Customer Reviews

Elementary Korean: Includes a 74-minute Audio CD

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After studying Korean (on my own using internet sources etc etc) I have decided that this book is definitely by far one of the best books you can get for Korean. It contains an incredible amount of information. Most courses are quite small for Korean and do not contain a great deal, or are hard to manage. I have looked at the Rosetta Stone series for Korean (costing $300) and this $50 book is by far better than that whole program. It is better than any books I have seen in book stores. I have done the Pimsleur course which is a little strange in my opinion. Pimsleur does help with pronunciation a little bit but some of the language structure is a bit weird and not natural for the Korean Language. I feel that ever since I bought this book a couple weeks ago (I am on lesson 6 out of 15 I believe) I am learning at a much faster pace than I ever was before.

1) The grammar in this is excellent. It contains many many grammar points for every chapter and introduces them in a nice order (meaning you get important stuff first unlike some other courses I have looked at where you have to wait till near the end of the course to really dig into some good grammar).
2) The vocabulary consists of a surplus of words that anyone could ever want to learn as they are starting Korean.

I admit, this course is really hard and does contain a lot of information right from the start and might be hard on someone who does not know anything about Korean, but if you have already begun looking into the Korean Language, I highly recommend this. I do not know how good of a job it does teaching Hangul as I already knew most Hangul when beginning this book, but I do know it covered some points and specific irregulars and pronunciation rules that I had not previously known so it probably is very good at Hangul as well. Others have said to do the 2 Hangul chapters first, which might be a good idea to someone who does not know it. It should be a pretty good book for teaching Hangul but I am not entirely sure if it teaches well and easy to understand for someone who does not know Hangul, but it seems to do a good job. The first two chapters on just basic sentences and sayings people should know were alright in my opinion. Chapter 1 is good because it deals with just simple things like yes, no, nice to meet you, thank you, etc...But honestly, the romanization confuses me very very much so I would learn Hangul first (it has both romanization and Hangul in the chapters 1 and 2 because they do not introduce Hangul until chapter 3). The romanization has a chart for how to pronounce all the strange letters they use for romanization and all, and I honestly think Hangul would be much easier to learn than learning romanization used in these two chapters. But if you know the Hangul (which is covered in the book) then chapter 1 is very good. Chapter 2 covers basic information on what a teacher might say in the classroom or the students, which didn't do much for me as I am learning completely on my own. 3 and 4 is Hangul. Chapter 5 is where this book finally really kicks in. Starting with Chapter 5 you have all your lists of vocabulary, your dialogues, and many explanations on grammar. Chapter 5 is where it gets intense.

People have mentioned the audio cd is not very good. I disagree. I think it is excellent. Even though it is just one 74 minute cd (seemed like it wouldn't last very long) it has most anything on the cd you would want being pronounced. It does not give you time to repeat after them or does not say words twice, but it fits a lot of words and spoken Korean on the one cd. You can listen to it and figure out how the word should be said. The woman speaker speaks at a nice pace, while the male speaker is a little faster but still a nice pace in my opinion. Listening to the male speaker helps build your listening comprehension because when speaking with a real Korean it will be just as hard if not harder to understand. The cd is excellent in my opinion.

Lastly, I want to mention the exercises. There are exercises at the ends of the chapters (mainly beginning with Chapter 5 when the real lessons begin) which I highly recommend you doing. Luckily I am highly interested in the Korean language and find it very fun to learn so I can make myself do them. Some may seem a bit dull or long or pointless at first but I know that's not the case. When it says figure out what this is in Korean and write out the WHOLE sentence for each one, I highly recommend doing that. It will greatly help, even if it is a lot of work. It has all the answers (or answers that work - for example if it says translate this sentence into Korean, it will give a correct translation, when there are a couple different ways to translate it. That is the only problem I have found so far. Sometimes its hard to check your answers if your working on your own and they only give one possible solution...but, they do cover an answer for every exercise in the book.).

Overall, I like everything about this book. It covers everything very well.

Since I am looking mostly for reading/writing proficiency I find this to be a great book.

+ The grammar notes are clear and well illustrated.
+ The vocabulary is a lot but not completely overwhelming. The authors try to group closely related words physically close together to reduce the cost of learning new vocabulary.
+ Better than Myondo in presentation of material. Instead of spreading out related grammar material, it tries to present them together.
+ What I think is really great are the pronunciation rules ... you won't find this kind of practicality and detail in most other text. (Now, Myondo is very detailed but describing ssang-chiut as a voiceless alveo-palatal glottalized affricative isn't particularly helpful to me).
+ No Chinese characters are used in this book which is a plus at this level since Chinese characters rarely appear in the main text of popular Korean newspapers anyway
+ The authors actually provide a decent number of exercises with ANSWERS in the back! Now what they need to publish next is a supplementary reading and exercise book.

- I concur with a previous reviewer that the CD does not have enough basic sound examples.

4.5 stars.

As others have said, this book is difficult, but wonderful. It will not hold your hand, and you have to be dedicated to learning the language. Personally, I enjoy that its raw learning without all the fluffy stuff (corny graphics, etc). I love that it is all in Hangul without Romanizations (there are only Romanizations in chapters 1-3). I have used other texts that have full Romanizations and many times they end up hurting you in the end because they are wrong, inconsistant, and you become dependant on them. There is also a good Korean-English/English-Korean glossary in the back in Hangul-alphabetical order (most are not), so you don't really need a dictionary yet, but of course one wouldn't hurt (warning: the dictionary with the big L on the cover is good, but in Romanized-alphabetical order which can be a pain for looking up Hangul words). Here are some things that will help you though:

-Yes, the CD is super fast, but that is the normal speaking speed in Korea. What I did to make it easier to hear was to play the CD in Windows Media Player and use the "Play Speed" function to slow down the CD. It really helped!

-Have a very basic understanding of some linguistics terms such as voiced, unvoiced, unreleased, aspirated. The authors are trained linguistics and sometimes use some jargon, although it is usually explained.

-I highly recommend learning Hangul (the Korean alphabet) before starting this book. The authors do not introduce it (but still use it) until chapter 3, which is very difficult if you do not have a Korean teacher.

-That brings my last point. If you know a native Korean, make sure you use him/her as a resource. That probably goes without saying for any book. However, I have been learning Korean about 90% on my own, and have used this book as my guide fairly successfully (no fault of the book; it is just a HARD language to grasp).

Good luck with your Korean learning!

Want to learn Korean than from what is taught in phrasebooks? Wanting to have a very basic command of the Korean language? Then this book is most likely for you! It's very rare that textbooks on the Korean language are very high quality, this newcomer is of high quality.

The section on the sound systems of a language is what I consider the most vital to a language book. This book accomplishes it real well. It uses a form of IPA alongside "layman's terms." If those don't work out, then use the accompanying CD. It also teaches the writing system, Han'geul, and the allophones (varities of a sound).

Romanization is used at a minimum and disappears around lesson 5. The Romanization isn't McCune-Reischauer or Yale, but it's a modified form of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Each lesson contains several brief dialogues followed by short vocabulary notes in Korean and English. After that section, Korean grammar used in the dialogue is thoroughly explained. Charts and sentence examples are used as learning aids.

There are also exercises on the different politeness levels of Korean and reviews of previous lessons. The end of the book featuers a two-way Korean and English vocabulary and the answer guide.

The authors were certainly correct in saying that this is comprehensive and detailed.

For those of you who have tried to study Korean using the books available in the marketplace you already understand there is a dearth of good learning materials. I think the reason why so many people give this book 5 stars is it is a relative value compared to other textbooks available.

Pros:
The grammar explanations of this book are fantastic as are the vocabulary building sections in the beginning of each chapter.

Cons:
As others have mentioned the dialogues on the CD are are difficult to comprehend for a beginning speaker. More exercises and examples would help to illustrate various uses of phrases and expressions.

I personally think a better series of books for the comprehensive study of Korean is the Integrated Korean series published by Hawaii University Press. The Integrated series stretches the language over a five-level, ten-volume series of books rather than trying to compact the entire language into two textbooks.

THE GOOD:
There's very little in the way of phonetic spelling which forces you to the Korean symbology (don't be put off by this, it's fairly easy to learn and makes you look like you're reading and writing in a secret code).

The Korean type-face has a nice, easy-to-read font. In fact, it's about the clearest I've seen.

There's lots of conversational text (some of it very nearly on the verge of being funny). It revolves around a family, their kids, teachers, and friends. You have a ton of honorific and relationship structures to work with.

THE BAD:
The CD is 'way ('way) too fast. Not only do they speak quickly, but there are hardly any pauses between each exercise. Trying to play it and follow the text is darned near impossible. Though, it does give you a resonable idea of what a native speaker might sound like. Plus, there is a female and male voice, each with a different accent - kinda cool.

ALSO:
I bought this bundled with the Langenschiedt's Korean Pocket Dictionary (the book with the "L" on it). You should know that the books are mutually exclusive. The textbook is Korean and the dictionary is phonetic. You can't use the dictionary to look up words from the textbook!

Hope this helps....

I should start off by saying that the book isn't perfect, but it's by far the best that I've found thus far. I agree that the CD conversations went much too quickly, and the emphasis is on the less formal style of speech (though I suspect they eventually teach the other styles in the higher levels). However, most Korean grammar books are like this. They focus on one level of speech for the almost the whole book, and then switch to a different style later on. So I felt there was no harm done there.

What this book gives that others don't is a very thorough, easy-to-understand explanation of the grammar. I now live in Korea and have bought grammar books written by Koreans, and they tend not to have very good grammar explanations in English.

"Elementary Korean" provides very useful vocabulary, and the conversations are very natural.

One thing I would mention is that there are a couple of words or expressions that (according to my Korean friends) are somewhat outdated. These, however, are few and far between.

I really think that this book is excellent, and I recommend it for anyone who would like a good grasp of and a good start to learning Korean.

I found this book to be good for only conversational Korean. I am currently taking Korean in college and did not find it that useful except for the vocabulary in the back. The book focuses only on informal polite (the -yo form) speech. It does not teach anything on the formal and honorific forms of the language. I was also hoping to find verb conjugations but was disappointed when I found none. If you are planning to buy this book, please note that it focuses on conversational Korean. The book will not help much if you wish to learn formal or honorific Korean.

I used Colloquial Korean and Teach Yourself Korean before this. By comparison this is by far the best book of its kind for English readers, if you already have some basics.

The introductory chapter uses an odd Romanization that most readers would be better off jumping straight to learning the Hangul. Chapter 4 on pronunciation rules is excellent and worth revisiting even after you finished the book.

The grammar is clearly presented and explained in detail. I like particularly the coverage on the different types of future tenses. Verb conjugation is treated thoroughly in Chapter 7. Mastering this crucial chapter will allow you to conjugate almost any Korean verb you come across.

There are plenty of useful vocabulary in each chapter, with closely related words grouped together to ease memorization.

There are plenty of exercises inneach chapter to test your understanding of the text materials. Answers are provided at the end of the book. But unfortunately, there are numerous errors (typos & others) in the exercises that tarnish an otherwise excellent text.

I am ready to tackle the sequel to this book -Continuing Korean.

I've just started studying Korean and this book, so I can't review it in depth. I mostly wanted to pass on some info to fellow Korean students. I will say that I was impressed enough to buy the 2nd volume which also includes a CD. Yes, the CD contains fast speech, but stick with it. You might only be able to repeat part of the phrase the first times through, but eventually you can catch up. Pronunciation is the first threshhold to cross whenever starting another language.

I live in the USA, but I ordered my copies from Amazon Canada. You might wish to look it up there yourself. As of this time they list a new edition coming out. I saved a few bucks and also ordered Assimil Coreen. If you can at least read French well, Assimil has a great course in Coreen (Korean) with tapes or CDs. (Check the Assimil site for ISBN numbers so you can order the version you prefer from Amazon--Amazon has all too brief descriptions, but does include ISBN). Also check out The Sounds of Korean: A Pronunciation Guide--another great CD/book combination with in depth pronunciation exercises.
For less than the cost of Pimsleur Comprehensive you can buy all 4 books. You would then have nearly 5 hours of recorded Korean instead of Pimsleur's 15 hours of WAY too much recorded English and repetitious bits of Korean. Plus, you would learn Hangul and have books full of info!