Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners: Read for pleasure at your level, expand your vocabulary and learn Korean the fun way!

by Olly Richards

"Olly's top-notch language-learning insights are right in line with the best of what we know from neuroscience and cognitive psychology about how to learn effectively. I love his work - and you will too!" - Barbara Oakley, PhD, Author of New York Times bestseller A Mind for Numbers

Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners has been written especially for students from low-intermediate to intermediate level, designed to give a sense of achievement, a feeling of progress and most importantly - enjoyment! Mapped to B1 on the Common European Framework of Reference, these eight captivating stories are designed to give you a sense of achievement and a feeling of progress when reading.

What does this book give you?

- Eight stories in a variety of exciting genres, from science fiction and crime to history and thriller - making reading fun, while you learn a wide range of new vocabulary
-Controlled language at your level, including the 1000 most frequent words, to help you progress confidently
-Authentic spoken dialogues, to help you learn conversational expressions and improve your speaking ability
-Pleasure! It's much easier to learn a new language when you're having fun, and research shows that if you're enjoying reading in a foreign language, you won't experience the usual feelings of frustration - 'It's too hard!' 'I don't understand!'
-Accessible grammar so you learn new structures naturally, in a stress-free way

Carefully curated to make learning a new language easy, these stories include key features that will support and consolidate your progress, including

-A glossary for bolded words in each text
-Full plot summary
-A bilingual word list
-Comprehension questions after each chapter.

As a result, you will be able to focus on enjoying reading, delighting in your improved range of vocabulary and grasp of the language, without ever feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. From science fiction to fantasy, to crime and thrillers, Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners will make learning Korean easy and enjoyable.

Genres: Language, Short Stories, Nonfiction

235 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 10, 2020

Reviews

[Denise Soriano · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let me start by saying that this book is not for intermediate learners, in my opinion it would be better suited for beginners.
Overall, this is just not a very good book, for several reasons. Mainly, the whole book is written in spoken form, meaning all sentences end in 요 even when they’re not part of a dialogue, I find this counterproductive as I believe one of the main goals of this book is to help you start reading like a native would; books intended for native speakers would only use spoken language when it is part of an actual dialogue between characters.
Second biggest issue I had were the conversations, they sound very unnatural, I think at some point characters would switch between formal and informal language which would make them sound rude if it happened in real life. Also words like 그리고 and 그렇지만 are overused throught the book making things sound super awkward.
I think the author could have done a better job at picking the highlighted words, as most of them were pretty basic vocabulary.
Lastly… the stories were sort of terrible. This being language learning book I was not really expecting much, but I found the stories felt rushed and came to a forced ending, or no ending at all (at least one of the stories was left on a cliffhanger), a lot of the characters were kind of clueless, the plot of the stories was quite boring and predictable. I appreciate the author trying to give us variety, but everything was so poorly written that it was kind of hard to get through.
To conclude, I think anyone trying to improve their reading skills in Korean would probably have a better time going through books intended for Korean children and working their way up to more complex texts than reading this book.

[Olga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is that the best book of the year? 🥰

[B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately this is neither fun nor at my level. I picked this up thinking it would be a bit challenging since it's targeted at intermediate learners and I struggle with books aimed at native 12 year olds.

Unfortunately, and shockingly, this book was way too easy. Granted, there were words in there I didn't know. However, they were hardly ever the highlighted words and they were always easy to grasp from context.

For what it's worth, I'm willing to consider that it might be my fault for picking a book that's below my level. I wouldn't give it a low score just for that, so why the 3 stars?

Because it's not fun and not good. The first story introduces a main character (Daniel) that's frustratingly stupid. (Also WHY would you pick a name like Julia for a main character? It's such an annoying name to read in Korean: 줄리아.) The stories aren't really interesting and often too short to truly have been developed into anything but a brief introduction to an idea, and often a pretty generic one.

And the writing style isn't great. There's a lot of repetitive grammar, far more 그리고s and 그렇지만s in weird places that no one but a beginner would use to such an extent. The dialogue is very unnatural, with far too many particles and odd sentence structure, but the descriptive paragraphs are written like spoken language, a world of difference from any native content.

Overall, I feel like this book would make much more sense as a podcast/listening series aimed at high beginners looking to level up to intermediate level (so A2 aiming for B1). It's just not very good as a book :/

[Lore · Rating 2 out of 5]

This would be an okay resource to get high level beginner learners used to longer Korean texts or to add some words to their vocabulary but it is ~absolutely NOT~ for intermediate learners and should not be marketed as such.
Almost all of the sentences end in '-았/었/였어요' form. Instead of forming complex sentences (something you should absolutely be getting used to at intermediate level), it's one 그래서 or 그렇지만 after the other. Not very challenging.

Another thing that bothered me is the names. Mans really picked the names that are the most annoying to read in Hangul. I'm looking at you, 칼 (Carl, but like, also the Korean word for knife). There were also a tad bit too many Western names for my liking. If you're gonna make a book for learners of the Korean language (and by extension its culture and society), why not get them used to more Korean names?

The stories themselves are a bit silly and predictable but that's okay I guess. You can't expect language learners to follow the craziest plottwists. Some of the stories do start out incredibly slow but then get wrapped up really fast. Could've been paced better.

Conclusion: if you have a solid knowledge of ~basic~ simple Korean sentence structure, I think you can already have a crack at this book. It could be a good resource to practice reading fluency and improve vocab. But don't expect any more than that.

[Mila · Rating 1 out of 5]

Feeling the achievement of finishing 200 pages of Korean texts makes me almost understand why this has decent ratings.
It was a strange choice to market the exact same texts labelled as Beginner for other language editions as intermediate for Korean, readers comfortable with this book would still struggle passing topik 2. The stories themselves are... lacking. I understand that beginner and lower intermediate readers will struggle with complicated texts, but from a storytelling or even just common sense point of view the stories are... particular. I went back to go over bits that seemed strange a couple of times in the beginning, thinking I misunderstood or skipped something, only to find that... that was just the story. If reusing the same stories for every language edition of the reader, it would have been nice to at least some efforts into localising the stories to the target language/culture. And keeping sentences simple is nice, but they could have tried to mix it up at least a tiny bit or maybe even build their way up to a slightly more flowing, not 100% staccato style in the later chapters....
Will make sure to do better research and use culturally relevant and/or localised readers in the future.

[Corey Bean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think it's accurate to say that this book is for intermediates because it's too simple. I'd say this book would work OK for beginners looking to familiarize themselves with basic Korean grammar and vocabulary. I wish this book had been advertised as such.

Also... yeah, the stories have quite a few unnatural expressions. As other commenters have mentioned, the overuse of 그리고 and "알아요" are really noticeable. And some of the stories are just plain bad; many of the characters are as dumb as rocks and there are massive, gaping plot holes.

Overall, it's better than nothing, but there are definitely better resources out there for intermediate Korean learners.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is okay for what it is. It's good practice for beginning readers. It was the first book I've read in Korean, but there's still a huge gap between reading this book and native content. It's obvious that the text is just a translation from another language. I wish at least some of them were set in Korea or had Korean characters. The stories were really simple, but even as a beginner, I noticed that some of them sounded really unnatural. Half of the stories are just he said, she said, he answered, she answered. I wish there was more vocabulary. Some stories would be better without dialogue. I would still recommend this book to anybody who wishes to improve their Korean reading skills.

[lina ‎reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

quite a good book, but firstly, it's not intermediate level, and secondly, the whole book is written in 해요체 and not 해라체 as i expected? idk, maybe i am wrong and lack some knowledge on how books are actually written in korean but yeah, overall the book is not bad :)

[Lacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Studied Korean for 6 years, lived in Korea, but haven't kept up with it since. This book was a good way to start picking it back up! Some of these stories were truly wild, too. Keeps you interested.

[Marwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

새로운 어휘를 배울 수 있었지만 지루한 젓 같았어요.

I agree with most people who read this book already. This is too geared up for beginners, and the grammar kinda gets annoying at some points using too much 그리고 instead of using other forms such as 고, 또한 etc.. Also, it would have been nice to use grammar endings other than 요 as this is mainly geared towards beginners/ early intermediate level (which I am currently at). It would have helped a lot.

Honestly it seems that this book was originally written in English then translated to Korean as some parts just seemed a bit off. And the names were super hard to pronounce 😭

But yeah, this is my first time finishing a full length fiction book in Korean. So I’m really happy about this milestone!

Next time I’ll opt for books written by S. Korean authors as I think it might suit me better. But yes, if you’re still a beginner, this book will be very helpful in helping you read faster/ learn new words.

[elizabeth (yyaksok) · Rating 1 out of 5]

i see why this has bad reviews

the 요 usage is terrible. doesn’t it defeat the point of reading literature to learn a language if it’s written so strangely? korean isn’t really written like this. honestly it’s not really spoken like this either. i have no idea why the authors decided to write it ALL with 요, do they think (even beginner) learners can’t figure out how to read literary forms?

the content is a beginner level so it shouldn’t be titled intermediate. skipping towards the end, later stories are more accurately at an intermediate level (at least some vocab). minus the constant 요 and disjointed sentences.

lastly, although a lesser issue, the stories are just not very interesting. this is fine with me, because the main purpose of the book is to learn.

here’s an example of what i’m talking about (this is from the end of the book too, transliterated from the audiobook by me). “…그리고 하늘을 봤어요. 그리고 갑지가 무언가를 봤어요. 처음에는 믿을 수 없었어요. (이름)은 다시 하나를 봤어요. 네, 정말 거기에 있어요. …”

[Madame Histoire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gave it 4 stars at first because it is indeed a well constructed book with available audiobook which does help one practicing the reading without being overwhelmed BUT I have several issues:
- should be advertised as Low-Intermediate
- unnatural and overly simplified sentences
- average stories, entertaining enough to keep on going but disappointing when you arrive at the end
- the Short Stories being all the same in all the languages of Olly's series, there is no Koreans in this book, and in fact some major cultural mistakes
- having to pay for the book and audiobook seperatly

[Beatrice Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book with relatively good knowledge of intermediate grammar but a terrible vocab range and still found it pretty manageable; I could see how more solidly intermediate learners would find this book a little juvenile/too easy to be of any real use. That aside, I found the stories quite interesting & varied, easy enough to read a story a day without feeling too overwhelmed but still challenging enough (for my level) to feel like I'm actually learning something!! 추천해요:)

[Celeste · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book says it's for someone who is at CEFR levels B1 and B2, I found it quite easy as someone at A2. I appreciated that it was pretty good about highlighting new vocabulary and was pretty good practice since it was aimed at learners yet still had fully Korean short stories. I would love to see a more advanced version come out of this for when I reach B2 or C1.

[Floriane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book for those who want to start reading in Korean. Definitely more a beginner-level book than an intermediate one. I bought it along with the audiobook to improve both my reading and listening skills. Thanks Olly!

[Paulina Karolina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not an intermediate book. It is more beginner, maybe higher beginner. Grammar is very basic and sentences are short and kind of choppy. There is no english translation included so maybe this is what makes this book a bit harder.

[Gem]

It's quite easy for an Intermidate level book

[Michaela]

***still reading this, but no point in tracking pages because I reread a lot of it for study

(1월2021년부터 읽고 있다)

[Neha 네하 · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels pretty robotic but okay. Can't say anything about the level. It is similar to it's Spanish version.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just the right difficulty for lower intermediate learners.

[Rania · رانية · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF at 60%, the stories are so monotonous

[Farah Lim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not too bad of a book. I was expecting stories that had meaning in Korea but nevertheless not too bad of a read for an intermediate reader, Just a little too easy for me.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

the stories were kinda dumb and the english names everywhere were annoying, but i still got to learn some versatile vocab which i can’t say about most books on the market that focus on folk tales