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Recommended Korean Textbooks

xflibble
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Postby xflibble » May 23rd, 2008 8:45 am

I think all of the books are deficient in some way. My perfect book/study aid would have -

a) Audio dialogues + practice, at varied speeds.
b) Separate vocab audio for each lesson
c) Audio exercises and answers for each lesson.
d) A methodical approach to introducing vocabulary in order, in the way that they are arranged in the various vocab study books (Survival 1000, functional next 2000, conversational next 3000).
e) Have a reasonable amount of vocabulary repetition so that the more difficult words stick.
f) Be pocket sized, so that I can carry it around with me.
g) Highlight Hanja patterns alongside vocabulary, as in Whitlock's book and the Handbook of Korean Vocabulary.
h) Have memorable stories. It seems to help things stick.

As it stands right now, you'll have to use a bunch of different books to get all of this. It's slow, painful and inconvenient.

Of the books I use, you can find
a) in most of them. The best audio of the books I have so far is in the Yonsei University 100 시간 한국어 series, although there are some dialogue errors in book 3. Audio in 'Teach yourself Korean' is too slow to be much help.
b) in books 1 and 2 of 100 시간 한국어, but they drop the pronunciation practice words in 3. Grr.
c) Teach Yourself Korean does this for a few chapters. It's great when they do, annoying that they don't do more of it.
d) Korean Through English claims to do this. I find the other books are all a bit random in their vocabulary selection.
e) Korean Through English does this reasonably well. Most other books not so well.
f) Teach Yourself Korean is the only worthwhile contender here. I love being able to shove it in my (big) pockets.
g) Only in the premium services on this site right now, as far as I know.
h) Korean Through English got this right. Teach Yourself Korean has reasonable dialogues too. You can tell that book is by an Englishman, as by chapter one you can ask 'Where's the pub?' and be able to order a beer :) The dialogues in Yonsei's 100 시간 한국어 are really dull.

So there are good points in all three of those books, but currently you'll need to supplement them with
- podcasts,
- Hanja vocabulary books (Whitlock's 'A radical approach' or 'A handbook of Korean Vocabulary)
- Word frequency vocabulary books (Korean Essential Vocabulary 6000 for Foreigners or Survival Korean Vocabulary)
- A grammar reference (Yonsei University's Korean Grammar for International Learners is good)
- A good dictionary (Minjeung's Essence Dictionaries seem the best in my experience).
- 'Making out in Korean' for translating swearing :)
- Something on idioms. I don't have much here, but have picked up 'How Koreans Talk'. I'm yet to find out how useful it is, so I would take Austin's advice.

That's my current set of self-study books. Any opinions/improvements on my selections, or categories that I've missed? I think I covered how to start a while back in other forum thread. I still recommend Teach Yourself Korean as a good starting point for self-studiers, but it doesn't work for everyone.

Anyway, would love for someone to create a text that addresses all of my points :)

Jared

xflibble
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Postby xflibble » May 23rd, 2008 8:48 am

Oh, I missed a category - Books that help you read/write Hanja, as opposed to just understanding word roots. I've read a couple, but haven't seriously attempted to study reading/writing Hanja yet.

Again, my feeling is that different books on this topic are useful in that they all present different ways that might help you remember how to write them. Pictorial Sino-Korean Characters is old, but it's mnemonic devices looked quite helpful.

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shanshanchua
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Postby shanshanchua » May 23rd, 2008 10:27 am

Now that's an extremely tall order!! :D

When I first started learning Korean, I used the Declan software, which has 15 lessons on basic grammar, with vocabulary weaved into the lessons. It has quite a lot of exercises (for both vocab and grammar), which I really like. The audio is good too. There is a separate software purely for vocab, and you can download many many files from their website, all categorised (verbs, nouns, military terms, body parts, seasons etc etc) and in order of frequency of use (100 most common verbs etc.). This also comes with exercises. The only thing is, it's not as "entertaining" as podcasts :D , and the grammar stops at 15 lessons (so only for beginner level). And you can't ask anyone questions, not like on this site. You can download it for a limited period trial.

I do think there's no shortcut way of learning a language. No single textbook or software can fill all the gaps.

austinfd
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Postby austinfd » May 25th, 2008 11:09 am

xflibble wrote:- Something on idioms. I don't have much here, but have picked up 'How Koreans Talk'. I'm yet to find out how useful it is, so I would take Austin's advice.


:-) Those books (on pg 1 of this thread) are really good for learners who have a decent command of grammar. There is ZERO English to explain the idioms, so be forwarned! I've made the mistakeof buying books above my level before...

Anyway, I also have "How Koreans Talk". I really like it. It will introduce a proverb or idiom, give an English equivalent (or translation) and then explain in a paragraph or two about the origin and usage. My complaint... it states the idiom as a flat sentence, and there are no dialogs to show you how to make use of the idiom and put into a conversational sentence.

If you are a beginning to intermediate (on KCLASS) student, I'd recommend How Koreans Talk as a place to start. Most of the KCLASS intermediate grammar will get you through those other books ( 살아있는 한국어) as long as you also have a great dictionary!
Image

I'm making some videos!: http://www.youtube.com/user/austinfd

xflibble
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Postby xflibble » May 27th, 2008 6:21 am

My grammar is fine, my vocab sucks :) Getting words to stick in my ageing brain is difficult, particularly as I'm not immersed in the language. I will definitely check out the grammar book you've listed when I'm in Korea next year.

On the plus side for self-studiers, compared to when I first started studying 6-7 years ago, the selection and quality of books has improved a great deal. I still think we have a long way to go though...

eejot
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Postby eejot » July 16th, 2008 8:47 am

I can't believe no one has mentioned the Ganada series (Korean for Foreigners): 6 levels, good audio, drill practice, workbooks available, and reasonably priced. They're my main traditional text.

I have used the older Yonsei books, which were also well written with drill practice and good grammatical explanations, but they didn't have any audio.

All the major universities produce books of a decent quality these days: Sogang, Ehwa, Kyunghee, SNU, etc. The list compared to a few years ago is much greater.

And if you speak French, you may want to look at Assimil. I have used Assimil courses for basically every other language I have studied and have never been disappointed.

For vocabulary books, you have the older Handbook of Korean Vocabulary - which is back in Australia and therefore not much use to me these days, kk ...And there is Surival Korean Vocabulary from Bryan Park (Nexus) - about 20'000W with CD, roughly 6000 most frequent words broken into categories and I'm loving having a dedicated vocabulary book that is actually like the vocab books for all other major languages.

whistleblower
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Postby whistleblower » August 8th, 2008 8:37 am

Nice thread I have several study books which is complemented by Koreanclass101. The books that I have bought all have positive points to consider and the favourite that I have bought is the 연세 한국어 series. They used to old books which were really poor but their new series are very good quality and have introduced a vocabulary book. So the books that I have are:

1. 연세 한국어 (Workbook and Textbook)
2. 연세 대학교 - 한국어 기본어휘 가나다라 (Korean vocabulary - the good thing about this is that it is all in Korean with Korean explanations so I love to work through the meanings in Korean and then check later. It really pleases me when I am correct in the meanings).
3. Survival Korean (Stephen Revere)
4. Survival Korean Grammar (Stephen Revere)
5. Arirang Korean Basics 1 & 2 plus audio and video
6. Gateway to speaking Korean

I also watch about 5 hours of TV per day and listen to the radio, Koreanclass101 podcast in the car, and try to speak as much as possible but still feel like a beginner.

:(

Hopefully one day I will be able to master this language.

ryans_class
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Postby ryans_class » August 9th, 2008 12:00 am

austinfd wrote:The one that really helped me when I first got here is "Survial Korean" by Stephen Revere.


I have found the Survival Korean Grammar book to be quite useful also, however the editors haven't proof read the text very well as there are too many mistakes in there for my liking. (I am only a beginner, so the mistakes must be pretty bad for me to spot them).

regards
Ryan

owbEe
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Postby owbEe » August 18th, 2008 12:06 pm

the_haunted_boy wrote:My favorite is Elementary Korean
http://www.amazon.com/Elementary-Korean ... 0804836140
And its sequel Continuing Korean
http://www.amazon.com/Continuing-Korean ... 080483430X
There are very through and sure to be helpful.


Hi everyone!

I also like Elementary Korean. It's also my favorite.

I never thought that it has a sequel. Maybe if I get enough money, or if I get my own job I'll try and buy it.

Is the second book good enough? I wanna know.

Thanks!

pucca246
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Postby pucca246 » September 2nd, 2008 3:54 pm

My Korean friend bought me this book while i was in korea - "Active Korean 1" by language educational institute Seoul national university Moonjinmedia.

It has a cd for audio and goes through lessons step by step, the only problem I have is when it says "practice with partner/classmates"! as I am all alone here so that part does not work - but on the whole it is a good and is split into sections and subsections with side notes on each page with reference in more detail at the back.
I am working my way through this book and find the lessons helpful - just need to get my memory to work better then i will be good!

shanshanchua
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Postby shanshanchua » July 15th, 2009 6:14 am

I came across this relatively new Korean textbook (published end 2008), and it looks pretty good for beginners. Of course all that's covered in the book is covered here at KC101 :) but for those who like to work through textbooks/workbooks, I think this is a fairly good one.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/041577 ... sbs_02_02#

Gudrun
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Korean Usage Book

Postby Gudrun » July 15th, 2009 2:48 pm

I would highly recommend Miho Choo's book Using Korean: A Guide to Contemporary Usage. It's available on Amazon.
It's not a textbook, and there is no audio, but it's a great book for using Korean and it helped improve both my speaking and writing skills. It has many, many example sentences to illustrate certain usage rules. It's almost like a more detailed reference grammar.

carsont
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Re: Korean Usage Book

Postby carsont » July 17th, 2009 12:46 am

Gudrun wrote:I would highly recommend Miho Choo's book Using Korean: A Guide to Contemporary Usage. It's available on Amazon.
It's not a textbook, and there is no audio, but it's a great book for using Korean and it helped improve both my speaking and writing skills. It has many, many example sentences to illustrate certain usage rules. It's almost like a more detailed reference grammar.


I second that.
It's basically a book that assumes you're familiar with all of the basic grammar, and focuses on teaching you when it's appropriate to use one expression over another. While I don't think I'm quite at the level the book is intended for yet, I've found that the explanations of how to decide between certain critical, basic structures (like politeness levels, 이/가 vs. 은/는, -을래/-을까/-겠어, &c) is fundamentally different from and much more thorough than those I've seen elsewhere. And it always provides a wealth of examples.

shanshanchua
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Postby shanshanchua » July 17th, 2009 5:38 am

Miho CHoo's book looks very good indeed. His/her??'s other book on vocab and Hanja characters is also in my wish list :)

xflibble
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Re: Korean Usage Book

Postby xflibble » July 31st, 2009 9:58 am

Gudrun wrote:I would highly recommend Miho Choo's book Using Korean: A Guide to Contemporary Usage. It's available on Amazon.
It's not a textbook, and there is no audio, but it's a great book for using Korean and it helped improve both my speaking and writing skills. It has many, many example sentences to illustrate certain usage rules. It's almost like a more detailed reference grammar.


Yeah, I'll second that. I picked it up since my last post :)

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