Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Korean (Teach Yourself Book & CD)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

"Teach Yourself Korean" is, as the last reader said, very good for those who want to learn Basics of Korean... it isn't aimed at Business, and it's definately NOT a Phrasebook (those are terrible anyway). However, I find 2 major flaws with this course. First, aside from the dialouge for each chapter, Korean script is not used. Anyone who wants to learn Korean MUST master its writing system (it's not hard). New Vocabulary for each lesson is done in Romanization. Once you learn Korean script, you will find that reading korean script is much easier than any system of romanization. Well, that can still be remedied with a dictionary, so no harm done really. The second flaw is that one the accompanying tapes, the dialogue is read very slowly. For people who have no prior experience with Korean, this is good, as vowels and whatnot tend to be blended together often which an make distinguishing words rather difficult. But learners with more experience might not like this. It's soo slow sometimes, like this, "An-nyeong ha----se---yo." Anyway, this is overall a good course. "Teach Yourself Korean" combined with "College Korean" should make an execellent selfstudy program for anybody. Sorry this was so long:)

I highly recommend "Teach Yourself Korean" to any beginners at the language. It has entertaining dialogues (not dry like most other textbooks) and teaches things in a systematic format focusing on the practical application of grammar principles supplemented by useful vocabulary. After learning a principle from this book, you always seem to be able to find a way to use it in a real conversation, and my Korean friends have complimented me when I use the expressions on how natural they sound. I have also purchased the more traditional "College Korean" paperback by Rogers, You, and Richards, and would say if one had to go with one or the other, most would be better off with "Teach Yourself Korean." The books weaknesses include using only romanized Korean in the vocabulary sections and grammar explanations (though dialogues are printed in Hangul), and its lack of any kind of index. Using romanized Korean as opposed to Korean script makes verb forms and pronounciation rules needlessly confusing; a good text should include both. This book is an excellent beginners course that won't bore you, but you should get another book to accompany it, such as "Active Korean" by Song-Chol Kim.

Teach Yourself Korean is a great book if you want to learn more than just "tourist phrases." The introduction with Han-Geul was clear and easy to understand. If your first language is English, the grammar and pronunciation rules will seem strange and hard to remember at first, but this is true for most Asian languages. Since Korean is not a tonal language, such as Chinese or Vietnamese, your learning will not be hindered by worries about "singing" the words. Each section includes an introduction listing the aspects of the Korean language you will learn. The dialogues in each section aren't dry either. They contain many colloquial Korean phrases and expressions that are explained later in the chapter. The dialogues are shown in Han-Geul and are followed by McCune-Reischauer romanisations. The romanisations were one of the aspects of the book that could have been improved. Sometimes they were inconsistent with the Han-Geul and left me wondering which pronunciations were correct. The vocabulary boxes were extremely helpful, but since the words were not translated directly under the Han-Geul dialogues, I had to keep flipping pages to understand what I was reading. This ruined the flow of the conversations a little bit. The commentary was the core of the book. It explained aspects of Korean culture and taught me how to construct Korean sentences. Although the authors attempt to keep the explanations simple, some of the grammar commentary sections needed to be read and re-read in order to absorb the information. The upside of this is that repitition reinforces memory. The exercises are varied and cover a wide range of problems. The book recommends that one completes the exercises using Han-Geul, but beginners can use romanistation as well. Some of the answer keys in the back of the book provided answers that seemed strange, and this was a major hindrance for me. I would re-read the grammar commentary to see if I had missed anything, only to find out that we would learn a certain verb-construction or colloquialism in later sections. All in all, this was a great book, but it needs some polishing.

This simple set of CD and a book is as effective as its Pimsleur counterpart if not more. First of all, this one has a book that explains the cultures, and grammars, not to mention the full translation of the dialogues from the CD in both Romanized and actual Korean alphabet. So you learn the spoken Korean as well as reading (and writing if you put in the effort). I have the version with cassettes then I got the CD version, it's even better than before. There are no typos now, and it's better organized.

This book does a good job of introducing basic Korean grammar and vocabulary, but is useless for any serious student. The authors make the mistake of teaching the language in its romanized form, rather than introducing the Korean alphabet--Hangul--from the start. The Hangul alphabet is very easy to learn, and trying to teach Korean without introducing the words in Korean script is a serious, if not fatal flaw. The lack of a cassette guide is equally troublesome. Instead, I would recommend "College Korean" by Michael Rogers, Clare You, and Kyungnun Richards; published by the University of California at Berkeley.

In contrast with other Korean textbooks this one is written not only for business visitors or tourists to Seoul, but also for those who really want to learn basics of Korean and be able to talk with friends about everyday topics. Another advantage is the simplified transliteration, or as they call it, romanization. The way it is done, for instance, in "Korean at a glance" just scares the reader away. In "Teach yourself Korean" romanization is quite readable. The audiocassete is extremely helpful, too. This book makes studying Korean easy and quick!

I bought this book after moving to Korea to help learn the language. I found it a great resource and easy to use. I also thought that it helped me as a English teacher in Korea by teaching a lot of useful classroom dialogue, as well as work related things, like how to great spouses etc. I worked through this book on my own and found it was extremely possible to learn from and the excercises at the end of each chapter really emphasize you learning the Korean. I would say that if you are like me and finding yourself suddenly surrounded by Korean this book is a great way of demystifying it.

This is a great book in many ways. It's not dry like most other texts, it has a lot of humour and useful grammatical tips. HOWEVER, the use of romanisation is annoying and inconsistent (why write "sojwu" instead of "soju"? It's absurd).

The authors should re-release the book and scrap the romanisation, COLD TURKEY. Instead, package the tape together with the book and sell them as a unit, so students can learn the proper Hangul pronunciation that way.

At the moment, I would say that the "Korean Through English" series (Hollym) surpasses this book. However, it is still a good book and has taught me a lot. Get rid of the romanisation (including the McCune-Reischauer system), sell the tape with the book, and you've got a five-star course.

I would recommend this book to most beginners. It helps you learn how to speak Korean, but this book alone is not enough. It would still be difficult to understand native Korean speakers. There are not enough excercises to really master the language. I am able to order at a restaurant, and tell Koreans that I can speak a little, but I can't understand everything. In most cases, the Korean conversation ends right there, and we go back to speaking English.

First of all, I am probably just restating other people's comments, but anyway, "Teach Yourself Korean" is a good foundation book. The phrases it teaches are definately useful, as the first chapter teaches the reader how to order Korean food. The book encourages the reader to learn to read the Korean written language, although I would say to study the written language somewhere else. The book gives a short explaination, but it is meant primarily for practical spoken learning.
A few drawbacks is that the romanization is not the type of romanization that is used in South Korea these days, so it can lead to confusion. Another thing that took me a while to figure out is how to properly use the "neun" and "reul" suffixes. You really need to dig for the explaination to a very vital part of Korean.
In conclusion, I recommend this book, if it's taken seriously and studied hard, a reader can learn a great grasp of Korean. Korean is a beautiful language and I think everyone should learn it. *smile*
- Keith