As I mentioned in my About page, I initially used Elementary Korean, by Ross King and Yeon Jae-Hoon to kickstart my Korean. I found it to be useful such that I didn't need to buy extra references. This much had to be from a book which retails for USD 69, had a CD and more than 400 pages.
Aside from the very detailed grammar explanations and complete written exercises, there's also another reason why Elementary Korean was so good for me.
To begin with, I like learning stuff by looking at the text first, then the hands-on stuff like video, audio, dramas, etc. That was also the approach I used when I bought this book, because back then I thought that one had to have a textbook to learn stuff. I believe that when it comes to learning Korean, many websites and maybe college teachers will recommend learning Hangul (한글) first. Grammar terms will always be taught as they are officially named in Korean textbooks. People will be taught And so on.
However, I find the approach taken in Elementary Korean to actually make more sense. EK does not go into detail at once about the script. Instead it starts with 2 chapters of basic expressions which, while written in Hangul, have been transliterated to make it easy to pronounce them. Play the CD that comes along with the book, and I found that it was much easier to learn the sounds of each of the 25 symbols of Hangul in the later chapters. Evidently, both Ross and Yeon intended the first two chapters to reinforce the sounds of Hangul.
Then there are also other aspects of grammar in which EK deviated very differently from the standard Korean textbook, but which also made learning grammar much easier. (This gets a bit technical here)
For example, the ㄹ irregular verbs (an example article of which can be found in the Korean Wiki Project) are actually called ㄹ~ㄷ verbs in EK, which suggests that both ㄹ and ㄷ are interchangeable. The connection is very obvious - on certain occasions the verbs retain ㄹ, on certain others ㄷ. In EK this was explained in very clear, unambiguous terms. Of course I'm not saying that the Wiki article is confusing. It's just that, EK made it much much easier.
It was from EK that I realized: there can be many different ways tokill a cat learn Korean. Even the text can be presented in a way which is better understood. Since then, having gained a very firm basic foundation thanks to EK and Continuing Korean (the sequel to EK), I felt it was easier to follow up on other Korean language books who stick to the "official" and sometimes, confusing, form. I've also since relied more on audio and video, especially dramas, to learn Korean.
Of course, this innovative form of expressing content can have some weaknesses too. Often you may lose out when books refer extensively to grammar using the official terms. This is where you should watch out.
So to summarize:
1. EK has an innovative, simplistic, yet easy-to-understand method of teaching Korean. Thumbs up.
2. There can be several ways to learn Korean, especially when there's so many resources available both on and offline.
Aside from the very detailed grammar explanations and complete written exercises, there's also another reason why Elementary Korean was so good for me.
To begin with, I like learning stuff by looking at the text first, then the hands-on stuff like video, audio, dramas, etc. That was also the approach I used when I bought this book, because back then I thought that one had to have a textbook to learn stuff. I believe that when it comes to learning Korean, many websites and maybe college teachers will recommend learning Hangul (한글) first. Grammar terms will always be taught as they are officially named in Korean textbooks. People will be taught And so on.
However, I find the approach taken in Elementary Korean to actually make more sense. EK does not go into detail at once about the script. Instead it starts with 2 chapters of basic expressions which, while written in Hangul, have been transliterated to make it easy to pronounce them. Play the CD that comes along with the book, and I found that it was much easier to learn the sounds of each of the 25 symbols of Hangul in the later chapters. Evidently, both Ross and Yeon intended the first two chapters to reinforce the sounds of Hangul.
Then there are also other aspects of grammar in which EK deviated very differently from the standard Korean textbook, but which also made learning grammar much easier. (This gets a bit technical here)
For example, the ㄹ irregular verbs (an example article of which can be found in the Korean Wiki Project) are actually called ㄹ~ㄷ verbs in EK, which suggests that both ㄹ and ㄷ are interchangeable. The connection is very obvious - on certain occasions the verbs retain ㄹ, on certain others ㄷ. In EK this was explained in very clear, unambiguous terms. Of course I'm not saying that the Wiki article is confusing. It's just that, EK made it much much easier.
It was from EK that I realized: there can be many different ways to
Of course, this innovative form of expressing content can have some weaknesses too. Often you may lose out when books refer extensively to grammar using the official terms. This is where you should watch out.
So to summarize:
1. EK has an innovative, simplistic, yet easy-to-understand method of teaching Korean. Thumbs up.
2. There can be several ways to learn Korean, especially when there's so many resources available both on and offline.
