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big_blue_21
Joined: 02 Nov 2005
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 Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 5:48 am Post subject: Best Products for Learning Korean? |
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I found Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone the best. Pimsleur for speaking, Rosetta Stone for building vocabulary . . . I really thought Pimsleur helped me gain the confidence to speak . . . I'm trying the Pimsleur for Farsi now, so I'll let you guys know if that one's as good.
I'm curious what other products people have had success with since I'm always getting asked about learning Korean . . . Also I found the "Teach Yourself" series pretty good for learning Hangil (the Korean alphabet), even though I did find it a little better for learning Devanagari (Hindi) and Nastaliq (Urdu). It's really good for learning those . . . so what other products have people found effective? I guess for Korean, or since I've kinda opened it up, for any language. I gather there's a lot of lingophiles here . . . and how's that for a second question: how many people came to Korea to work on languages? . . .
Opps, before I forget Random House also has a product called Living Languages . . . it helped me skip a year of French if you can believe that . . . I went from nil to third semester French at my university after using it pretty consistently for three months . . . but have still found Pimsleur the best on the market . . . |
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Join Me
Joined: 14 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 7:11 am Post subject: |
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| www.koreanclass101.com Educational and entertaining. I love it and just bought a year membership. I would recommend it to anyone. |
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Underwaterbob
Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Soju is definitely the best product out there for learning Korean. You can start a conversation with any Korean with a bottle of soju. |
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Chris Kwon
Joined: 23 Jan 2008
Location: North Korea
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 6:48 pm Post subject: |
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Rosetta Stone is garbage. If you want to increase your vocabulary, especially useful vocabulary, get Survival Korean vocabulary by Bryan Park.
But Rosetta stone is garbage for all languages.
Do you have the time and money to take a class at SNU or Sogang univ? If so I'd recommend that. There are also free classes you can take near city hall with beginners, intermediate and advanced classes. I think it's only once a week. If you want more info on that let me know. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 8:36 pm Post subject: |
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Pimsleur is very good. I liked the Continuing Korean series as a textbook.
Editted to fix the link.
Last edited by Kuros on Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:20 am; edited 1 time in total |
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robot
Joined: 07 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 9:16 pm Post subject: |
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Are you kidding? You actually like that Survival Korean book?
It's just poorly organized lists of random words. Many of the inclusions are questionable and the omissions glaring. The CD is just the list of words being read, with no dialogues of the example sentences.
Absolute garbage. I almost emailed the author to tell him that, too. |
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Chris Kwon
Joined: 23 Jan 2008
Location: North Korea
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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| robot wrote: |
Are you kidding? You actually like that Survival Korean book?
It's just poorly organized lists of random words. Many of the inclusions are questionable and the omissions glaring. The CD is just the list of words being read, with no dialogues of the example sentences.
Absolute garbage. I almost emailed the author to tell him that, too. |
Poorly organized? How so, they're all categorized.
The list of the words also are mostly from the 6,000 words deemed important by the Institute of Korean Language.
It's good for vocabulary building, with all the words in it did you expect dialogs with each word? A simple sentence is more than enough in this case. One shouldn't expect to use only this book to become a competent Korean speaker, only as a source for increasing vocabulary.. hence the word "Survival Korean VOCABULARY." You're calling the book garbage because it doesn't meet your extra expectations? A bit of a reach |
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samd
Joined: 03 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 5:10 am Post subject: |
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I agree with Chris Kwon, it's a great book that can be used as a dictionary, or just to flick through.
I also like it because it teaches you the frequently used words, rather than the obscure one which show up first when you use Naver online dictionary, for example.
I also second Rosetta Stone being garbage.
Pimsleur is great for some languages, eg. Mandarin, but sadly Pimsleur Korean is a waste of time.
The best resource on the net, and free: http://korean.sogang.ac.kr |
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Beer Man
Joined: 16 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:54 am Post subject: |
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| I've heard good things about the "Vocabulearn" Levels 1-2 series for Korean. They're like 15 bucks each, and apparently really good. Anyone had any experience with it? |
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itaewonguy
Joined: 25 Mar 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:57 am Post subject: |
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best product! A female ! BADDABOOOM!!
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Join Me
Joined: 14 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 1:06 am Post subject: |
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| Actually this is the worst...nothing more offending to the ears than a foreign male that speaks Korean like a Korean woman 어머! 어머! |
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nate1983
Joined: 30 Mar 2008
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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In my experience the Integrated Korean series was excellent for teaching the basics about the writing system, grammar, and everyday vocab. I began with book 1 last summer and pretty much worked through book 4 (and did some stuff in 5 and 6) and was able to pass TOPIK level 3 this spring studying 5-10 hours a week (not having lived in Korea). If you're studying alone, you'll probably need outside speaking practice cause now that I'm here it's still tough to understand what's being said and I need people to repeat a lot. But if you know the material from the first 6 books cold (so through Advanced Intermediate 2) you could probably pass level 5 TOPIK, and I brought the 3rd-6th books here for study/review.
I also have Korean Grammar for International Learners, which is more of an intermediate/advanced book I haven't really got to yet, and a couple others which I can't yet comment on. |
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Omkara
Joined: 18 Feb 2006
Location: USA
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| Posted: Thu Jun 19, 2008 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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Chris Kwon Wrote:
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| But Rosetta stone is garbage for all languages. |
I've been using Rosetta Stone every day for the last year. I have a basic fluency now. My pronunciation is good. My vocabulary is solid. My grammar is also solid.
This is my third language now. I am fluent in Russian. I've been playing this language game for a while now.
Were it not for Rosetta Stone, I'd have had much more difficulty breaking into the language. I owe much to this program. It is the most consistent part of my overall strategy.
You must develop you own strategy with the tool. Most importantly, build it into your daily schedule. During that time, the rest of your strategy will unfold.
To use Rosetta Stone with no other resources is less effective. I often have to ask Koreans to help me with sentences. But, this leads to Korean discussion.
People who study with books as their primary resource, with no audio, speak Korean horribly. Rosetta Stone builds the phonetic systems wonderfully, without the interference of English.
Learn Korean in Korean as much as possible. Mixing it with English translations will only impair you in the long run. |
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Atavistic
Joined: 22 May 2006
Location: How totally stupid that Korean doesn't show in this area.
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| Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 3:50 am Post subject: |
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| Beer Man wrote: |
| I've heard good things about the "Vocabulearn" Levels 1-2 series for Korean. They're like 15 bucks each, and apparently really good. Anyone had any experience with it? |
Do you mean the "audio flashcards?" That's VocabuLearn, right?
I find my mind wanders when I listen to them. The tracks are just too long and stupidly, the tracks aren't word by word. If they were word by word you could shuffle and make them really useful. As it is, I get used to the order the words appear in.
What I did with the materials was use it to test which words I knew. I printed out a 10 by 10 grid and listened to one track. If I knew the word, I put a check in the grid. At the end, I could match up unchecked boxes with the word list to see which words I should add to my flashcard rotation. The word list is actually in Korean, not Romanized, which makes it very useful.
One software company that I liked (and should use more) is Declan software. I like their flashcard system and I use their grammar program for review. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2008 6:47 am Post subject: |
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| Is there a program with vocabulary and grammar keyed to readings? |
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