Thanks for posting this thread. I will start Korean in about a week from now. Has anyone considered using the “Korean From Zero!” series?
I know it’s relatively new, but it has many excellent reviews on Amazon, and I want to give it a try. That is, I want to use it as my primary text; I’ll use many other tools in conjunction.
I never thought to do the lessons backwards. I’m going to have to give this a try when I pick it up again.
I still am not a fan of doing the exercises, and I only did them in my first LL which was French.
As for writing out the Hangul, I did both handwritten and typed for the first half of Assimil, and I found after awhile it was just too boring to write it out, but it does indeed work, for both reading, and working on pronunciation.
I have yet to hear of that, but from looking at the preview, it reminds be of a typical classroom style book. It looks like it has some good explanations of some of the grammar points.
Looks good though and definately worth a try.
I came here to recommend the “from zero” books. It is a great place to start Korean or Japanese from scratch. the books do contain a fair amount of exercises, but the videos and website are great which are included with the book and walk you through a good path from the start and simple, clear explanations that aren’t overly grammatical.
George does a great job of explaining the concepts from an english speakers point of view and is also entertaining. I think this is one of the best videos for explaining the concept of particles to beginners.
This is the textbook my friend is using. He just moved to Korea for school. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/integrated-korean-hyo-sang-lee/1103119927?ean=9780824834401&pcta=n&st=PLA&sid=BNB_DRS_Core+Shopping+Textbooks_00000000&2sid=Google_&sourceId=PLGoP210&k_clickid=3x210
Ahh. I didn’t know they had videos as such. That might make a good beginning book, but I’m not the biggest fan of videos/podcasts as such which explain in English/other language. At the same time, however, they are also good to explain certain aspects which you just can’t seem to grasp unless someone who speaks the same language as you explains them.
Thanks for the info!
From reading the reviews, Korean From Zero doesn’t seem like a “typical classroom style book”. Most of the reviewers appear to be self-learners. And the book is big on free online resources that I think most learners would use on their own rather than in a classroom.
What attracted me to it - great reviews, many free videos and other resources, a true “modern” and up-to-date feel, and perhaps most of all, it appears to be organised by grammar rather than topic. Living language appealed to me for many of the same reasons, but it’s topic-based rather than grammar, which is a minus for me. Incidentally, this is the same reason I found Penguin Russian to be so much better than the Princeton Russian course.
I didn’t realize that they are giving the Korean From Zero course away absolutely for free until I visited the website. http://www.koreanfromzero.com/
I remember seeing a video by the author. I think he was talking about publishing the books. I think the books are supposed to be entertaining.