Recommended Korean Textbooks

[xaghce]

I've used a dif textbook for each level of korean, beginners, intermediate and advanced
uhm, although i used a really awesome intermediate textbook, I dont think I can recommend it cause its geared towards learning through japanese, but if ur interested, I totally reccomend the dekiru kankokugo series, available on amazon.co.jp etc

I actually used genki myself when i started out w/ Japanese, so i know what u mean about layout. heh

anyways, ganada has some nice textbooks for decent prices that come w/ cds
its nice cause they speak at a natural speed and the chapter topics are interesting and useful! plus if u look around, u can find flashcards etc online for the beginners and intermediate levels, but advanced students r on their own


oh, i would incredibly NOT recommedn the college korean series. I've checked those books out and they r old and rubbish. how could they call that intermediate level!? omg. I learned all of that stuff in my beginners book.

[tonygr]

Rather than creating a whole new topic on books, I thought I'd ask my question here first:

I'm studying a lot of Korean vocabulary where a lot of words have the same or similar meaning. What's difficult is that many of those words, especially if used improperly, can take on an entirely different meaning.

So I'm curious to know: What are some good Korean thesauruses out there?

I plan on visiting Seoul again in May 2010 so feel free to recommend any books that I could get at Kyobo.

[Gudrun]

If anyone knows of a Korean thesaurus please let me know. I even had Korean friend who lives in Seoul search for one and she couldn't find any. In fact, she said she's never heard of one for Korean. I'm not sure they exist---but they should!

[Engine54]

Nobody has mentioned them yet, but I like the two Fred Lukoff books, as well as the "Speaking Korean" books by Francis Y.T. Park.

Each is a great grammar reference. Of the two, I suppose I like the Lukoff ones better. They are among the few Korean textbooks written by someone for whom Korean was a second language. This could be why his explanations sometimes seem to make a bit more sense to me than do those of other Korean textbooks.

As for "Speaking Korean," I use volumes I& II mainly. Volume III is directed to hanja, and volume IV to newspaper reading. Good books - if I had to knock them I'd say that perhaps the Korean taught in them is a bit formal and not the sort you'd here everyday on the street.

The Lukoff ones might be a bit tougher to find, but I think the Park ones are available on Amazon.

[xflibble]

Rather than creating a whole new topic on books, I thought I'd ask my question here first:

I'm studying a lot of Korean vocabulary where a lot of words have the same or similar meaning. What's difficult is that many of those words, especially if used improperly, can take on an entirely different meaning.

So I'm curious to know: What are some good Korean thesauruses out there?

I plan on visiting Seoul again in May 2010 so feel free to recommend any books that I could get at Kyobo.

I'm not sure how a thesaurus would help. Don't they usually just list the synonyms? If you want to understand how to use the words in context, dictionaries are usually better for that. Which dictionary/dictionaries are you currently using?