Korean for Beginners: Mastering Conversational Korean (Includes Free Online Audio) Paperback – August 10, 2010

I had already been learning Korean on my own for about 9 months when I purchased this and a few other physical textbooks to try. This was by far my favorite of the bunch. The text is incredibly easy to read and really entertaining without sacrificing effectiveness. At first, I found the author's attempts at humor to be a bit obnoxious, but I came to really appreciate it further into the text.I am, however, not certain how great of a resource this would be to a true beginner of Korean. This served my purposes perfectly, I wanted to reinforce the information I was getting in my online lessons and have it presented a different way. I think someone using this as their first resource however would be left really confused. The author, for example will use a lot of example sentences throughout the book without explaining all of the grammar within the sentences and essentially why that sentence means what the author is telling you it means. A lot of time he does a good job of explaining the points relevant to the current lesson, but I imagine someone would be confused in the early lessons when they've only been explained a fraction of the sentence. I also don't necessarily like the way vocab is introduced and I personally don't even consider the vocab in this book because of that. However, the ease of reading could greatly outweigh all of these points. A true beginner could possibly read through this, not necessarily to study strictly from, but to get a broad and simple introduction before tackling harder texts.Regardless, this is definitely a great resource and I'd highly recommend, but would also suggest that it's supplemented with other resources for sure.

This is a great book for beginners. For a beginning student of Korean it would be very difficult to have any conversation with a Korean speaker, let alone UNDERSTAND anything other than greetings etc. Korean is a very difficult language and the verbal endings require experience and ample practice to comprehend and use. This book is a fun addition to any library of Korean Language books and offers a unique perspective due to its layout and delivery.For those moving beyond the beginning level, two things in addition to this book would be; 1) a live Korean speaker to help with pronunciation of the very different sounds of the Korean Language (This is very important to avoid the very easy bad pronunciation habits that will set in without a teacher). And 2). Comprehensive Korean grammar and vocabulary texts. The materials available in the US are not very good at all, and I would suggest some of the grammar and texts offered by Korean Textbook importers that have been written for foreign language learners of Korean by Korean Universities. Although some may be found on Amazon in scattered fashion, they are unjustifiably high priced. To avoid appearing to be an advertisement, I cannot name these, but these would be texts produced by the Korean Language departments of Korean Universities. Korean origen grammar texts are also useful. An internet search will allow you to find an importer with more reasonable fees.

I like this book a lot. I've been trying to learn '' for several months and although I had memorized all the letters, I was struggling to remember all the various pronunciation rules and to gain speed in recognizing them so that I could achieve word recognition. I found Amen's and Park's explanations very easy to understand and, more importantly, very easy to put into practice. The tone is engaging, and I appreciation the combination of language teaching and introduction to aspects of Korean culture.Some of the negative reviews commented on the non-traditional order in which concepts are introduced (introducing grammar concepts before basic greetings). I actually chose this book based in part on that description. I am in the US trying to learn Korean so that I can read Korean novels (and understand Korean movies/tv), and I really just want to understand as quickly as possible how the language is structured so that I can start to read/listen to the language. For my purposes, the organization of this book is a pleasant change from language textbooks that force you through greetings and basic conversations before teaching you how to recognize nouns and verbs.I also appreciate seeing emoji in a text about how language is used to communicate. Online communication is a huge part of daily life, and I like that the authors acknowledged that in creating this textbook.I bought Elementary Korean and its workbook along with this text because I knew I would want more practice exercises than a single book would provide, but I'm starting with this one, and I'm very, very happy with it.