This language WILL be mine!!!

I am SO EXCITED to share this with you!

Not long after I got here, I purchased a gem of a book called, Essential Korean for everyday use published by Hollym.

The book is brilliant because it teaches Korean expressions, but it’s not just any ol’ expression book, because each expression is set up in the following format:

Hanguel

romanization

then (drum-roll, please!) the literal English translation

English translation

It’s one of the few books on learning Korean that shows you, word for word, what each Korean word means in the order it’s being said.  Which is absolutely brilliant, because then you can intuit what the grammatical structure is just by being exposed to it.  For those of you not familiar to Korean at all, this may not seem like a big thing – but grammatically, Korean is SOOOOO different from English, that the English translations we get of sentences seem to have zero relationship to the words we are learning, and most — practically all — of the books out there fail to show us the word order, which makes finally understanding the grammar next to impossible, and then it is academic.  Being able to visually see that the Korean translation for “I didn’t order this” literally says, “this order did not.”  is HUGE, vs. some dry lesson where the book/instructor breaks down the grammar for you and it’s all conceptual…

Okay, but brilliant as it is, it was still just too overwhelming for my absolute beginner mind to retain any of it, but it is excellent, excellent, excellent for an intermediate learner.

One year and hundreds of dollars and four courses later, I just discovered some of Hollym’s other series for learning Korean.  And they are equally brilliant.  No.  They far outshine everything out there on the market for self-study, and it presents the material in a very natural way.

First off in the series are two books written by a Korean American to teach their own second-generation American children Korean – totally removed from Korean culture and in the American vacuum, Time for Korean.

Because it’s designed for upper elementary school children and not preschool, it’s not like being forced to watch teletubbies or anything, but respects the intelligence of absolute beginners while totally understanding that they are absolute beginners.  (so there you have it – I just needed a parent to teach me like they would teach their own children!)  It’s set up is the elementary school classroom, which is PERFECT for us English teachers in Korea, as this is the environment we spend most of our time in.  And it’s also set up so only a couple new words are introduced at a time, and the hanguel is introduced a little at a time, all perfectly in concert with the words you need the most to communicate right away.  And the children’s voices are clear, natural, and endearing.  All I can say is:

IT WORKS!  IT WORKS!  IT WORKS!!!

Following this is the second series by the same author, called, Yes you can speak Korean! books 1 and 2.

I did not purchase these two books, as there were a lot of kiddie songs and flashcards in it that DID make me feel like I was 7 years old again.  However, I might need to re-think this, as there is a little bit of a jump to the next Hollym series, which is absolutely brilliant.

The Hollym for beginners series consists of four books: Writing Korean for beginners, Reading Korean for beginners, Speaking Korean for beginners, and Listening Korean for beginners.

All of the books work in concert with each other, so you get triple or quadruple reinforcement for the lessons.  (though I would suggest taking them on in the order I’d introduced them above, cycling through all four books for each lesson that comes up) and the exercises are really well thought out and not mindless dribble.  Hollym has scored a home run with this series because it’s so thoroughly thought out and holistically put together, and most importantly of all, introduced naturally.  As I said, there’s a little jump from absolute beginner to these, but I also think anyone who’s lived here for a year and picked up a few words just by osmosis would be able to work through these and learn.

I AM a total fan of Hollym publishers now because all their books are a cut above the others, and I’m really pumped to work through these books on my own!  The books here in Korea are cheap, but you’ll pay about 75% more for them ordering internationally, not including shipping.  But they’re well worth it.  You can reach Hollym’s website here to order.

I also purchased Arirang Korean Basics 1 which is from the Arirang tv’s Let’s Speak Korean t.v. show.  (this is the government’s English-language station carried all over Asia, Australia, (other places?) and on-line, promoting Korean culture to foreigners)  I HATE HATE HATE that show, because it’s down-right distractingly goofy and moves too fast for me, but this particular book, the first in the series, is very good for sticking to survival Korean in a very very helpful manner, (most of the survival Korean books are written like travel phrase books and NOT convenient or helpful for picking up the language in a meaningful way) and is chock full of cultural tidbits, some of which I’d never seen before.

What a relief!  Now I don’t have to date Korean guys! (just joking – sort of!)

Added:  it’s still a patriarchy here.  :(  Very rough for a western raised girl.