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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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elg
Joined: 23 Aug 2005
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 Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 12:14 am Post subject: korean dictionary and book |
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looking for a person that can speak korean as a 2nd language at a decent level of fluency.
( with all due respect, a decent level according to a korean person not oneself, please. coming from a country where i have studied the language for three years and 2nd language students i have found to be very poor appraisers of what is a good book and what isnt as most have very little actual grasp or acquisition of the language.)
would appreciate a recommendation of a *very good korean/english dict and a very good beginners book for korean (should deal with both written and spoken and absence of transliteration). |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 10:43 am Post subject: |
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I like the New Age dictionary for Korean -- English. I haven't found an English -- Korean dictionary that I like.
Elementary Korean is a great book for laying out all the basics (and the newest edition has a CD). After that I like Seoul University's books for having tons of writing exercises. The Integrated Korean books are pretty good too.
Avoid Yonsei University's books like the plague.
And, by the way, in Korea the language learners are much better appraisers of their abilities than the natives. Just ordering ice cream properly can send the lady behind the counter into paroxysms of joy at your fluency. |
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Mashimaro
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: location, location
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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| anyone know a good korean-korean dictionary? |
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ladyandthetramp
Joined: 21 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Hater Depot wrote: |
Avoid Yonsei University's books like the plague.
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Can't say anything about the books for self-study purposes, but if you're taking the class the books are quite good. If you're considering a class, try Yonsei's program (day or evening). Whenver I meet a good Korean speaker, it seems they always study/studied and Yonsei.
As far as dictionaries, I use Dong-A Prime. It's pretty good, and the English-Korean version comes with a CD, too. If you want a different dictionary for your computer, get a copy of the Hangul word processing software. It comes with a bilingual and monolingual dictionary. I tend to use the two above-mentioned dictionaries. |
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the_beaver
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Mashimaro wrote: |
| anyone know a good korean-korean dictionary? |
I like ���� �ѱ������, but it's a little unwieldly. |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 6:42 pm Post subject: |
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| ladyandthetramp wrote: |
| Hater Depot wrote: |
Avoid Yonsei University's books like the plague.
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Can't say anything about the books for self-study purposes, but if you're taking the class the books are quite good. If you're considering a class, try Yonsei's program (day or evening). Whenver I meet a good Korean speaker, it seems they always study/studied and Yonsei. |
Did you use the books with blue spines and gray covers, with a picture of King Sejong? I used with my tutor and they held me back for a long time. No exercises, no guide to pronunciation, really boring example sentences. The examples frequently used complicated grammar that wouldn't be introduced until chapters later. |
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Mashimaro
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: location, location
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 8:36 pm Post subject: |
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| ladyandthetramp wrote: |
Whenver I meet a good Korean speaker, it seems they always study/studied and Yonsei.
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whenever I meet someone who knows a motherload of grammar but can't speak worth a damn seems they always studied at yonsei |
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Mashimaro
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: location, location
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 8:40 pm Post subject: |
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| the_beaver wrote: |
| Mashimaro wrote: |
| anyone know a good korean-korean dictionary? |
I like ���� �ѱ������, but it's a little unwieldly. |
thanks beav |
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wrago
Joined: 31 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 9:05 pm Post subject: book |
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| check out Integrated Korean. I used this in the first course i took back in the states. It has a website where you can hear all of the vocab and conversations in the chapter, then answer some comprehension questions. Also check out the Sogang site... http://sogang.korean.ac.kr i think.... |
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Hater Depot
Joined: 29 Mar 2005
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Integrated Korean isn't very good for self-study, I'd say. Goodish grammar explanations but very few written exercises (this is in the Intermediate 1 book). If you get the accompanying workbook though it's good (the audio portions only make sense if you have the workbook). |
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ladyandthetramp
Joined: 21 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 10:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Hater Depot wrote: |
| ladyandthetramp wrote: |
| Hater Depot wrote: |
Avoid Yonsei University's books like the plague.
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Can't say anything about the books for self-study purposes, but if you're taking the class the books are quite good. If you're considering a class, try Yonsei's program (day or evening). Whenver I meet a good Korean speaker, it seems they always study/studied and Yonsei. |
Did you use the books with blue spines and gray covers, with a picture of King Sejong? I used with my tutor and they held me back for a long time. No exercises, no guide to pronunciation, really boring example sentences. The examples frequently used complicated grammar that wouldn't be introduced until chapters later. |
Yeah, I didn't think it was good for self-study. It's designed to go along with the course, where the teachers have other materials to supplement the main book. In the context of the class, they're well made.
Concerning grammar, I don't know what you're talking about. The grammar is nicely layed out in order. If you are finding complicated grammar you never learned, you should look at the index. You probably skipped it or forgot it. |
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ladyandthetramp
Joined: 21 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 10:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Mashimaro wrote: |
| ladyandthetramp wrote: |
Whenver I meet a good Korean speaker, it seems they always study/studied and Yonsei.
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whenever I meet someone who knows a motherload of grammar but can't speak worth a damn seems they always studied at yonsei |
Well, yesterday I happened to meet three new people from Yonsei. They hadn't even graduated yet, and they were all quite capable of conversing in Korean.
I haven't met a Yonsei graduate who can't speak.
There's a myth that Yonsei doesn't involve much speaking. While I'll admit that the evening program doesn't have too much speaking at first, by the time you are in the advanced levels there is a lot of speaking. Not just speaking about the weather, either, but discussing fairly advanced topics.
In fact, by level 3 (of 6) most students are quite capable of holding decent conversations in Korean. That's less than one year of studying. |
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the_beaver
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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| ladyandthetramp wrote: |
| Mashimaro wrote: |
| ladyandthetramp wrote: |
Whenver I meet a good Korean speaker, it seems they always study/studied and Yonsei.
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whenever I meet someone who knows a motherload of grammar but can't speak worth a damn seems they always studied at yonsei |
Well, yesterday I happened to meet three new people from Yonsei. They hadn't even graduated yet, and they were all quite capable of conversing in Korean.
I haven't met a Yonsei graduate who can't speak.
There's a myth that Yonsei doesn't involve much speaking. While I'll admit that the evening program doesn't have too much speaking at first, by the time you are in the advanced levels there is a lot of speaking. Not just speaking about the weather, either, but discussing fairly advanced topics.
In fact, by level 3 (of 6) most students are quite capable of holding decent conversations in Korean. That's less than one year of studying. |
My ass.
No, wait.
My ass doubled.
I studied at Yonsei to level 5 (A��) and what a fucked up program that is. I know that there are quite a few who can speak Korean coming out of the program, but definitely not the majority. And those that learned to speak well are the people that are the type that don't require classroom learning.
Yonsei classes are teacher centered and the amount of speaking in the classroom is minimal. In level 5 we were all supposed to explain a newspaper article every morning, and that 5 minutes of explanation accounted for half of the day's speaking time. There was a much touted debate, but that didn't amount to a pile of beans in terms of speaking time.
Naw. Yonsei gets by on reputation. |
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ladyandthetramp
Joined: 21 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 3:20 am Post subject: |
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| the_beaver wrote: |
| ladyandthetramp wrote: |
| Mashimaro wrote: |
| ladyandthetramp wrote: |
Whenver I meet a good Korean speaker, it seems they always study/studied and Yonsei.
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whenever I meet someone who knows a motherload of grammar but can't speak worth a damn seems they always studied at yonsei |
Well, yesterday I happened to meet three new people from Yonsei. They hadn't even graduated yet, and they were all quite capable of conversing in Korean.
I haven't met a Yonsei graduate who can't speak.
There's a myth that Yonsei doesn't involve much speaking. While I'll admit that the evening program doesn't have too much speaking at first, by the time you are in the advanced levels there is a lot of speaking. Not just speaking about the weather, either, but discussing fairly advanced topics.
In fact, by level 3 (of 6) most students are quite capable of holding decent conversations in Korean. That's less than one year of studying. |
My ass.
No, wait.
My ass doubled.
I studied at Yonsei to level 5 (A��) and what a *beep* up program that is. I know that there are quite a few who can speak Korean coming out of the program, but definitely not the majority. And those that learned to speak well are the people that are the type that don't require classroom learning.
Yonsei classes are teacher centered and the amount of speaking in the classroom is minimal. In level 5 we were all supposed to explain a newspaper article every morning, and that 5 minutes of explanation accounted for half of the day's speaking time. There was a much touted debate, but that didn't amount to a pile of beans in terms of speaking time.
Naw. Yonsei gets by on reputation. |
Perhaps you're just not the brightest kid on the block. Or you didn't study.
I had an American friend last year start at level 1, and by level 3 he could already understand and hold a decent conversation in Korean.
I also did teacher observation of level 3 students from China and Japan. I was amazed at how well they could speak in less than one year.
Yonsei has, in my opinion, earned its good reputation. |
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the_beaver
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:30 am Post subject: |
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| ladyandthetramp wrote: |
| Perhaps you're just not the brightest kid on the block. Or you didn't study. |
Perhaps. But it's also possible that I've learned a bit about language learning since then. Initially I did put my lack of progress down to lack of ability but I've discovered that Yonsei is essentially using 50 year-old methodology which has largely been abandoned because it doesn't work for the greatest number of people.
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| I had an American friend last year start at level 1, and by level 3 he could already understand and hold a decent conversation in Korean. |
You had one American friend at Yonsei?
Dude, I've studied with at least 60 different people in Yonsei and with another dozen or so ex-Yonsei students at Sogang, and there were plenty of Americans in the mix. If we're going empirically, I have your ass kicked.
I could hold a conversation at the end of level 3 that would astound anybody who couldn't speak Korean -- as could most of my classmates. A couple of people could speak quite well, but, by and large, for the amount of effort we put in, we didn't correspondingly raise our ability levels. Most of us also plateaued at level 3 (well, not the Japanese students).
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| I also did teacher observation of level 3 students from China and Japan. I was amazed at how well they could speak in less than one year. |
I'm not amazed at all. I can show you all kinds of Chinese and Japanese students from different language schools who can speak Korean quite well. Hell, I'm teaching four Chinese students this semester and every one of them is completely fluent after studying at a language school with a worse reputation than Yonsei.
I'll try the empirical evidence again. I attended Yonsei for a total of 1.5 years and I saw a few people doing well, but most were just treading water. I attended Sogang for a total of 9 months and I hear level 2 and 3 students yammering away in Korean in the hallways with each other and with their teachers and doing things that few could do in Yonsei in level 4 or 5.
| Quote: |
| Yonsei has, in my opinion, earned its good reputation. |
So, you've never attended Yonsei, you've never attended a different language school for comparison, you've put nothing forth about the methodology used, and you're basing your opinion on a few people you've met and know. . .
Well, after you've attended Yonsei get back to me. |
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