Spoken World: Korean [Audio CD]

It used to be that anyone learning Korean had to go on a treasure hunt to find learning materials. Now that Korea is emerging as a global economic player, learners of Korean are in the enviable position of having too many language learning choices.

Living Language products are sold as no-gimmick learning materials. There are no tricks, no cuteness, just you and the language. The new World Languages series features a fairly thin book and a set of six CDs.

First, the good. The CDs are excellent. The Korean speakers are clearly understandable and they speak at a pace that is easy for a non-native to follow but not so slow that they sound odd. Three of the CDs are meant to be used with the book, the other three are meant as refreshers that can be used without the book.

The book teaches the Korean script (Hangeul) immediately. This alone sets it apart from many of the major Korean language releases. Learning the Korean alphabet is easy and essential to full fluency. The first few lessons have Romanization but it disappears later in the book.

There is good emphasis on casual speech, a topic notably lacking is most Korean learning material. Most books confine themselves to -imnida and -saeyo endings. This book teaches casual speech fairly early, an excellent move. After all, making friends is an important part of language learning and who wants to talk to their friends the same way they would talk to their boss or grandmother?

The exercises are also good. The suggestion of starting a journal in Korean is a wonderful idea and has helped me greatly. Admittedly, my journal does not make for very gripping reading (mostly concerned with work, weather and what I bought today) due to a limited vocabulary, but it gives great practice in actually using Korean. And your beginner's mistakes will be a fun thing to laugh about with your Korean speaking friends once you become fluent.

Now for the not so good. The book is very light on the grammar. Irregular verbs are skimmed over and conjugation is not as well covered as I would have liked. I found myself constantly referring back to my other two Korean books, Beginner's Korean (Hippocrene Beginner's Series) and Elementary Korean (Tuttle Language Library) to find answers to very basic questions.

The vocabulary section is anemic. You are asked to make a Korean journal but they don't include the word for journal? Hmm.

So, it it worth the money? It depends on your finances. If you are on a budget, I would recommend one of the two books mentioned earlier. They are both good as stand-alone textbooks. If you have the money to spend, the recordings are well worth the price of the set. The culture notes included in the book are also good. It will make a worthy addition to your Korean language bookshelf and will supplement your other material.

I would NOT recommend purchasing this set as your lone Korean language learning material. The grammar and vocabulary sections are just too thin to be of much help to a beginner.

First, as an introduction, I am not an individual who picks up a book and latches onto a foreign language. I have not fluent in Korean (yet), but am working on improving my proficiency. I used this course to get my feet wet through informal study. I have used phrasebooks, Before You Land, and Rosetta Stone resources before but prefer the type of no-frills, no-nonsense instruction offered by this course.

Packet consists of 6 audio CDs and a book - all are user friendly and easy to understand. I especially like how the CDs are indexed with relatively short lessons when compared to other resources. Explaining further, if you want to review a lesson or a specific phrase, the sections are small enough to quickly fast-forward or rewind to the specific point on the CDs. The vocabulary building CD is great to keep in the car to brush up while commuting around town.

I highly recommend this for school and public libraries, and would recommend this to American students who would like a 101-style introduction to this beautiful but intimidating language.

As an experienced language learner, I can honestly say that the Living Language series is, by far, the best on the market. Specifically, the Living Language Ultimate series and Spoken World series offer an entertaining and effective approach toward language learning. I have found that this product succeeds where others seem to have failed. For example, the audio for the Assimil series is terrible, as the speakers talk at such a slow pace that there's a good chance you'll be waking up several hours later. The reading and writing aspects are other areas in which courses such as Teach Yourself and Pimsleur have dropped the ball. Pimsleur offers zero text and hence, is absolutely useless to anyone who is serious about learning the language. While Teach Yourself does offer text, the authors for some reason or another have decided that it would be better to use romanization. Living Language is the most complete course I have found as both the written content and the accompanying audio are excellent. Here, the authors have taken a sensible approach, using Hangeul with the aid of transliteration in the first few chapters, and then introducing the text in Hangeul. The conversations also are lively, natural, and above all, practical. You will find that every chapter is filled with content that is pertinent, useful and applicable to actual conversations. Unfortunately, for Rosetta Stone fans, you will not find sentences such as "the octopus is behind the library". My only complaint is that the course could be longer. I would also recommend supplementing the material with a dictionary and grammar workbook. Even so, the course is great. If I were to any one product, Pimsleur (trash), Teach Yourself, or Assimil (although the latter two are also excellent in their own right) I would recommend this one.

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