Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I taught myself beginning and intermediate Korean (my proficiency now is high advanced), and if this book had been available when I started learning Korean, I don't think I would have used it. If you're an absolute beginner who is intimidated by the language, this book might be an interesting introduction, but I'm not convinced that it would help you communicate with confidence about even basic topics. The book teaches a lot about the language and culture, but it's lacking in practical content, and a bit superficial and slow-moving even for a beginning text. The primary goal of this book appears to be familiarizing beginning learners with the pronunciation and demystifying the language and culture. It's definitely entertaining. The tone of the textbook is uniquely informal and enthusiastic--I've never seen a textbook author write with emoticons before--although it can be a bit chatty at times. There are many great cultural insights and some nice anecdotes, including funny and potentially embarrassing miscommunications. The problem is in the way that the language is introduced. The back cover says that "new words are explained in terms of how you'll find them useful to communicate with new friends," but I didn't find that to be the case. The way vocabulary is introduced didn't seem at all intuitive to me--basic greetings aren't mentioned until almost halfway through the book. The text explains that the motivation for this design is that you become familiar with the building blocks of the language before you start learning conversational skills, but the problem with this approach is that you learn words and grammar points with no context to put them in, which makes them much harder to remember. Chapters 9 and on are better in this regard, but should have included more of the vocabulary and grammar that was introduced in previous chapters. In my opinion, the greatest weakness of the book is that there are virtually no practice exercises. Yes, this book tries to be fun, and exercises are not very much fun. But without opportunities to practice, students will find it difficult to remember everything they've learned and apply it to practical conversation. A few reading comprehension passages, listening tasks, and roleplays would have gone a long way towards improving students' ability to have a conversation in basic Korean. The enclosed disc is not bad. There are recordings of most of the sentences in the text, which is a nice touch. There are videos that show a Korean person's mouth as she pronounces various words, which is an interesting idea, but it might have been more helpful to include animated drawings of the inside of the mouth to show how consonants and vowels are articulated. If you're looking for all-around competence in the language, I recommend that you go with a different text, such as Elementary Korean Second Edition. It's more expensive and demanding, but will ultimately offer you a better grasp of the language.