Rating: 
Summary: Great book for beginers
Review: This is a great book, it is not the classical phrase book (although it gives you many phrases!), but is a combination of a grammar book with a small dictionary and a phrase book.
It is written in a clear way, it's easy to understand every lesson, and it helps you to build a vocabulary wide enough. Besides, the small dicctionary at the end of the book makes easy to search for many words. Contains exercises at the end of every lesson, with their answers.The cd is a great tool for you to hear the pronunciation and how korean is actually spoken. The only problem is romanization, it's a little complicated, but as soon as you learn hangeul (by the third lesson), you'll never have to worry about it. The conclusion: If you wanna learn korean in an easy way, this book is an option.
Rating:
Summary: Another comprehensive Korean resource
Review: Want to learn Korean than from what is taught in phrasebooks? Wanting to have a very basic command of the Korean language? Then this book is most likely for you! It's very rare that textbooks on the Korean language are very high quality, this newcomer is of high quality. The section on the sound systems of a language is what I consider the most vital to a language book. This book accomplishes it real well. It uses a form of IPA alongside "layman's terms." If those don't work out, then use the accompanying CD. It also teaches the writing system, Han'geul, and the allophones (varities of a sound). Romanization is used at a minimum and disappears around lesson 5. The Romanization isn't McCune-Reischauer or Yale, but it's a modified form of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Each lesson contains several brief dialogues followed by short vocabulary notes in Korean and English. After that section, Korean grammar used in the dialogue is thoroughly explained. Charts and sentence examples are used as learning aids. There are also exercises on the different politeness levels of Korean and reviews of previous lessons. The end of the book featuers a two-way Korean and English vocabulary and the answer guide. The authors were certainly correct in saying that this is comprehensive and detailed.
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