Teach Yourself Korean: Complete Audio Cd Program

Jon · Korean Citizen Joined: Mar 19, 2004 Posts: 510

Book Description
Bestselling language courses now with audio CDs!
From Danish to Spanish, Swahili to Brazilian Portuguese, the languages of the world are brought within the reach of any beginning student. Learners can use the Teach Yourself Language Courses at their own pace or as a supplement to formal courses. These complete courses are based on the very latest learning methods and designed to be enjoyable and user-friendly.

Prepared by experts in the language, each course begins with the basics and gradually promotes the student to a level of smooth and confident communication, including:

Up-to-date, graded interactive dialogues
Graded units of culture notes, grammar, and exercises
Step-by-step guide to pronunciation
Practical vocabulary
Regular and irregular verb tables
Plenty of practice exercises and answers
Bilingual glossary
The new editions also feature:

Clear, uncluttered, and user-friendly layout
Self-assessment quizzes to test progress

Review of this book:-

Teach Yourself Korean is a great book if you want to learn more than just "tourist phrases." The introduction with Han-Geul was clear and easy to understand. If your first language is English, the grammar and pronunciation rules will seem strange and hard to remember at first, but this is true for most Asian languages. Since Korean is not a tonal language, such as Chinese or Vietnamese, your learning will not be hindered by worries about "singing" the words. Each section includes an introduction listing the aspects of the Korean language you will learn. The dialogues in each section aren't dry either. They contain many colloquial Korean phrases and expressions that are explained later in the chapter. The dialogues are shown in Han-Geul and are followed by McCune-Reischauer romanisations. The romanisations were one of the aspects of the book that could have been improved. Sometimes they were inconsistent with the Han-Geul and left me wondering which pronunciations were correct. The vocabulary boxes were extremely helpful, but since the words were not translated directly under the Han-Geul dialogues, I had to keep flipping pages to understand what I was reading. This ruined the flow of the conversations a little bit. The commentary was the core of the book. It explained aspects of Korean culture and taught me how to construct Korean sentences. Although the authors attempt to keep the explanations simple, some of the grammar commentary sections needed to be read and re-read in order to absorb the information. The upside of this is that repitition reinforces memory. The exercises are varied and cover a wide range of problems. The book recommends that one completes the exercises using Han-Geul, but beginners can use romanistation as well. Some of the answer keys in the back of the book provided answers that seemed strange, and this was a major hindrance for me. I would re-read the grammar commentary to see if I had missed anything, only to find out that we would learn a certain verb-construction or colloquialism in later sections. All in all, this was a great book, but it needs some polishing.

Zero · Tourist Joined: Mar 28, 2004 Posts: 13 Location: Al,USA

out of all the Teach Yourself Korean books that you have read
What would be the best to start off on?

Jon · Korean Citizen Joined: Mar 19, 2004 Posts: 510

I think this one, it is well written, and explains things really clearly.

Asthmatic_Ant · Korean Linguist Joined: Aug 03, 2004 Posts: 158

No post found
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Itadakisourou shisounourou

Caneduck · Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2004 3:56 am Post subject: Thanks for the info...

lol, thanks for the tips. I was looking into purchasing this book and found the postings you left really useful. I am trying to learn Korean and fully agree that the korean word for pancake wouldn't be of much use to me at this point. I was wondering if you can recommend any exercises to help me get a better hold on vowels and consonants. thanks:)

janossyd · Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2004 6:15 am Post subject:

i would like to know where to buy the book.. I'm here in the Philippines...

KkOmA · Posted: Sat Dec 18, 2004 1:32 pm Post subject:

janossyd · Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 10:50 pm Post subject:

Oh how I wish I could find that book here in my area... I think it will be a great help to me....

Jon · Korean Citizen Joined: Mar 19, 2004 Posts: 510

you can buy through amazon.com..and they will send it to the phillipines..

Alex · Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2004 2:25 am Post subject:

If you can't find it in amazon.com this is the publisher's link:

http://books.mcgraw-hill.com/search.php?keyword=korean&template=foreignlang&subjectarea=114

FCG · Beginner Joined: Feb 28, 2005 Posts: 1

Link to the book on amazon.com, hope it helps if anyone needs it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0071414363/002-1622429-4100015?v=glance

tkitano · Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 4:16 pm Post subject:

I just bought this Audio set. I hope I like it.!!!
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Im nothing butta 10seaki

HaLeY · Tourist Joined: Jun 08, 2005 Posts: 36 Location: Ohio, USA

i looked at the link, it seems very helpful, i might buy it...
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핼리
Haley

yonamine · Beginner Joined: Jul 13, 2005 Posts: 2 Location: folsom

just go to your local bookstore and rip open the package
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사랑 슬아

skatta · Posted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 7:13 am Post subject:

I have that book, it's pretty good i can't really compare it to any others but i think i would prefer a book that is more similar to the way i would imagine a korean schoolbook to be rather than the way this one is setup. if your intention is to get as fluent as possible this book is probably not the best solution, if you're just visiting korea and want to pickup a few things then this book is ideal i think. This book is split into sections where they give you a scenario in korean in hangeul and alphabetized and the translation in english and definitions of most words. in every chapter they explain some of korean culture or some grammar and whatnot which is pretty good and is probably what i found most useful in it. The book was really good for learning the korean alphabet and proper pronounciation as well. It is also useful for learning how to say things which are generally most useful for tourists like how to order in a restaurant and whatnot. In short the book is pretty good to learn the alphabet and how to say specific things that you can remember but it's not really good for learning to manipulate the language and speak it with certain freedom. That's what I found anyways.