jeff_lindqvist wrote:Thanks to everyone for the replies so far! This is really a job-related topic - our library doesn't have a course for Korean, so I got a purchase suggestion yesterday (English as the teaching language is OK, and preferably a course including romanization). Anyway, I see that the Elementary/Continuing/Advanced series is also available, as are Korean for Beginners (9780804841009, incl. CD-ROM
), Read and Speak Korean (9780071768719, also with CD) and a couple of others. If Elementary Korean (or TY Korean or Colloquial Korean - has anyone here used either?) seems to be good enough, I think we'll get it. Not everyone is a hardcore polyglot and we try to adapt our purchases so that they match demand.
To some embarrassment I've picked up a bunch of Korean courses through Amazon and eBay and they'd probably overwhelm the Korean language learning section at most public libraries. Since you're thinking of a general audience, I'll limit myself to commercial courses which are a combination of text and audio. For the record, I've been using "Korean Language for a Good Job 1" and "Korean Made Simple 1" for a while now while the others languish.
*Common to all of the following is that the first few units or the introduction of the book for beginners (e.g. "Volume 1") focus on pronunciation and learning Hangul. The usual set-up of chapters with a dialogue or two followed by notes, exercises and vocabulary lists begins after.*
1a)
Elementary Textbook + CD (King & Yeon)
1b)
Elementary Korean Workbook + CD (King & Yeon)
1c)
Continuing Korean + CD (King & Yeon)
1d)
Advanced Korean + CD-ROM (King, Yeon et al.)
- 3-part course with the elementary set comprising textbook, workbook and CD. "Continuing" set is a book with audio CD while "Advanced" is a book with a CD-ROM containing a supplement in .pdf for learning Hanja ; no audio there.
- I'd say that "Continuing" and "Advanced" are more suitable for a classroom than the independent learner even though there are answer keys to the exercises, and audio for "Continuing". "Elementary" is a little more useable independently because of the workbook that provides extra practice which could be hard to arrange outside a classroom, but it still isn't as great for learning on your own as you might gather from the reviews of the 5-star brigade on Amazon.
- A big drawback for me is that the vocabulary lists for every chapter in the books are quite long and it's a lot to remember when you're a beginner. Some of the explanations of grammar are a little long-winded, not to mention somewhat quirky by taking an unusual approach to teach conjugation which appears formally starting in Chapter 7 of the "Elementary" textbook. A tutor or teacher would be helpful here in particular.
- Romanization and IPA are in the first few chapters of the elementary textbook (these deal with pronunciation), but when you get started for real on Chapter 5 of that volume, then it's Hangul only.
2)
Colloquial Korean (Pyun & Kim)
- Typical course in the "Colloquial" series with dialogues, notes on grammar and culture, exercises and answer keys.
- All dialogues are presented in Hangul, Romanization (*blech*) and translation to English
- Lengthy introduction introducing sounds and Hangul, a fair bit of grammar thrown about in every chapter which would be less intimidating if one already has a bit of background or a tutor/teacher.
- Not enough exercises for my liking.
3)
Teach Yourself Get Started in Korean + CD (Yeon)
- This is rather like most "Colloquial" and "Teach Yourself" courses but goes a little more slowly. It also doesn't cover quite as much as the other regular Korean courses in those series.
- Romanization in the notes on grammar and vocabulary lists.
- Answer keys in the appendix
- Each of the 10 chapters is focused on a theme with notes on grammar following the dialogues, and then exercises.
- I liked the dialogues and the variety of exercises, although I somehow couldn't get things to stick as I moved through the course. It could have been the sequence of how the author introduced grammar and vocabulary. Maybe someone else would have more success.
4)
Living Language Korean, Complete (Roh)
- Each chapter is divided into chapters, divided into phrases or wordlists to memorize as in the first part of the "Beginners" volume interspersed with notes on grammar and exercises, or containing a theme (e.g. shopping) with an introductory dialogue followed by notes on grammar and exercises. Answers to exercises are provided in footnotes below the exercises rather than in an appendix
- Romanization is used in the first 5 chapters of the beginner's volume adjacent to the Hangul - very distracting for me. It's Hangul only afterwards.
- I stopped using this course after a while because the pace was far too low and in many ways I felt as if I were being taught through a phrasebook augmented by notes on grammar.
- Audio for exercises, phrases and dialogues, as well as audio that's similar (but not keyed identically) to textbook which is rather nice since you have to think a little outside the box while still having a chance to figure out what to say or what's being said because of how it's just a variation of what's taught in the books.
- Exercises include translation, fill-in-the-blank and substitution.
- Informal polite register is taught for the most part although honorific variant of this register is introduced early on.
5)
Living Language Spoken World Korean (Roh)
- This is arranged rather like "Colloquial Korean" (and of course like other titles in the "Spoken World" series) with each chapter focusing on a theme containing a dialogue followed by notes on grammar and culture, exercises and finally a (sometimes long) list of vocabulary.
- Half of the audio (first 3 CDs) contains the dialogues and exercises in the book while the other half (next 3 CDs) contain material that's just different enough that it forces you to apply what you've learned without frustrating you. Part of the challenge is that it's merely based on rather than taken verbatim from a given chapter.
- Romanization used for the first few chapters.
- Answer key in the appendices.
- It really could have stood to have had more exercises in each chapter; I felt overwhelmed by Chapter 3 and so stopped using it.
6a)
Korean Made Easy for Beginners (Oh)
6b)
Korean Made Easy for Everyday Life (Oh)
6c)
Korean Made Easy - Intermediate (Oh)
- Not that expensive on Amazon ($20 - $30 per volume)
- Sleek-looking set of books with "Beginners" and "Intermediate" divided into chapters each comprising a couple of dialogues followed by notes on grammar and culture, and then some exercises. Each book has a CD with the audio of dialogues and the listening/speaking exercises, but the audio for each volume can also be downloaded without charge or password from the publisher's website.
- "Everyday Life" is set up into two parts. The first part is divided into 10 units comprising 5 phrases each. Each unit then has a few short dialogues showing those 5 phrases in action. The second part is divided into a couple dozen units demonstrating various situations (e.g. asking for directions, ordering at restaurant) containing dialogues, notes on grammar, and a few exercises.
- All books come with keys to the exercises.
- No Romanization.
- Rather fun to use, with dialogues containing useful phrases and not overly-long lists of vocabulary per chapter, but not quite enough exercises.
7a)
Korean Language for a Good Job 1 (Lee)
7b)
Korean Language for a Good Job 2 (Lee)
- Not that expensive on Amazon (~ $30 USD per volume)
- Each volume is arranged similarly to "Korean Made Easy for Beginners" or "Korean Made Easy - Intermediate" with chapters consisting of a couple of dialogues followed by notes on grammar and culture, and then some exercises. Each book has a CD with the audio of dialogues and the listening/speaking exercises, but the audio for each volume can also be downloaded without charge or password from the publisher's website.
- All books come with keys to the exercises.
- No Romanization
- Rather fun to use, with dialogues containing useful phrases and not overly-long lists of vocabulary per chapter, but not enough exercises.
- Unlike most Korean textbooks these days, both volumes of "Korean Language for a Good Job" start off by teaching the formal polite register of the language and this goes on for the first several chapters. In contrast, the rule is to start off by teaching the informal polite register. In my experience (and that of Billy Go, the author of Korean Made Simple 1-3 (q.v.)), starting off with formal polite is a little less taxing mentally because its endings don't set off changes to the stems which complicate the learner's job; the beginning learner already has his/her hands full.
- Despite the title insinuating instruction for work purposes, the work aspect comes out in the dialogues where the protagonists are usually co-workers at a Korean firm, and their interactions outside work (e.g. shopping, going for noraebang). You don't actually focus on Korean workplace jargon. In short, it's totally fine for someone like me who just wants to learn for the hell of it.
8a)
Korean Made Simple 1 (Go)
8b)
Korean Made Simple 2 (Go)
8c)
Korean Made Simple 3 (Go)
- Usual set up of chapters with dialogues, notes, exercises and (unfortunately long) lists of vocabulary
- Notes are written in a fairly conversational and non-technical style
- Answer keys to exercises
- Audio is for dialogues only
- No Romanization
- Each chapter has fairly short sets of exercises, which are dominated by translation exercises (basically 10-12 sentences where you translate 5-6 sentences into English and then 5-6 sentences into Korean). Basically I think the author got lazy on designing exercises and he just decided to go through the motions here.
- Like the first halves of "Korean Language for a Good Job", "Korean Made Simple 1" focuses on teaching the formal polite register rather than the informal polite one.
9a)
Korean from Zero 1 (Trombley, Bullen et al.)
9b)
Korean from Zero 2 (Trombley, Bullen et al.)
9c)
Korean from Zero 3 (Trombley, Bullen et al.)
- Similar layout and prose to ones in aformentioned "Korean Made Simple 1-3".
- Answer keys to exercises
- Audio is for dialogues, example sentences and word lists, which means that there are many MP3s to download, and this is a pain in my view. When I downloaded the .zip with the audio, each word in the vocabulary list was assigned its own track. Thus a chapter's audio folder can contain a few dozen tracks, many lasting no longer than a couple seconds. This makes for very tedious navigation on my .mp3 player, and I'd have to stitch many tracks together in Audacity to make navigation of a chapter's audio folder tolerable.
- Sets of exercises by chapter are more varied than in "Korean Made Simple" by making the learner rearrange jumbled sentences, translate to Korean, answer captioned drawings in Korean, and do a bit of reading comprehension.
- It's better to work with the text and audio offline rather than through the online course. The textbooks (free download of .pdf for volume 1 only) contain exercises which are not found in the online courses.
- No Romanization outside the introductory section on Hangul
10a)
Listening Korean for Beginners (National Institute for the Korean Language)
10b)
Reading Korean for Beginners (National Institute for the Korean Language)
10c)
Speaking Korean for Beginners (National Institute for the Korean Language)
10d)
Writing Korean for Beginners (National Institute for the Korean Language)
- Each volume is quite cheap on Amazon (~ $20) and audio for "Listening" and "Speaking" is available in .mp3 for free download from the publisher, Hollym.
- Each book is divided into chapters comprising a few dialogues or reading samples, followed by notes on grammar and culture, exercises, and fairly short lists of vocabulary. Answer keys are also available in the appendix of each book.
- These courses are much more suitable for a classroom despite the presence of answer keys and free audio. Plenty of exercises call for group work or working with a partner while the books don't overlap when it comes to themes. For example the chapter on shopping in the "Writing" volume doesn't fit that neatly with the one in "Listening" volume since the vocabulary is a little different. A competent teacher or tutor would be very helpful in integrating the material presented in each books so that one practice all of the advertised skills coherently while staying on topic.
- The exercises assigned in each volume reflect the focus inherent in the title. As exmaples the "Writing" volume is full of exercises of fill-in-the-blank and writing short paragraphs while the "Speaking" volume has exercises where one makes up dialogues and practices them with a partner.
- I found the least frustrating way to use these books independently is to work through a chapter in the "Writing" book first, and then move onto a chapter with the same or similar theme (if applicable) in the "Reading" book. From there I'd move onto the "Listening" and "Speaking" volumes again looking for a chapter whose theme most resembled that of the respective theme in "Writing" and "Reading".
- The "Listening" and "Speaking" volumes focus on the informal polite register while the other two volumes focus on the formal polite register.
If I were in charge of your library's inventory, I'd try to get at least "Elementary Korean" (workbook, textbook and CDs), and both volumes of "Korean Language for a Good Job" when it comes to courses that lend themselves best to independent study. When it comes to burning extra money in the budget for a second round of purchases, I'd have the most reservation with the series by the National Institute for the Korean Language because of the four-way split and the less-than-perfect thematic overlap between the books while the other titles would be safer choices. I like the suggestion for "Korean Comprehensive Grammar", "Basic Korean" and "Intermediate Korean" as grammar-focused works for learning on your own, although none has audio.