Suggestions for Korean textbooks at the beginner/low inter. level?

Good day,

I am making a concerted effort to improve my abysmal Korean skills over the summer and I am interested in suggestions for good textbooks to utilize in this endeavor.  As the post mentions, I guess I would put myself in the high beginner/very low intermediate range, but the bottomline is that I have a very long way to go. Thanks for any help you may be able to offer.

-Kevin 

Re: Suggestions for Korean textbooks at the beginner/low ...

Hello there.

I would recommend you the excellent "Korean made easy" series by Seung-un Oh. See this link to see how the cover looks --> http://koreanmadeeasyseries.blogspot.jp/

I believe you could easily purchase the book in bookstores such as Kyobo, for around 14,000 won. Otherwise order it from an internet shopping website such as Gmarket.

I would also direct you to a few websites that I have found (and still do) hugely useful for learning Korean (among other languages), and the best of all is that it's free. Check out www.lingq.com. Also, koreanchamp.com, and talktomeinkorean.com.

Lastly, if you want an additional resource to learn the language, I have found the Pimsleur series to be great at learning useful phrases and getting used to listen to the language. It's easily downloadable in torrent websites, unless you wish to pay the $150 or so price for each series.

Hope this helps

Re: Suggestions for Korean textbooks at the beginner/low ...

I wish Steven Revere's (the guy from Arirang, first foreigner to get a masters in Korean blah blah) 'Survival Korean' had been around when I first started out learning Korean, because he teaches the everyday Korean that foreigners need to know to get by from day to day as opposed to the more formal Korean that many other books try to teach you.

The second book I would highly recommend as it can be used in conjunction with their website (http://korean.sogang.ac.kr/) is 'Sogang on-line Korean'. The book is extremely well structured in the way that it breaks down the grammar and vocabulary.

The above mentioned 'Korean made easy' is good. A lot of universitites use it in their introductory courses.

The 'Pathfinder in Korean' series of books by Ehwa University I found very good, but I did use them with a private tutor and they are kind of intense.

'Roadmap' to Korean by Richard Harris is more of an approach to learning Korean by trying to learn about the people and it's history. Maybe something you want to consider later once you have the basics down.

Three other books that I've found essential are vocab and grammar books.

'Easy Korean Grammar' (my covers pink and red!) by  이인혜 and 라혜민 is an invaluable reference tool.

The fatter and much more comprehensive grammar bible 'Korean Grammar for International Learners' from Yonsei press has the basics and the nitty gritty, but it can be quite daunting at times.

Finally one of my favourite books has been 'Handbook of Korean Vocabulary' by Choo Miho and William O'Grady. It teaches you Korean vocab by understanding the Chinese root words underlying them. Sounds complicated, but it's anything but and your vocab learning acceleartes super quick!