Customer Reviews

Integrated Korean: Beginning 2 (Klear Textbooks in Korean Language)

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

 

 

What you learn in this book is no-nonsense useful stuff. That's the main point. Right from book 1 there is no romanization, a big bonus. Romanization keeps you from ever learning Hangul.

[Audio files should have been provided in mp3 format. Converters are available, but the resulting audio quality is bearable, not more.]* The vocabulary is too limited to university student life. Try to find 'job', for instance. It's not there, only 'arbeit', something you do while studying. Many words appear once and never again. A few words are not listed in any of the book's dictionaries. The impression is the editors don't have a firm grip on vocabulary matters.

*[Later addition] Now the publisher lets you download mp3 files. It takes forever, but the difference in sound quality is dramatic. This is really great news!

I purchased the Integrated Korean set. Many schools use this book in their Korean Curriculum. Because I am too busy (I work 50+ hours a week) to take a course, I purchased the first two beginning books so that I could learn on my free time. I also have Rosetta Stone v3 Korean and Pimsleur Korean. To be more helpful to you all I will briefly touch over them all.

Pimsleur Korean was actually too overwhelming for me. I believe that Pimsleur works with languages that you are use to hearing and can pronounce easily. Korean is not one of those languages. I would have had no problem doing Pimsleur with Spanish, Japanese, or another language. American's must train their ears and mouths for the Korean language because it uses sounds we are not use to.

Rosetta Stone is a good introduction to Korean. It will give you some vocabulary as well as practice reading, speaking and listening. Because it is so easy to repeat a word, it is easier to train yourself.

Integrated Korean starts off going over the basics. It teaches you how to read, write, and stroke order. Though pronunciation explanations use vocabulary words that most people would not typically know. Unless they were a linguistics major, or in a field that focused on teaching people to speak.

Anyways because this is the second of the two books, it builds on what you have learned. You will find that this book is used for the 102 level of Korean Classes, with the first book being the 101 level. You will learn a lot of school-related vocabulary and some additional grammar. There is a lot of cultural information, which is very important since Korea has such strong cultural ties. It will also help make sure you do not offend anyone. I recommend using this in conjunction with Rosetta Stone and then Pimsleur if you wish. You can also find helpful videos online as well as other free resources to help your learning.

I would have liked deeper explanations for things and more structure. Especially with the alphabet and pronunciation - the trickiest part for an American speaker. I would've given it a 3.5 if it was an option.

Out of all the self-paced textbooks available, this series isn't perfect but it does get the job done. This particular textbook (Beginning Level 2) is very useful and contains some of the best explanations of Korean grammar I've ever seen. If you are a native English speaker and want to learn Korean grammar and incidental vocabulary, pick up this book.

Remember this textbook is designed to be used in a classroom; namely the University of Hawaii. It outlines the goals, vocabulary and grammar points quite well and actually fits a self-paced and self-determined student quite well outside of the classroom. The chapters are logically laid out and are never too difficult to follow. This book not only takes it slow, but systemically explains and compares previous grammar points to avoid confusion.

Like the other books in the series, the publication date is dated and needs an update. Almost ten years since the last one. However, unlike the previous book in the series (Beginning Level 1) this book stays pretty natural throughout the text. The situations are mostly quite believable and the appropriate level of speech is used most of the time. I found myself pleasantly surprised at the scripts. It rarely felt like a textbook in that it didn't feel dry.

All in all, it's a relatively cheap and easily obtainable self-study resource for explaining Korean grammar in English. I highly recommend it as an additional if not primary resource for studying Korean.

My wife has been using this book and been very satisfied. I thought the topics for the chapter were very useful, as were the associated grammar patterns and vocab. We're living in Korea and mingle with a lot of Koreans so we're experiencing how Koreans really talk. There's a very helpful link through the University of Indiana Korean language department that correlates with these textbooks. I don't have time to write an extensive review, but this book has been helpful for us as we strive to learn "real Korean" in Korea.

This book might work well in a classroom, but it doesn't work at all for someone trying to learn the language on their own. It moves very fast, and the workbook exercises (particularly the listening comprehension exercises) quickly become so difficult as to be impossible for someone who isn't already used to the sound of the language. Some grammatical concepts are used without being explained, and the grammar index includes references to sections in which the relevant grammar is not explained at all, merely used. All of this is very dejecting, and it surely needn't be that way. The problem, of course, is that there are very few other textbooks around -- in particular, there are very few textbooks that avoid romanization, as this one does. But being the best of a bad lot doesn't make it useful.

I used these books for my Korean class at college. For the Beginning 1 book, we used the second edition, but were told to get the 1st edition of Beginning 2. I would highly recommend getting the second edition instead, because just comparing my Beginning 1 and Beginning 2 books, there is a huge different. The layout of the newer edition one is just so much more convenient and easy to understand. Not only that, but it looks a little nicer, too. If you don't need this version for a class, then definitely get the 2nd edition.

This is a well organized series, and follows pretty much the same layout that the Genki series did for Japanese. It's very controlled, with the first dialog or so taking a few grammar concepts from the previous chapters and introducing new ones as well. You get about 7 or so new grammar points, with maybe 20-30 or so new words per chapter. The task/function sections in the chapters clearly had classroom work in mind, but it's not entirely useless for self learners. I used this as my main study material for the KLPT, and with this book (to beginning 2) plus spaced repetition software managed to score a level 1.

This book is not very well organized and it comes WITHOUT any audio whatsoever. You can download the audio from the Hawaii website BUT - it's only in real audio format which you can only play on your computer with the real audio program. You can't burn the audio to a cd and then listen to it in your car, for example. Or...you can buy the cd for $195!!

No integrated audio is the first deadly sin for a language book. Worse, the audio situation with this book is an UNETHICAL attempt to rip you off. The University of Hawaii should be ashamed.