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Gathering materials for Korean | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| mikey Newbie United States Joined 5246 days ago 13 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Korean | Message 1 of 11 20 November 2010 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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So after many years of saying that I'd like to learn Korean, I think I might just begin! I'm really writing to see what others think of the materials that I'm considering using in teaching myself:
Pimsleur Korean Living Language- Spoken World: Korean Teach Yourself Korean 2010 ed. (I know this one gets bashed a bit but after seeing LaoShu's youtube review of the "Complete" course published not too long ago, and learning of the improvement by the addition of more Hangul script, I think I might give it a go. it's fairly cheap anyway) Colloquial Korean Hippocrene's Beginner's Korean Sounds of Korean- University of Hawaii Press Elementary Korean- Ross King Ph.D., Jae-Hoon Yeon, and Jaehoon Yeon Ph.D Integrated Korean Beginning 1- Young-Mee Cho, Hyo Sang Lee, Carol Schulz, and Ho-Min Sohn So what do you all think? I know it's quite a bit, but I figured there's no harm in having a decent amount of materials at your disposal. Edited by mikey on 20 November 2010 at 7:10pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| crafedog Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5628 days ago 166 posts - 337 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean, Tok Pisin, French | Message 2 of 11 20 November 2010 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
Personally I'd get the Teach Yourself Korean book (and possibly the Colloquial Korean book) and throw it out the window. Really crap. Pimsleur Korean - worked well to improve my friend's accent. A bit slow going though as others have noted. You could possibly replace this with website material from Korean101 or TalktomeinKorean (I think those are the addresses). Either way, a listening heavy course as your starting point is a good idea. Hippocrene's Beginner's Korean - never heard of it before this so I have no opinion. Sounds of Korean - very detailed and good but it can be a bit much for a total beginner in the language/if you're not used to phonetics. I found this useful to come back to when I wanted to fix my pronunciation later on intermittently. Some really important information in there though. Elementary Korean - Good. Pretty intense but fairly clear and extensive. If you can get through the book you can go onto 'Continuing Korean' and don't forget the website for support. Integrated Korean series - I've heard good things about this series and I've browsed through them a couple of times. It looks pretty good and pretty clear. I think in higher levels the difficulty of the grammar they teach can be a bit erratic but that seems to be a common problem in Korean course books. Personally these are the ones I used/my favourites: Speaking: Active Korean 1-4 - Great for speaking practice so if you get a speaking partner then you can practice with this. Grammar: Speaking Korean books 1 & 2 by Francis Park - great books. Dry as heck but very extensive. Pure grammar so if the grammar's giving you a problem or you want to focus on that then give them a try. Vocabulary: Darakwon's 2000 Essential Korean Words for Beginners - good for shadowing (look on Youtube and Arguelles for details on this method if you're unfamiliar with it). Simple sentences. The example sentences aren't translated but they're typically low level so it's not a problem. Reference: Darakwon's Korean Grammar in Use - a good, friendly reference book for times when Speaking Korean is a bit outdated/you want to see it in different forms. I hope this helps. Good luck. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mikey Newbie United States Joined 5246 days ago 13 posts - 14 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Korean | Message 3 of 11 21 November 2010 at 3:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Oh wow, thanks for a very thorough response!
What makes the TYS and Colloquial books so bad? I will most definitely check out/keep in mind your recommendations. Knowing me, I will probably end up investing in all of them over time haha 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RVFA Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 4992 days ago 13 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hungarian | Message 4 of 11 27 November 2010 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think you could group Teach Yourself, Colloquial, and Living Language together into one group, because they are all not so good as textbooks. They can still be useful though - if you are new to a language, especially a more difficult one like Korean, it is helpful to first work through a less detailed book to get a basic notion of how the language is structured. I don't think it matters much which of them you pick.
After that you could start with one of the textbooks - Beginner's, Integrated, or Elementary. I happen to use Hippocrene's Beginner's Korean myself as one of my basics-books. The only bad thing about the book is that there are too few exercises. So I make my own extra grammar and translation exercises, which I actually base on my Japanese textbook (Japanese for Everyone). Other than that I am very happy with the book: it has modern and practical vocabulary, the grammmar is explained clearly and is quite comprehensive, and the reading dialogues are realistic and natural-sounding. I did a rough count and found that it covers about 1500 words. The audio is alright but they speak at natural speed, for good or bad. However the book is quite rigorous, it requires alot of effort from the learner. The Integrated-series seems to be the most popular series around. The advantage of using this series is that it takes you far into Advanced-level Korean. I have looked in some of the books and they seem very thorough with alot of exercises and such. You have to buy 10 textbooks to cover everything, but you can find many of them second-hand at low cost. The main complaint I have heard about this series is that they may not be the best for self-learners, but looking at the exercises I do not agree with that statement. This series also seems much less rigorous than both Hippocrene's and Elementary, so if you want a more gradual approach and plan to get to advanced levels this series could be a very good option to continue with. I have looked at the Elementary Korean and its follow-up Continuing Korean, they also seem very good, but many complain that they are too rigorous and therefore hard to work with. This is highly subjective, but I would question language books that are not rigorous, people are too lazy in my opinion, or maybe they think Korean is easy. The only reason I never bought these books is because they are quite expensive. Anyway both books cover basics + intermediate, so that's good. Since you already have the first Integrated book as well the first book by Ross, I'd say pick one of them to continue with. The first book by Ross 'Elementary' is roughly equal to Integrated Beginners 1 & 2, the second book 'Continuing' is equal to Integrated Intermediate 1 & 2. The main difference is that the Integrated series have books that continue to 'Advanced' and 'High Advanced' levels, although these are mainly reading-based books. But even if you do the Ross-series you can just get an advanced grammar book and do heaps of reading, and thusly match the content of Integrated Advanced & High Advanced. This page may give you good ideas on how to progress: Textbooks used in colleges and universities My only recommendation to you now is get started on learning Hanja (the Chinese script used in South Korea) as soon as you can read Hangul. The book that I use is Grant's 'A Guide to Korean Characters'. There are probably others around but this one is very easy to find a copy of. It always helps to see what paths others are taking, so this is my rough plan: 1a. Beginner's Korean (Hippocrene) + Grants Hanja-book 1b. Active Korean: a functional approach + Grant 2. Modern Korean: An Intermediate Reader + Grant 3. Korean Grammar for International Learners + its workbook + Grant 4. Using Korean: A Guide To Contemporary Usage + Grant + Korean Reader for Chinese Characters 5. "An advanced korean grammar book" + Grant + intermediate readers (DLI, online stuff) 6. Selected Readings in Korean + Grant 8. Readings in Modern Korean Literature + Grant 9 -> infinity. Read, read, read, read, read...DLI advanced etc.,... Edited by RVFA on 27 November 2010 at 12:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6104 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 5 of 11 27 November 2010 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Easy Korean for Foreigners is good. Comes with CDs too.
Lots of on-line resources to consider as well. Sogang University, for example, has a lot of materials on-line. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| susjosa Newbie United States Joined 5427 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 11 27 November 2010 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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-Just popping in with a question of my own-
I see that Active Korean: a Functional Approach is a part of your plan on studying korean RFVA. What do you think of it? I am deciding between this and Elementary Korean for now + Basic Korean: A Grammar and Workbook. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| RVFA Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 4992 days ago 13 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hungarian | Message 7 of 11 28 November 2010 at 10:52am | IP Logged | ||
I think it is a good book, like all textbooks it has some good aspects and some bad. It works very well for self-study because the grammar explanations are clear and there are enough exercises to train the grammar well. The vocabulary it covers is also good: about 1700 words. It is neither college-focused nor business-focused. It also covers alot about Korean culture. The only thing I do not like about it is that it covers all speech levels at once, from deferential to intimte, and it does this from the beginning. It is not a serious problem though, when you read the dialogues you can just transfom them into polite-form in your head, problem solved. I have also looked at Elementary a few times in my old university library, and it seems very good too, the only weird thing is that they don't cover the script until lesson three. Both books are perfectly good to use, I can easily find faults with any book I look at, I have developed a philosophy of working with the books I use. When I first got Active Korean, Elementary Korean was not around yet. If it had been I would most likely have gotten Elementary instead, solely because it has a sequel book at the intermediate level: Continuing Korean. So if I had to make the same choice today, I would have chosen Elementary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4988 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 8 of 11 28 November 2010 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't gree as for the coloquial series, they are quite good.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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