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Complete Korean Book/CD Pack (Teach Yourself Languages)
Using both book and CDs, Teach Yourself Korean is the course for anyone who wants to progress quickly from the basics to understanding, speaking and writing Korean with confidence. Although aimed at those with no previous knowledge, it is equally suitable for anyone wishing to brush up existing knowledge for a holiday or business trip. Key structures and vocabulary are introduced in 14 thematic units progressing from introducing yourself and dealing with everyday situations to travelling and making complaints. The emphasis is on communication throughout with important language structures introduced through dialogues on the accompanying recording. The dialogues focus on real-life situations which feature authentic Korean as it is spoken on the street. The explanations draw comparisons with English to illustrate how Korean is both similar and different, rather than introducing a lot of grammatical terminology. There are plenty of exercises to practise the language as it is introduced and two review units to help the learner to monitor progress. The dialogues are given in the Korean script and a romanised version and a section at the back of the book gives English translations.The new edition retains the tried-and-tested structure of the lessons but has been updated to make changes to the romanisation system to make it easier to use. Several new features have been added - Korean script as well as romanisation in the vocabulary boxes - an English-Korean vocabulary to go alongside the existing Korean-English vocabulary - an index of grammatical terms The accompanying CD is available separately (0340912499), as is the book (0340867000).
Audio CD
First published October 22, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 12, 2021
A book that tries to teach you Korean without using Korean characters. Everything is explained through romanized Korean, not 한굴. I am honestly amazed this book made it to the shelves.
March 12, 2021
I don't like the romanization methodology, since I already know the Korean alphabet well. I should have done some research before buying the book. There are other books that do a much better job.
June 13, 2023
This book is a helpful complement to Duolingo for writing practice. I'm still pretty bad though.
May 2, 2015
Firstly: co-author Jaehoon Yeon is also co-author with Ross King of the magisterial, but pedagogically hyperchallenged, Elementary Korean. Miraculously, Teach Yourself Korean is everything that indigestible torture machine is not. I suspect then that E.K. was altogether Ross King's fault.
The nice thing about this book is that everything is there. I find the Korean typeface inferior to every other book's (Colloquial Korean, Living Language, et al.), but quite readable, and at least having a larger type-size than that of the aforementioned E.K. The dialogues, with the Romanization—which version I agree with, incidentally as it properly uses a largely one-grapheme per phoneme approach—and the vocab are within 2-3 pages of each other. I would prefer to see a larger format with the translations also plainly visible, all on two facing pages. The translations of the dialogues have been shunted toward the end of the book: one of those baffling pedagogical nuances that seem to make sense only to the author(s). At any rate, you can photocopy them, and paste them in with their corresponding conversations.
In fact, you can even start with the dialogue tranlations. What's the story about? Work through the conversations until you can start forgetting the English, until you can see/read the word and picture it, or associate it with something else in the conversation you can picture, feel, hear, etc.
If you make the dialogues, vocab, phrases-explanations, translation, and romanized text front and center as the focus for the first month, and learn the alphabet in little doses at the beginning, and don't take the grammar sections and exercises, too seriously to start with (leave most of that grammar stuff for the second month), you'll be in good shape to go further in the language.
The nice thing about this book is that everything is there. I find the Korean typeface inferior to every other book's (Colloquial Korean, Living Language, et al.), but quite readable, and at least having a larger type-size than that of the aforementioned E.K. The dialogues, with the Romanization—which version I agree with, incidentally as it properly uses a largely one-grapheme per phoneme approach—and the vocab are within 2-3 pages of each other. I would prefer to see a larger format with the translations also plainly visible, all on two facing pages. The translations of the dialogues have been shunted toward the end of the book: one of those baffling pedagogical nuances that seem to make sense only to the author(s). At any rate, you can photocopy them, and paste them in with their corresponding conversations.
In fact, you can even start with the dialogue tranlations. What's the story about? Work through the conversations until you can start forgetting the English, until you can see/read the word and picture it, or associate it with something else in the conversation you can picture, feel, hear, etc.
If you make the dialogues, vocab, phrases-explanations, translation, and romanized text front and center as the focus for the first month, and learn the alphabet in little doses at the beginning, and don't take the grammar sections and exercises, too seriously to start with (leave most of that grammar stuff for the second month), you'll be in good shape to go further in the language.
November 24, 2013
DO NOT do what I did and buy this book when you are an absolute beginner. Check out Pimsleur, Talk to me in Korean podcasts, or any of the other Korean language learning tools, but do not buy it. The conversations are too complex for beginners and the explanations are too text-heavy.
The authors obviously wrote this book from a grammar-translation background, as is evident from their "explain, but don't show" approach to grammar. Each chapter tries to cram in too many vocabulary words and too many new grammatical forms with too few examples and exercises. Even people who have studied Korean for years will have trouble getting to the end of this book.
To the authors: introduce grammar more slowly. Don't try to test both new vocabulary and new grammar in the same exercises; it is too much for learners. ADD MORE SCAFFOLDING.
The authors obviously wrote this book from a grammar-translation background, as is evident from their "explain, but don't show" approach to grammar. Each chapter tries to cram in too many vocabulary words and too many new grammatical forms with too few examples and exercises. Even people who have studied Korean for years will have trouble getting to the end of this book.
To the authors: introduce grammar more slowly. Don't try to test both new vocabulary and new grammar in the same exercises; it is too much for learners. ADD MORE SCAFFOLDING.
December 21, 2014
Didn't really like that it used the McCune-Reischauer romanization (I think). It's just because I'm used to the Revised version in all of my books since it's easier to read. It was still helpful anyway. The disc that it came with was no help at all though.
May 17, 2007
I can now read signs in Korean by sounding out the letters. I don't know what they mean, but it sounds impressive.
July 29, 2016
very thorough and not hard to understand for beginners. definitely recommend to use as foundation towards your learning of the Korean language.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews