Colloquial Korean

by In-Seok Kim

Colloquial Korean is easy to use and completely up-to-date! Specially written by an experience teacher for self-study or class use, the course offers you a step-by-step approach to written and spoken Korean. No prior knowledge of the language is required. What makes Colloquial Korean your best choice in personal language learning? By the end of this rewarding course you will be able to communicate confidently and effectively in Korean in a broad range of everyday situations. Two 60-minute CDs are available to complement the book. Recorded by native speakers, this material will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

Genres: Language

288 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 1996

Reviews

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was instrumental in my understanding of the Korean language and culture. I recommend it to anyone interested in learning Korean. There are an unlimited number of books on learning Korean. Some of them are extremely poorly written and difficult to follow. That is not the case with this book. It is the perfect into to Korean.

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I kind of read this book twice, but actually I read two completely different books (they still have the same ISBN.) The only thing these books have in common is the name, that's it. The texts and the exercises are different.

The older edition (with the dragon on the cover) is the worst language textbook I've ever seen and I've seen a lot. It is full of mistakes, some grammar is never explained. The instructions for the exercises don't match the given answers, which require more grammar and vocabulary than can be found in the book. It was really frustrating trying to work with this book.
This edition gets 1 star. Use it only if you wish to read some more challenging texts than what's in the newer one.

The new edition (with the lamps on the cover) was dry and dull, but that was the only problem I can remember having with it. It's dull, but very organized. I felt like the book was holding my hand all through the learning process.
This edition gets 4 stars. Use this if you want to actually practice using Korean.

I wish they'd kept the reading practice passages from the old edition and even the texts as they were more interesting and overall covered more material. Even though the old edition was horrible it managed to push my Korean skills up from TTMIK level 3 to level 5. So not bad for a very frustrating book.

[М · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is incredibly formal, and teaches honorifics. Not only the level of politeness is different, but also the word choice. For select business situations the book is okay. Otherwise it sounds awkward, and honestly isn't useful outside of a few circumstances.

A word of warning - the Amazon ebook version is nearly unreadable. The hangeul letters are tiny images, not actual text - so it can't be zoomed in

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I think this would be a crappy book to try and learn Korean from, especially if it is your only book. Too few examples are given for some very complex and unfamiliar grammatical constructs. However, it does provide excellent reading practice for the advanced beginner student in the form of simple dialogues; it also gives useful and pertinent vocabulary lists for different topics. It's a good book to read through for review if you don't want to look at your original study materials over and over again. If your hangul reading pace is still on the slow side, it might be a good idea for you to spring for a cheap copy if you can get it.

[Bobbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Working on hangul as a winter hobby this year. Foreign alphabets are like writing in code, and tickles my brain. The Korean alphabet was created by a Korean king who wanted more people to read than just scholars (previously they used the complicated Chinese characters), and it spread literacy to women and children, and the less educated male population as well. You've got to admire a king who makes a difference like that rather than just going around conquering and spoiling.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is best used as a quick dictionary or a guide for brushing up on Korean. Grammatical concepts are explained in a couple of sentences, with very little detail and few examples. The exercises also tend to include vocabulary and other things that have not yet been introduced. I mostly just use it for reading practice and vocabulary building since that's all it's good for.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book just didn't fit my learning style. Also the book didn"t come with an audio CD and it seemed half of the lessons required one.