Gathering materials for Korean (Language Programs, Books & Tapes) Language Learning Forum

Gathering materials for Korean
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Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes

11 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

susjosa
Newbie
United States
Joined 5427 days ago
4 posts - 4 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese

Message 9 of 11

30 November 2010 at 7:21am | IP Logged

RVFA wrote:

susjosa wrote:

-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.

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.

I don't mind so much the order the information is presented, as long as the book does not contain relatively outdated information. Do you find that this occurs in Active Korean?
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 10 of 11

30 November 2010 at 4:36pm | IP Logged

Hm yeah, that could be a problem, the latest edition I can find of Active Korean is from 2002, while the latest edition of Elementary Korean is from 2009. But I am not sure if Active Korean is just re-printed or if it has actually been updated, it seems more like re-prints of the 2000 edition, which makes it comparatively outdated to Elementary.
Korean is a modern language so certain expressions can become outdated quite fast.
I have noticed myself that my main Korean textbook 'Beginner's Korean' (2007) has a lot more modern expressions than my Active Korean (2002), even some of the pronunciations are different. Actually one of the reasons I do Beginner's Korean first is to learn modern Korean, the reason I then use Active Korean is to re-inforce everything, especially grammar.

So overall Elementary seems like a better choice: more modern, has audio, has a sequel.
It seems like a safer choice.

1 person has voted this message useful

noriyuki_nomura
Bilingual Octoglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 5150 days ago
304 posts - 465 votes

Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, French^C2, German^C2, Italian^C1, Spanish^B2, Dutch^B1
Studies: Turkish^A1, Korean

Message 11 of 11

30 November 2010 at 4:52pm | IP Logged

I would personally avoid learning materials, which are targeted at Japanese speakers, like plague. Sometimes, I have this impression that Japanese publishers have no clue about language education (likewise for Japanese books/materials that are meant for people learning other languages such as Japanese, French, German etc). They just constantly produce tons of books (and audio CDs) so as to reap as much profit as possible from the reigning Korean wave in Asia....

Edited by noriyuki_nomura on 30 November 2010 at 8:44pm

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