I went shopping with a friend on Saturday in 종각 for English books. She can't speak English much at all, she always says "영어 가르쳐줘~~ABC에서 ㅋㅋㅋ". Anyway we're looking at the books (we linger in the 어린이영어 section for awhile ㅋㅋ) and we come to some conversation books. She starts looking at some travel phrasebooks and I pick up these 엉어시력 급상승 books.
I ended up grabbing two, one for conversation and one for daily life expressions. I swear they're both white gold. They're both divided into different sections for different kinds of expressions, and they don't just give direct translations of phrases. Rather, they link up all the English expressions with the practical equivalent in Korean, matching in actual meaning for the expression as a whole rather than for each word. And they're more complex, interesting and useful expressions than I have seen elsewhere. And most of them are ready to use, though I think some are more useful than others so I'm going to check with friends on some of them.
Later that night (well, early the next days morning) I was eating Samgyeopsal with a Korean buddy and my crazed American friend and he was pissed off about some girl in a club and a bit drunk. His Korean is strange, he can't read 한굴 but he can use 욕 very well. So I start making fun of him and he starts insulting me in Korean but he's drunk so all he can say is "개새끼야" over and over again. The nearby tables are looking annoyed so I pull out the books I bought and start insulting him back with more sophisticated language (까불지 마! 진정해!) and the other tables seemed amused by that. So the books seem versatile.
Of course, these books are mostly phrases in a vacuum (though grouped in useful blocks) so they're something you'd probably want if you're at an intermediate stage and want to try and amp up your conversations skills. For grammatical context and such you'll need other books but they are welcome additions to my growing library of korean study books and should help me to communicate with greater ease and fluency if I memorise some of these expressions.
