Self Study Korean

BY SHANNA / HANGUKDRAMA

HANGUKDRAMA E-BOOKS

it’s not impossible

Now self studying Japanese in Korean

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Dedication

To all my blog readers-friends. You guys are the best. Some of you I’ve met, others I have corresponded with on-line and to the anonymous reader out there, please say hi!

To everyone I’ve met in Korea, each and everyone of you shaped my experiences here and made me love the coun-try and the culture. Special mention goes to the LC peeps!

And not forgetting the 3 awesome girls who have been with me through the 4 years of my university life. All our laughing sessions were the best.

Cheers to many more years of Hangukdrama which doesn’t write about dramas!

p.s. E-books are such an awesome invention. Who knew that the day will come when I can actually write some-thing like this!

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Foreword

Learning a foreign language is a very rewarding journey, but often expensive. A lack of financial resources, a gen-eral dislike for stifling classes and the determination to prove that I can do as well (or even better) on my own has led me to choose the self-studying route.

There is no one way for language learning, and this is simply a collection of my experiences and my own personal methods and thoughts. Language learning is all about trial and error and exploring a brand new world on your own. Where’s the fun if there’s only one fixed way of doing it?

In writing this, I hope to inspire more people to take up a foreign language. Simply for the reason that it opens up a whole new worldview and is a lot of fun.

This book is mainly written for the self-learner in mind, but I hope that every Korean learner will find something useful in here.

And finally.

Self-studying is not impossible.

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자기소개서 | About Me

Shanna. Singaporean. Just a girl who does not believe in giving up her passions and dreams just to pursue the more “pragmatic” things in life.

She started learning Korean in Jan 2008, taking beginner lessons at a local institution for 2 levels. Decided to stop classes and self study. Most of her friends believed that that was going to be the end of her Korean learning jour-ney and she will somehow give up along the way.

Oct 2008: Passed KLPT Level 2

Oct 2009: Passed KLPT Level 5 (advanced) and TOPIK Level 4 (higher intermediate)

Apr 2012: Passed TOPIK Level 5 (advanced)

5 years down the road, she is still on this journey and loving Korean more than ever. She is now able to watch al-most everything in Korean unsubbed, loves reading Korean historical novels in her free time and is currently learning about Korea’s history in Korean.

She blogs at www.hangukdrama.com and loves receiving emails/comments. ^^

BEFORE WE START

Why Self Study?

I can list down 10 convincing reasons to self study a language. But another person can probably give you another 10 good reasons to take language classes. It boils down to choice. Still, let me tell you about my choice.

BEFORE WE START

The 10 best reasons

10 best reasons? Nah. I’ll give you one.

I did it, so can you.

I’ve received many emails over the years, and one of the recur-ring questions is: Is self studying possible?

I don’t know why I’m still receiving that question, even up till now. Haven’t I shown (through my entire blog) that it IS possi-ble?

Instead of doubting your own abilities, why not give it a try and find out the answer for yourself?

My favorite Taiwanese author once said that many authors like to encourage their readers to be true to themselves, go for their dreams and give them so many convincing reasons to do so. But he took a different path and just did it, achieved his dreams and that in itself is probably the best he can give to his readers.

I’m very much inspired by his thinking, as it also echoes with mine. Instead of empty words, I want to show it through my actions. And I’m happy I did it.

If you still want to be convinced, maybe you should think again. Everyone is different and there is nothing in the world that is suitable for everybody. Self studying works for me, but it may not for you. Instead of asking to be convinced, convince yourself. What I can offer, is my own experience. There is no answer until you find it for yourself.

I can’t give you the 10 best reasons to self study, but I can share with you my experiences and what I gained from mak-ing this choice.

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Like many others, I did think that language classes is the best way to learn a language. Self study wasn’t in my consideration right from the start. But as I went through the lessons, I knew that it wasn’t for me. I want to learn more. I want more free-dom in my studies. I want to go at a faster pace.

And so, I made the decision. The decision that everyone was skeptical about. Like I mentioned earlier on, everyone fully ex-pected me to give up soon, but that didn’t deter me from mak-ing that choice.

One of the best things about self studying (for me) was the freedom it offers. I can use any textbook I want. I can study from any materials. I do things at my own pace.

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Self studying means that I don’t see it as a chore. Immediately it becomes something that I am responsible for, like a hobby. I take charge of my own learning and passion and interest drive me, instead of scores or exams.

I’m no longer restricted to learning only what is covered in the syllabus. Having classes give you a fixed routine and some kind of guideline, but it can be restrictive. If something is tested, naturally you will pay more attention to it. Let’s be hon-est. Have you ever made the effort to learn a lot more than what was covered in classes in school? The same logic goes for language learning. Once you are in a class, it’s harder not to put all the focus on the syllabus.

On the other hand, it’s true that there isn’t anyone there to guide you. However, that does’t mean there are no alterna-tives. It just depends on your effort. You may not have a teacher, but you can gain many friends who are willing to help you correct your sentences, point out your mistakes. There isn’t anyone to mark your writing, but you can make use of sites such as Lang-8 to get your writing checked. There isn’t someone who will make sure you do a minimum amount of studying each week, you just have to pace yourself.

If you choose self studying, be prepared to put in a great amount of effort, determination and perseverance. In some ways, self studying is harder than taking language classes.

Before writing something off as impossible or to admire peo-ple who have managed to do it, ask yourself: have you put in the appropriate amount of effort?

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THE FIRST STEP

The start is the most difficult

Taking on a foreign language is often a spontaneous decision. You are eager to jump straight into it and start learning how to converse. Enthusiasm is great.시작이 반이다. A good beginning is half the battle. But how can you begin?

THE FIRST STEP

Where to start?

You have decided to start self-studying Korean and you are ea-ger to jump into it straightaway. But the first question comes: HOW? There are tons of learning resources, both online and offline. The most natural thing to do will be to google “learn Korean beginner free” or something along the lines. Or search youtube for “Korean beginner lesson”. But is that really use-ful?

For those who have experience learning languages, you will know that not all online resources/books are equally good and a bad choice will make you confused or even make you give up learning altogether, deeming the language “impossibly hard” to learn. I made the mistake of choosing a wrong resource at first and I was left wondering why I couldn’t simply search for a “word” in the dictionary and at that that point of time, I thought that a word in Korean is equivalent to characters joined together between spaces in a sentence. So I searched

for 즐거웠던 in my compact dictionary and needless to say, I never got any results.

I can’t emphasize any further about the importance of a good first resource in language learning and here are some online resources for you to test the waters.

Personally, I like resources that do not just teach you the very basics but those that offers some form of structured lessons that you can keep using for a few months at least.

1.talktomeinkorean.com

You will not see TTMIK when you google “learn korean begin-ner free”. However, they are the best free online resource for the beginner Korean learner. Scratch that. They actually offer something suitable for every Korean learner (beginner to ad-vanced) but I find that they are one of the best when it comes to beginner resources. There are more alternatives when it comes to the higher levels.

So who is TTMIK? Headed by Hyunwoo Sun, the team is made up of Koreans who are avid language learners them-selves and they have a lot of experience teaching Korean to for-eigners online. Hyunwoo Sun will not be an unfamiliar name to language learners. He’s an amazing polyglot and he has been teaching Korean online for years. His enthusiasm for lan-guages is infectious and he is my role model (:

Although TTMIK is founded in 2009, Hyunwoo Sun and Kyeongeun Choi (the two most experienced in the team) have

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been teaching Korean online for a number of years before TTMIK and I learnt Korean through their videos and re-sources last time too! I was really inspired by them and that was one of the reasons why I was able to keep learning Korean and not give up. When you have such inspiring teachers, how can you give up so easily?

The site itself is easily to navigate and I recommend starting on their Learn Hangeul category, before moving on to Level 1 and progressing from there. One main reason their website is so popular is because of the amount of interactive, multimedia materials that they offer and also proximity to the teachers. I love how they have videos and/or mp3 for each of their les-sons and this makes learning so much more fun. You can find the team on Facebook / Twitter / Tumblr / Blogs / Email etc and it feels like they are only a tweet/email away. Even though the site is really popular, I appreciate their efforts to get back to their users.

www.talktomeinkorean.com

2. Sogang Online Program

So much fond memories. Because TTMIK didn’t exist in 2008 when I first started learning Korean, I relied a lot on Sogang Korean Program. The program is designed by Sogang Univer-sity, which also has a very popular Korean Language Program that focuses a lot on conversational and speaking skills. More on that in another chapter, or another book.

Although I recommend using a number of learning resource at one time, the Sogang program is actually good enough on its own. Besides a section introducing Korea and the Korean language, the program consists of six levels and by the end of it, you will actually have a decent proficiency level. Just did a quick check on my blog and found that I finished the entire program in Dec 2009, which means I took two years to do it. By then, I had actually gotten my TOPIK Level 4 (high inter-mediate) certification.

I loved the site for its interesting videos, interactive exercises and detailed grammar explanations. You can use it together with TTMIK.

http://korean.sogang.ac.kr/

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Are you eager to start right now?

WAIT.Before you do anything, remember that there is no shortcut to language learning. It’s like Jenga, if your foundation is weak, everything will topple. So, build your foundation well. The way to do it?

Learn Hangeul (한글) first.

I have met many people who tried to learn Korean by listening to music, dramas or watch youtube videos that introduce sim-ple Korean phrases. It’s great that they are learning with their ears, but learning Hangeul right at the beginning is very im-portant for two reasons:

1.맞춤법 (spelling)

2.뛰어쓰기 (spacing)

One of the first phrases one will learn is ‘좋아해요’, which means to like. Cho-a-hae-yo. That’s what you will hear. If you learn Hangeul later on, you might be susceptible to mistakes like 조아해요. Sounds the same, but wrong. Other common mistakes are 가치 (x) for 같이 (O) and 괜찬다 (x) for 괜찮다 (O). Or making mistakes with the spacing and writing 한국 에

서 살았어요 instead of 한국에서 살았어요 (I have lived in Ko-rea). One more incentive to learn Hangeul right at the start? It’s super easy to learn because it’s like alphabets + building blocks. If you are a language enthusiast like me, you can read up about the history of Hangeul and it will help you remember the consonants easier because there is logic behind each char-acter.

I learnt the Hangeul in a day and some people have claimed to do it in a few hours or even lesser. Of course, practice makes perfect and no one will expect you to be able to read Hangeul fast at first. After learning the alphabet, I had to slowly read it bit by bit. For example: 한글. I’ll be like ㅎ ㅏ ㄴ ㄱ ㅡ ㄹ and then piecing it all together to say it out loud. You get the idea.

The difficulty in Hangeul is not learning it, but pronouncing it. One can remember the consonants and vowels in a day and learn to piece them into a word, but pronouncing it takes longer than that.

Do not fall into the pitfall of comparing Korean to any lan-guages that you learn. Forget that you know English and other languages and approach Korean like you would for a brand new speaking system.

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Tip: Use your ears when you learn to how to pronounce the consonants and (especially) the vowels. Forget about English. Don’t insist that just because ㅅ is “s” it will sound exactly like the English ‘s’.

Use your ears.

Do not be tempted to use romanization.

Do not be tempted to use romanization.

Do not be tempted to use romanization.

I think I have emphasized it enough. Do not attempt to write down the romanization while you practice the alphabet and more importantly, do not attempt to pronounce Korean like you will do for English. Romanization is like a drug. Gives you short-lived relief and makes you reliant on them. Most re-sources will include romanizations below for beginners, and it will be really tempting for your eyes to slide down to the ro-manization. Resist the temptation. Trust your ears.

While on the topic of romanizations, there are a number of ways to “romanize” Korean. I will only grudgingly agree to use IPA but even then, it’s not good to be reliant on them. On the other hand, looking at romanizations like mul-juseyo will just screw up your pronunciation and looking at the McCune Reis-chauer kach'i / mŏgŏtta will make you wonder if Korean is im-possibly hard to pronounce.

If romanization is bad, I don’t even want to talk about using Chinese characters to learn Korean. Saw a video on youtube that subbed the lyrics in Chinese. 哈吉麻油 is supposedly 하지마요. O.M.G. Let’s not get there.

Best thing? Just avoid them. It’s a personal pet peeve, but please do not go around telling people that “I can read and pro-

nounce Korean now but just can’t understand what I’m read-ing” after learning Korean for a week or so. I have heard this so many times and I can’t help but roll my eyes at times. There are quite a number of sound change rules etc that even the advanced learners will sometimes forget. So please don’t underestimate the time needed to learn the pronunciation!

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Before we move on further, I would like to emphasize the fact that this is not a book to teach you Korean. So please don’t ex-pect me to teach you the Hangeul alphabet etc. Language learning, especially self studying, requires a lot of self disci-pline and the ability to find out things on your own. One of the most fun parts of learning a language is to explore the world on your own. I can give tips, but I am not a dictionary or a know-it-all.

Because of my personal dislike for romanization, further chap-ters will not include any romanization unless to make a point. There may or not be English translations given after any Ko-rean words used. If there isn’t, chances are that it’s something simple and you can just use the dictionary.

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THE FIRST STEP

Before you dive into it..

Korean is technically my first foreign language. I have dabbled in Spanish before for a short while and even though it’s differ-ent from English, there’s still some sense of familiarity in terms of the writing system and language structure. I have read an article somewhere that touted Korean as one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn. Is it really so?

Yes and no. Granted, Korean is totally different from English, especially in terms of grammar and sentence structure. Verbs are at the end of the sentences. There is an elaborate system of conjugation and if you take into account the politeness levels and different sentence endings, that’s a lot to handle. Certain words are changed depending on the seniority of the person you are talking to / about. You have both the 한자 (Chinese characters borrowed into the Korean language) and the 순우리말 (native Korean words). The hanja equivalent is usually used in news broadcasting or other more formal writings. For

example you will hear 사망하다 (死亡) instead of 죽다 when describing deaths from a landslide, for example. But if you ask someone to go die, you will say 죽어라 instead of 사망하라.

Nevertheless, don’t be intimidated by what you read. But it’s a good thing to get a sense of the language structure, a little bit about the history of the language etc before you start to learn the language. For me, I made so many silly mistakes because this was my first experience in language learning. I am a na-tive speaker of English and Mandarin Chinese and both lan-guages do not involve conjugation. So I was really confused when I first started to learn Korean and I had no idea how to go around doing it. It took me some time to get used to the fact that verbs are at the back of the sentences. But now, that’s like second nature to me.

Reading up helps you to build a general picture of what to ex-pect in the language, but some articles tend to exaggerate. Ko-rean is not that difficult to learn, trust me (: I did it. And so can you.

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Now that you have learnt the 한글 alphabet, it’s still not time yet to dive into it.

Goal setting

Ask around and you will find that majority of the people around you have some kind of experience learning a foreign language. But how many of them are conversational? Very few. And how many are really fluent? Very very very few. Why? A lot of people tend to give up learning halfway for a wide variety of reasons, and one of the most common reasons I have seen is disappointment and “unfulfilled expectations”.

Not everyone have the same goals for learning a language.

• just for fun and to learn something new

• to be able to watch dramas unsubbed

• to be able to hold a conversation in Korean

• to be able to read tweets from your favorite idols

• to be able to read a novel in Korean

• to be fluent in all aspects

So many different goals. There’s no such thing as a “better” goal and often, our goals change. Personally, I started off learning just for fun and later on got serious about it and started aiming for full fluency. Whatever your goal is, have re-alistic expectations and then put in the necessary effort to

achieve it. As I have mentioned in a blog post titled: “I want to learn just enough Korean so I can watch unsubbed Korean dra-mas”, people like to assume that watching unsubbed dramas is something that is “easy to achieve” and that one doesn’t need to learn Hangeul to do it. Rubbish. Bullshit. If you are aiming for that, you are essentially aiming to be proficient in most of the grammar structures, have a good knowledge of slangs and expressions used in daily life, have a decent vocabu-lary bank etc. Sure, you may not be able to speak or write that well, but you will definitely need to have good listening skills and reading skills by then. And let’s see... that will take around 2 - 3 years and I’m a pretty fast learner!!

In any case, goal setting is important because it helps to avoid all the unnecessary disappointments and you will know what you are in for. If you are serious about it, learning a new lan-guage is a lifelong commitment that requires constant prac-tice, immersion and passion. The language learning curve is also not a linear graph, but it’s characterized by periods of fast progress coupled with periods of stagnancy and perhaps even times when you feel like you are doing worse than before.

The book is probably written for someone who aims for full flu-ency in the end, but there’s always something for everybody. If you are ready, let’s go on the journey together! ^^

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THE BEGINNER

Beginners: The period of progress

입니다/습니까? Is that useful?Grammar or vocabulary first?How to organize a language notebook?What dictionaries to use?What books to get?....... Endless questions. But so much fun.

THE BEGINNER

입니다 / 습니다

King Sejong Statue. Go behind the statue and there’s an entrance to the King Sejong Museum located underground! :D

“Useless?”Many Korean learners were disappointed when they eagerly signed up for Korean classes thinking that they will be learn-ing phrases used in dramas but ended up having to start with the formal speech style. This applies to self learners too. “Why do we have to learn this? It’s not even useful”, said a friend.

Many people do not realize it, but often language as used in dramas or movies are colloquial and colloquial language is of-ten designated as more “advanced” in curriculum.

It makes sense for textbooks to introduce the formal speech style first, seeing how the conjugation is less complicated com-pared to the 아/어 form.

I completely understand the enthusiasm but it will be great to channel the enthusiasm to learning from the basics instead of wanting to skip steps and jump to the colloquial speech.

All in all, learning about the formal speech style is important and it’s a step that all Korean learners will have to go through.

Do not skip this.

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THE BEGINNER

Grammar or Vocabulary?When we approach language learning for the first time, we tend to treat it as another subject in our curriculum and break them up into separate components. Grammar. Vocabulary. Idi-oms. Proverbs. We will then start to wonder: Should I focus on grammar first? Or build up my vocabulary? Does grammar come before vocabulary? Or the other way round?

Thought-provoking questions. I did ask myself the same thing, but luckily, I didn’t spend too much time agonizing over the choice.

Language is not compartmentalizable (is this a word?). Focus-ing on grammar without vocabulary gets you nowhere. Same for the other way round. Unless you are thinking of speaking in single words all the time and throwing the task of stringing them up together to the listener.

So.. Grammar or vocabulary first?

Do both at the same time.

One may argue that perhaps for a beginner, vocabulary is more important. Without knowing some vocabulary, knowing the grammar point doesn’t help. Yes, I do agree. I did started out learning 20 simple vocabulary and that was about all the words that I ever memorized in 6 years of learning Korean.

The idea is not to debate over which should come first at the beginner stage, but to recognize that they go hand in hand and that one should not concentrate on one component at the ex-pense of the other.

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Busan, 2011

I do agree that knowing simple vocabulary may come first be-fore grammar at the very beginning, but take note that lan-guage learning is about habit/routine building. For me at least. It’s about finding a comfortable routine and whatever method that I start to use will end up sticking to you for a large part of your learning journey.

Let’s say you started out with flashcards and memorization. It’s likely that you will continue to use up to the intermediate stage and maybe beyond. If you started out with romaniza-tion, it may take you a long time before you break that habit.

I came to realize that separating language into components is something of a “man made” categorization. There’s no sepa-rate components when it comes to language, and every “com-ponent” or “skill” is in fact, very much linked to one another. It’s perhaps for convenience (and commercial?) sake that we get separate books for grammar / vocabulary and even weirder that we sometimes have books for speaking! Seeing such books in the market reinforces our impressions that these components can be separated but I want to stress that it’s an inaccurate impression.

After writing so much, I don’t think I have gotten to my main point.

My point: Don’t fret over this issue and just learn.

Whether you like it or not, grammar and vocabulary are not separable. When you are learning a grammar structure, you may come across new words. Just check the dictionary and

note it down in your notebook (or your memory). When you are reading a passage and learning vocabulary, you are essen-tially revising the grammar points and if you come across a new one, check it out on the internet or refer to your text-books.

Personally, I had periods of time when I focused on one more than the other. I am a grammar geek and I remembered that for a period of time in 2008-9, I was having so much fun learn-ing grammar that I could spent hours on it! My grammar bank expanded really fast then. But it didn’t mean that I was totally neglecting vocabulary. On other times I was more in-vested in learning vocabulary, so I would read Korean enter-tainment articles voraciously to expand my vocabulary.

It’s one thing to be more focused and another to be learning vocabulary through vocabulary lists / books.

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Tips:

Never try to separate things that are never meant to be sepa-rate - grammar and vocabulary

THE BEGINNER

Paper vs Online vs Electronic dictionaries

Dictionary. This is one of the first obvious tool of foreign lan-guage learning, besides textbooks. It’s tempting to go to the bookstore right away to purchase one, but hold on.

When I first started learning Korean, I thought a paperback dictionary was the most obvious choice. So I bought one.

.....

And never referred to it.

Because of people like me, paperback dictionaries are fast dis-appearing but I still think that there is no need to invest in one in this era. If you are at home, there is the internet, if you are out, there are always handphone apps - so why will you need a paperback?

Language learning is already a time-consuming task, I’ll pre-fer to immediately type in a word and get the meaning instead of flipping through the dictionary.

My choice of online dictionary for beginners is the Naver on-line dictionary (endic.naver.com). It’s supposed to be an Eng-lish dictionary for Koreans, but since you can input both Ko-rean and English in the search bar, it’s extremely useful for Ko-rean learners.

The site is entirely in Korean and at first glance, it may seem too overwhelming for a beginner. But I never believe that something can be “too difficult”. Obviously it’s difficult. Every-thing that you have never tried is “difficult”. But that isn’t the excuse for you not to try it. Especially since it involves just mental capacity. If you take a closer look at the site, you will find that it’s intuitive and very soon, you will get the hang of navigating the dictionary section.

Although I have a personal preference for Naver dictionary, there are quite a number of decent ones out there, and it’s about finding something that you like.

• Naver dictionary endic.naver.com

• Nate dictionary http://engdic.nate.com/

• Daum dictionary http://alldic.daum.net/index.do?dic=eng

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Useful terms:

검색 - search 숙어- idiomatic expression

예문 - examples 상세검색 - advanced search

Electronic dictionaries. This is worth discussing. When I first started learning Korean, I really envied those who have an electronic dictionary. To me, it looked really cool and useful. At that time (2008) smartphones weren’t as popular and only the rich and most tech savvy will have them. Needless to say, the concept of 3G and apps weren’t popular too. Electronic dic-tionaries seem really useful, and I thought it was great that one can study on the go. The pronunciation function was at-tractive too and the better ones can even read pdfs / store mp3 files. Those were really expensive, so after much thought, I settled on a cheaper (but still expensive) Korean-Chinese-Japanese-English electronic dictionary.

I really regretted the purchase. I barely use it and some of the words I wanted to check weren’t in the database. I rarely do my studying outside (even though I thought I will) and when I’m at home, the laptop screen is so much conducive than the small electronic dictionary.

Another important point is that an electronic dictionary can serve you well enough in the beginner - intermediate stage, but once you start to learn the harder vocabulary, you may re-alize that your electronic dictionary may sometimes fail you. As you delve deeper into the language, you will come across slangs and jargon that will not be available on electronic dic-tionaries.

That being said, I do have friends that invested in a good one and really like it. Most of them attend language classes and perhaps it’s better to be seen using an electronic dictionary in-

stead of a phone in the class even though you may be just us-ing the dictionary function in both :P

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THE BEGINNER

The beginner textbooks

Now that you have learnt Korean online for a while, you may also be considering getting a few books for some offline study. Choosing a good textbook is a skill in itself.

THE BEGINNER

How to choose a beginner textbook

Before launching on some tips and advices of choosing a text-book, I would like to talk about WHEN one should start buy-ing foreign language textbooks. Although foreign language textbooks are cheaper than lesson fees, most of them will be very expensive. In Singapore, such textbooks can range from anything between SGD $15 - $100+. Unless you have the fi-nancial resources to splurge on them, you should think twice before buying them.

I have seen some friends who were so enthusiastic about learn-ing a new language that they go to bookstores the next day and start purchasing piles of phrasebooks, dictionaries, text-books, guidebooks, exercise books, CDs etc. It’s good to have enthusiasm, but perhaps you shouldn’t channel them to pur-chasing all these stuff and think that they showcase your deter-mination to learn a language.

I was guilty of it too. So now I have a Spanish dictionary, a phrasebook and a guidebook rotting on the bookshelf and an untouched Korean-English dictionary by the side.

With the amount of learning resources online, I think it’s smarter to start online. I have already introduced two wonder-ful sites for learning Korean in the previous chapters and they will serve you well for quite a while. You should start thinking of textbooks only after 1-2 months for two reasons:

1. This is when you will probably know whether you want to give up or continue learning

2.Spending a few months learning Korean gives you some knowledge of what to buy and what not to buy.

Instead of going straight to recommend good textbooks, I think it’s important to talk about some tips on choosing a good textbook. This may seem a little obvious to the seasoned learners, but for a beginner, telling the difference between a good and bad textbook may not be so easy. After looking at so

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Quick Tips - What To Avoid!

• Phrasebooks - you are not going on a holiday

• Generally avoid textbook sets mass published for all dif-ferent kinds of languages

• Dictionaries - You get them free online

many different textbooks, I think I have developed a pretty good eye for them. (It’s like having an eye for fashion)

Having written a blog post on this topic (The importance of a good 1st textbook .. and how to choose them!), I’ll simply re-peat and talk more about the points in the post.

1.Avoid books with romanization

This is a very general rule. I’m not saying that all books with romanizations are bad, but generally, I dislike books that keep the romanizations for more than a few beginner chapters. If you are buying Chinese books, please chuck them back onto the shelves if you see Chinese pronunciation like 撒嚷嘿哟 be-neath the Korean. Enough said.

2.Master Korean in 30 days? Yeah Right.

Read Korean in a week. Speak Korean in a month. Whatever. For some reasons, I see more Taiwanese / Chinese books that have such titles. Beware when you see such titles. They aren’t usually good resources and nothing will be explained prop-erly. All you get are chunks and chunks of sentences that ‘are used in the everyday life’. Foreign language learning is not about memorization of sentences. Well… I’ve yet to come across people who actually remembered the sentences without knowing the grammar underlying it.

That’s not to say that there aren’t decent books with such ri-diculous titles. I have a couple of them which are quite good. With slightly more decent titles like ’50 grammar structures in

50 days’. I guess they are forced to use such titles as a market-ing strategy for the time-strapped language learners

3. Avoid 123084 ‘must-know’ words for TOPIK Basic

Another type of books that I hate. I’m convinced that such books are out to cheat your money. First, language learning is not… a school subject. There’s no such thing as “chapters tested” that guarantee only certain words will be tested. Even if your sole goal is to pass TOPIK basic, I’m sure that certifi-cate is used for some other purposes that will require the use/knowledge of Korean, which I think you will fail if you only know that 2500 words. I may sound harsh, but I’m really against the idea of ‘must-know’ words.

It’s one thing to use that as a guideline and another if you are too fixated with knowing that 2500 words. Also, personally I don’t see the point of shelling out money for a vocabulary list. I’m sure you didn’t learn your first language by reading a dic-tionary, and I don’t see why it will work in the foreign lan-guage.

4. Choose a book with mp3 / CD included

Most decent beginner books will include mp3 files for the dia-logues. The beginner stage is where audio input is the most im-portant and you need to keep listening to be able to grasp the intonation, get used to the speed and pick up listening skills etc.

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5. Get those in a series

Personally, I like some kind of structure in my language learn-ing and having a series makes me feel that I can progress steadily. It’s just a personal learning style. But most series are pretty good, especially those published by universities in Ko-rea. Readers of the blog will know that I favor the Ewha Ko-rean and Yonsei Korean series.

If you are a bilingual or multilingual (lucky you!) already, you have the additional factor to consider: Which language should I study Korean in? Well, I’ll say it’s very much up to you. Based on personal experiences, I like using books both in Eng-lish and Chinese. English books because most translated Ko-rean textbooks will first be published in English. Chinese books because they are much cheaper and somehow I find the Chinese explanations of Korean grammar easier to digest. It’s very much personal preference, just like how I prefer to learn Japanese using Korean textbooks/guidebooks!

Quality over QuantityIf you have the financial resources, it may be tempting to get a large selection of textbooks. Unless you really have a lot of money to spare, don’t do it. Determination to learn a language is reflected in the amount of effort you put in, not the number of textbooks you have on the bookshelf.

Personally, I do like to study from a wide range of books. I don’t purchase everything, only those that are the most useful. The rest, I borrow from the library.

Most beginner textbooks are roughly the same (decent ones at least), content and style wise. There is no need to buy many beginner textbooks. Save your money for the intermediate and advanced materials! You are likely to discard your textbooks and not refer to them anymore after you are done with them, but a good novel stays with you for life.

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Because this e-book is meant to be a general guide, text-book reviews / recommendations will not be included (as of now). Check out the blog category “Korean textbook re-views” or the Korean resource page!