Mastering Korean

The romanization is awful, the lack of hangul is disturbing, and nobody speaks like that. My wife laughed at me when I showed it to her.

Could have been excellent... (0/0 people found this helpful)

I bought the book without cd or tape.

At first, I found this book frustrating. I didn't like the physical layout - each lesson has smallish Hangul on the left page, somewhat confusing Romanisation and English translation on the right page.

Relying on Romanisation is not a good idea in any event, but it could be quite dangerous with this book if you didn't have the tape (as I didn't) or were not fairly confident reading and pronouncing Hangul. The Romanisation employed seems to use parts of IPA (international phonetic), which is rather different to romanisation used in all the other Korean books I have.

Another point is that (in common with many other Korean textbooks) the language presented is probably too formal for every day conversation. Nothing specially wrong in learning very formal polite Korean, but it's probably not what you'd actually want to use day to day.

One plus point about this book is that it covers grammar points quite well (when compared with many of the other Korean books I have).

I also liked the substituion drills given in the book - you repeat phrases, substituting a different part of the sentence each time. The books seems to have been designed to be presented in class by a teacher to a group of learners, I can imagine these drills working quite well.

Unfortunately, the drills and grammar point language examples do not use Hangul - only the rather dodgy and confusing Romanisation (Hangul is given in the first part of the lessons where new language is introduced, but not the latter parts
). This was a real nuisance to me, as I wanted to try to ignore the Romanisation as much as possible.

There is a useful glossary at the back of the book, which happily does include Hangul as well as Romanisation. This states which chapter each word / phrase appears in first.

I've given this 3 stars as there are strengths...I liked the grammar points, and like the drill format. But I wish the type was bigger on the page, that Hangul were used throughout, and I have big reservations about the Romanisation. Because of these points, I do not recommend this book (without tapes at least) for an absolute beginner. If you can read Korean and are looking for some concise grammar points, this could be useful.

Poor... (6/7 people found this helpful)

...this book is far too formal. The first time I attempted to speak to a Korean with the language of the book I was laughed at for being so formal. I now live in Korea and absolutely never do I use the inflected forms introduced in the book. It was a waste of time as when I bought another book I had to learn the forms again...

The book is also mindless repetition to an astounding degree. As a teacher I find it hard to believe thay anyone could find any fulfillment from coldly repeating mantra after mantra without any scope for interpretation or personalisation. If you have the tape too you will find the voice is robotic and flavourless, maybe the idea is to put you in a trance from which you wake fluent in Korean.

Perhaps the most astounding fact for me about the book was its introduction of Hangul. It is completely wrong! Some of the characters which are introduced are unrecognisable from those used in other books and the country itself. I would really like to know on what basis these choices were made...

I am sorry for such a negative review but it really is better to go for the other books on the market, such as Teach Yourself Korean.

The Best to Start with! (4/8 people found this helpful)

This self-study set fully accompanied with audio-cassettes gives you real chance to MASTER the language. You will speak, read, understand and fully communicate rather soon (if you are reasonably dilligent and keen to learn). Some may find this course boring but one have to appreciate that it is quite thorough, precise and understandable. No doubt this is the best course to start with!

OKAY (3/5 people found this helpful)

This program is a really great language program if you want to learn Korean fluently. It goes over grammer, vocabullary, and everything else that a language program would ever need. The only problem with it is that it is not fun. You need to Memorize many things, and there are not activities to do. One other thing that this is lacking is tests for knowledge. However, this is the best Korean Program that I have seen.

B.Nam Park

Reader Reviews:

It's useless (0/0 people found this helpful)

Could have been excellent... (0/0 people found this helpful)

Poor... (6/7 people found this helpful)

The Best to Start with! (4/8 people found this helpful)

OKAY (3/5 people found this helpful)

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