particles), drills to practice the grammar points, and then a reading passage. There’s really nothing special or particularly interesting about this structure, but it works if you go through it systematically. It’s interested to note that this first volume alone contains roughly the same amount of grammar as the first four volumes of Integrated Korean. Volume II (Grammar 2/2) As the second of the two grammar volumes, this one has exactly the same structure as the first one. However, I found that this one was significantly more difficult to work though. The problem wasn’t so much the difficultly level of the material, but rather the overwhelming amount of new grammar points in each chapter. It took me several months to work through this book, and the grammar points have slowly made their way into my natural speech, but I still need to put a lot more time into reviewing it. Volume III (Chinese Characters) This volume is actually pretty easy, and it’s designed to be used alongside volumes I and II. It is basically just a hanja reader. However, since the purpose of the book is to teach hanja and hanja-based vocabulary, the readings use very simple grammar and never get too difficult. The vocabulary, on the other hand, gets progressively more difficult and intelligent. There is absolutely no filler in this book, so it manages to teach a little under 2000 characters in only one volume. This is really an ideal way to learn the hanja, and it beats memorizing lists of characters out of context. Furthermore, it can be used by students at any level. I think it would be especially helpful for those who have previously studied Chinese or Japanese. I'm about halfway through this volume, and I expect to finish it soon. Volume IV (Newspaper Reader) I haven't made it to volume IV yet, but I've examined it and it seems a little too difficult. I don't expect to be able to go directly from volumes II and III to volume IV. The content is dry, and the reading passages contain too many new words. It is unclear whether I will ever use this book, seeing as there are more interesting materials available to me. Nevertheless, it matches the other three volumes in quality and presentation. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| solidsnake Diglot Senior Member China Joined 6852 days ago 469 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 2 of 4 16 December 2008 at 8:39am | IP Logged |
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Malcolm, its good to see you back on the boards after your self-imposed hiatus. I'm currently using Chinese to learn Japanese; ironically, this originally resulted as more of a consequence of the dearth of any English language teaching materials for learning foreign languages here in the PRC. However, I believe the insight that I'm getting in terms of experiencing how the Chinese approach learning a foreign language has improved my Chinese understanding as well the Japanese I'm currently studying. I hope that you using Korean materials to learn Japanese gives you the same insight into the Korean mind! Good luck and please post more when you can.
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| nhk9 Senior Member Canada Joined 6615 days ago 290 posts - 319 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 4 18 December 2008 at 4:12am | IP Logged |
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Interesting that you brought up this series
I had used this series a couple of years back, and I thought that it was a pretty dry series. I am still amazed at how I was able to get through the first 2 books of it. If you like high-density books, you will enjoy the Integrated Korean series by Lee, Park, Yeon. The series is much more interesting and current, and you also get audio files on the net for the some of the books in the series (up to advanced intermediate). You have several levels, and when you get the the upper stages, you will be learning a lot of useful Korean words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DNB Bilingual Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4697 days ago 47 posts - 80 votes Speaks: Finnish*, Estonian*, English | Message 4 of 4 20 August 2011 at 7:05pm | IP Logged |
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Sorry for reviving an old thread, but I'm curious to ask about this book. As far as I've
read some reviews, people praise this book for being a slow, although extremely detailed approach to learning Korean fundamentals all the way to advanced level. I just finished Elementary Korean some time ago and I'm now proceeding to go through Continuing Korean and after that KLEAR'S Integrated Korean Intermediate 1. I'm curious to know, whether I should continue to Speaking Korean's second volume after these I mentioned, or still purchase the first volume in case there remains anything to learn? This book looks just like something that would suit my way of learning, I hate to learn languages without knowing WHY something goes the way it does. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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