Rating: 
Summary: I found it ok, but some things were bugging me...
Review: Out of the few Korean books available out there, I'd recommend this book. It teaches the basics, and also Hangul. The thing I didn't like about it is the fact that they use romanization. And when they do use romanization, it's non-standard and inconsistent. Hangwul instead of Hangul. Wuri instead of Uri. A better alternative would be Active Korean (published by Hollym), and Colloquial Korean.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book! but it could have used some work
Review: Teach Yourself Korean is a great book if you want to learn more than just "tourist phrases." The introduction with Han-Geul was clear and easy to understand. If your first language is English, the grammar and pronunciation rules will seem strange and hard to remember at first, but this is true for most Asian languages. Since Korean is not a tonal language, such as Chinese or Vietnamese, your learning will not be hindered by worries about "singing" the words. Each section includes an introduction listing the aspects of the Korean language you will learn. The dialogues in each section aren't dry either. They contain many colloquial Korean phrases and expressions that are explained later in the chapter. The dialogues are shown in Han-Geul and are followed by McCune-Reischauer romanisations. The romanisations were one of the aspects of the book that could have been improved. Sometimes they were inconsistent with the Han-Geul and left me wondering which pronunciations were correct. The vocabulary boxes were extremely helpful, but since the words were not translated directly under the Han-Geul dialogues, I had to keep flipping pages to understand what I was reading. This ruined the flow of the conversations a little bit. The commentary was the core of the book. It explained aspects of Korean culture and taught me how to construct Korean sentences. Although the authors attempt to keep the explanations simple, some of the grammar commentary sections needed to be read and re-read in order to absorb the information. The upside of this is that repitition reinforces memory. The exercises are varied and cover a wide range of problems. The book recommends that one completes the exercises using Han-Geul, but beginners can use romanistation as well. Some of the answer keys in the back of the book provided answers that seemed strange, and this was a major hindrance for me. I would re-read the grammar commentary to see if I had missed anything, only to find out that we would learn a certain verb-construction or colloquialism in later sections. All in all, this was a great book, but it needs some polishing.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book! but it could have used some work
Review: Teach Yourself Korean is a great book if you want to learn more than just "tourist phrases." The introduction with Han-Geul was clear and easy to understand. If your first language is English, the grammar and pronunciation rules will seem strange and hard to remember at first, but this is true for most Asian languages. Since Korean is not a tonal language, such as Chinese or Vietnamese, your learning will not be hindered by worries about "singing" the words. Each section includes an introduction listing the aspects of the Korean language you will learn. The dialogues in each section aren't dry either. They contain many colloquial Korean phrases and expressions that are explained later in the chapter. The dialogues are shown in Han-Geul and are followed by McCune-Reischauer romanisations. The romanisations were one of the aspects of the book that could have been improved. Sometimes they were inconsistent with the Han-Geul and left me wondering which pronunciations were correct. The vocabulary boxes were extremely helpful, but since the words were not translated directly under the Han-Geul dialogues, I had to keep flipping pages to understand what I was reading. This ruined the flow of the conversations a little bit. The commentary was the core of the book. It explained aspects of Korean culture and taught me how to construct Korean sentences. Although the authors attempt to keep the explanations simple, some of the grammar commentary sections needed to be read and re-read in order to absorb the information. The upside of this is that repitition reinforces memory. The exercises are varied and cover a wide range of problems. The book recommends that one completes the exercises using Han-Geul, but beginners can use romanistation as well. Some of the answer keys in the back of the book provided answers that seemed strange, and this was a major hindrance for me. I would re-read the grammar commentary to see if I had missed anything, only to find out that we would learn a certain verb-construction or colloquialism in later sections. All in all, this was a great book, but it needs some polishing.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book! but it could have used some work
Review: Teach Yourself Korean is a great book if you want to learn more than just "tourist phrases." The introduction with Han-Geul was clear and easy to understand. If your first language is English, the grammar and pronunciation rules will seem strange and hard to remember at first, but this is true for most Asian languages. Since Korean is not a tonal language, such as Chinese or Vietnamese, your learning will not be hindered by worries about "singing" the words. Each section includes an introduction listing the aspects of the Korean language you will learn. The dialogues in each section aren't dry either. They contain many colloquial Korean phrases and expressions that are explained later in the chapter. The dialogues are shown in Han-Geul and are followed by McCune-Reischauer romanisations. The romanisations were one of the aspects of the book that could have been improved. Sometimes they were inconsistent with the Han-Geul and left me wondering which pronunciations were correct. The vocabulary boxes were extremely helpful, but since the words were not translated directly under the Han-Geul dialogues, I had to keep flipping pages to understand what I was reading. This ruined the flow of the conversations a little bit. The commentary was the core of the book. It explained aspects of Korean culture and taught me how to construct Korean sentences. Although the authors attempt to keep the explanations simple, some of the grammar commentary sections needed to be read and re-read in order to absorb the information. The upside of this is that repitition reinforces memory. The exercises are varied and cover a wide range of problems. The book recommends that one completes the exercises using Han-Geul, but beginners can use romanistation as well. Some of the answer keys in the back of the book provided answers that seemed strange, and this was a major hindrance for me. I would re-read the grammar commentary to see if I had missed anything, only to find out that we would learn a certain verb-construction or colloquialism in later sections. All in all, this was a great book, but it needs some polishing.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: Teach Yourself Korean, in my opinion, is really a great book for beginners. The tape was also good even though some conversational parts were a bit fast to learn. They included romanization for beginners because they wanted you to read in hangul text and then look at the romanization to see if you are beginning to improve on how to read hangul. After reading this book, move on to "College Korean" and "Elementary Korean."
Rating: 
Summary: awkward expressions (cassette tapes)
Review: The topics of the chapters are not really fit for non-native speakers of Korean. There are many awkward expressions and unrealistic situations for non-native speakers to learn.
Rating: 
Summary: The book would be excellent, but for a major flaw...
Review: This book does a good job of introducing basic Korean grammar and vocabulary, but is useless for any serious student. The authors make the mistake of teaching the language in its romanized form, rather than introducing the Korean alphabet--Hangul--from the start. The Hangul alphabet is very easy to learn, and trying to teach Korean without introducing the words in Korean script is a serious, if not fatal flaw. The lack of a cassette guide is equally troublesome. Instead, I would recommend "College Korean" by Michael Rogers, Clare You, and Kyungnun Richards; published by the University of California at Berkeley.
Rating: 
Summary: lose the romanisation!!
Review: This is a great book in many ways. It's not dry like most other texts, it has a lot of humour and useful grammatical tips. HOWEVER, the use of romanisation is annoying and inconsistent (why write "sojwu" instead of "soju"? It's absurd).The authors should re-release the book and scrap the romanisation, COLD TURKEY. Instead, package the tape together with the book and sell them as a unit, so students can learn the proper Hangul pronunciation that way. At the moment, I would say that the "Korean Through English" series (Hollym) surpasses this book. However, it is still a good book and has taught me a lot. Get rid of the romanisation (including the McCune-Reischauer system), sell the tape with the book, and you've got a five-star course.
Rating:
Summary: Exceeds the effectiveness of Pimsleur series
Review: This simple set of CD and a book is as effective its Pimsleur counter part if not more. First of all, this one has a book that explains the cultures, and grammars, not to mention the full tranlation of the dialogues from the CD in both Romanized and actual Korean alphabet. So you learn the spoken Korean as well as reading (and writing if you put in the effort). I have the version with cassettes then I got the CD version, it's even better than before. There are no typos now, and it's better organized.
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