Good and Bad Points, October 29, 2003

This was my second book on the Korean Language and I am almost finished with it. The first book I had was Teach Yourself Korean- avoid that book if possible folks! It concentrates on romanized Korean. Do yourself a favor...LEARN HANGUL! Anyhow, I found Beginning Korean an easy read (for a Korean grammar book that is). I do not like how the book is laid out, however. The first two chapters are strictly about memorizing a huge list of phrases and expressions. This can be extremely boring to a newcomer to the language. Furthermore, at the beginning you have no idea how these phrases are constructed. My advice is to start at chapter 3 and go back to chapters 1 and 2 when you finish chapter 5 and 6. This way, you'll at least be able to intuit some of the grammatical structure.
One more note on the layout. They wait until, I believe chapter 14 (don't quote me on this), to cover the future tense particles. When I finished chapter 9, which has the past tense, I jumped ahead to learn the future tense. This worked out fine.
There is a TON of vocab in this book (about 1000 items in all). I have not even come close to memorizing them all. However, the book is laid out in such a way that if you memorize the items in chapters 5, 6 and 7, you can understand the grammatical explanations throughout the rest of the book- which is nice.
The CD-rom is OK, maybe a bit fast. Also, I wish they had spoken all of the vocab items on the CD. They only do this for chapter 5, and from there on its just example sentences and dialogs. On an up note, my Korean friends say that the language is relevant and not too archaic.
There is also very little, if any, discussion of the intimate form of verbs. I have found that I use this form most when speaking to friends and loved ones in Korean. The upside to this, is that this book, unlike most Korean textbooks, doesn't spend too much time on the ultra-formal "-hamnida" stuff. I have found that the -yo forms and -aseyo type forms are more than sufficient for daily use.
Anyhow, get this book, its good.

Great Sequel, October 16, 2002
Reviewer: A reader
Very challenging sequel to the Elementary Korean book. This one seems a bit more difficult(as it should be as the material becomes more advanced)......but my Korean friends say the lessons are gramatically accurate and useful. As with the first one, a ton of useful vocabulary and many exercises (with answers in the back of the book)....