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Rating: 
Summary: An excellent Korean vocabulary primer
Review: For those who have no or minimal knowledge of the Korean language, this book is excellent. 5 stars!The book begins with a "scriptbreaker" section that explains the elementary rules of constructing Korean syllables and pronouncing Korean characters (although for truely Korean pronunciation this book will needed to be supplemented with some form of audio instruction). From there the book is divided into 8 lessons. Each lesson utilizes a variety of the familiar and time-tested exercizes you used to learn new English words as a kid, such as matching and word finds, to implant the new vocabulary in your head. The book is then finished off nicely with a tear-out set of flash cards (one for each word learned in the book). As far as minus points, the cost of this book is a little high. Despite the cost, however, this book is a solid investment. If you go through the book and do the exercizes, your first 100 words in Korean are likely to stick with you.
Rating: 
Summary: Great idea, glaring mistakes
Review: I like the book. Plenty of exercises to beat the script into your head. Kinda fun to do these childlike exercises, too.
Rating: 
Summary: A picture is worth a thousand words.
Review: I wish I had this book three years ago, when I first came to Korea. When I saw the profusely illustrated materials which my English students were enjoying, I felt somewhat envious. If Montessori was right, actual objects aid in learning betters than pictures, and pictures aid in learning better than print on the page. Too bad we don't have books like this for foreign language students at all levels.
Rating:
Summary: A picture is worth a thousand words.
Review: I wish I had this book three years ago, when I first came to Korea. When I saw the profusely illustrated materials which my English students were enjoying, I felt somewhat envious. If Montessori was right, actual objects aid in learning betters than pictures, and pictures aid in learning better than print on the page. Too bad we don't have books like this for foreign language students at all levels.
Rating:
Summary: Can be useful, if you have a basic understanding of Korean
Review: This book has many errors in it.
The pronunciation for some of the letters are wrong.
("aw" is shown as "o", for example)
And even the definition of some of the words are wrong.
(the book shows the word "nan-lo" means "stove", but, really means "heater")
Don't use this book to learn how to read and write Hangul.
It can be helpful to learn vocabulary, as long as you have a friend who knows Korean to make sure you are learning the words correctly.
Rating: 
Summary: Good to get you started, but ignore Romanizations
Review: This book is great to get you started with learning some of the basic words so that you can apply them to sentences later. However, like many books on Korean, the Romanization is aweful. If I did not already know the alphabet and pronouniations, I would have been been saying all the words very wrong (www.langintro.com is a great place to learn along with a native Korean speaker). I was always having to cover up the Romanizations on the flashcards because my native-English eye would go right to them. I also found that I stopped using the little excercies mid-way through the book and just used the flash cards.
Rating:
Summary: Good to get you started, but ignore Romanizations
Review: This book is great to get you started with learning some of the basic words so that you can apply them to sentences later. However, like many books on Korean, the Romanization is aweful. If I did not already know the alphabet and pronouniations, I would have been been saying all the words very wrong (www.langintro.com is a great place to learn along with a native Korean speaker). I was always having to cover up the Romanizations on the flashcards because my native-English eye would go right to them. I also found that I stopped using the little excercies mid-way through the book and just used the flash cards.
Rating:
Summary: A good beginners book.
Review: Very good book for the begginer, not an advanced book. Very simple to follow and the flash cards are a nice feature. You will not learn Korean from this book, but it will make a good companion to begginer just to get familiar with korean words.
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